68 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
since that time have competed for supremacy. These opposing principles, if not recognized in the organic structure of the con- stitution, must make a place for themselves outside and above the constitution. This compels us again to note the distinction between the persuasive basis of an institution and the coercive elements which constitute its framework. In the case of a politi- cal party the one is the principles for which the party contends, the other is the organization, or "machine," by which it gains success.
Its principles are all the selfish and the patriotic interests which its members strive to have enacted into law and enforced upon the people. Its organization is the machinery by which it marshals together a majority or plurality of the voters. The success of organization depends not only upon the number of voters, but also upon their discipline. Discipline depends upon control over the privative and remuneratory sanctions, that is, the appointment, discharge, promotion, and reward of the party workers. Consequently discipline and organization tend to monopoly and centralization. In the struggle for existence the best- disciplined and largest organization, if backed by the motive power of desires and conscious interests, will survive. In the system of election by majority vote there can be but two great parties, and every advance in organization of the one must be copied or bettered by the other, under penalty of lasting defeat. So urgent is this necessity that quite divergent principles and interests are usually forced into the same organization. It does not follow, because there are two parties, that there are also but two opposing principles animating their membership. It is the over- whelming demands of success that give organization preponder- ance over minor divergent principles. Various subordinate groups and factions of the party may be unrepresented in the ruling faction, but they must yield. And with this yielding of factions within the party for the success of the whole has it fol- lowed that parties have become more powerful than the consti- tution itself. The federal and state constitutions recognize only the individual candidate and the individual voter. But parties strive to elect those men who will above all things else enforce
