General Laws and the Emergence of Durable Political Parties: The Case of Pennsylvania

In previous work we have highlighted the importance of revisions to state constitutions that mandated that laws be general and uniform throughout the state. Indiana (in 1851) was the first state to adopt a general-law mandate, but most other states followed suit by the end of the century—most of them in the 1870s. This paper focuses on Pennsylvania, one of the states that made the change in the 1870s. We show that the movement to revise the state constitution was led by Republican party bosses seeking to suppress factional strife they thought was threatening their party’s dominance and perhaps even its existence. Their effort succeeded. We argue that it was the shift to general laws in Pennsylvania and other states that led to the emergence of a party system in the United States dominated by two durable political organizations.