<P> A political party is a group of people who come together to contest elections and hold power in the government . The political parties are well organized which agrees on some proposed policies and programmes, with a view to promoting the collective good or furthering their supporters' interests . </P> <P> While there is some international commonality in the way political parties are recognized, and in how they operate, there are often many differences, and some are significant . Many political parties have an ideological core, but some do not, and many represent ideologies very different from their ideology at the time the party was founded . Many countries, such as Germany and India, have several significant political parties, and some nations have one - party systems, such as China and Cuba . The United States is in practice a two - party system, but with many smaller parties also participating and a high degree of autonomy for individual candidates . Its two most important parties are the Democratic Party and the Republican Party . </P> <P> The first political factions, cohering around a basic, if fluid, set of principles, emerged from the Exclusion Crisis and Glorious Revolution in late 17th century England . The Whigs supported Protestant constitutional monarchy against absolute rule; the Tories, originating in the Royalist (or "Cavalier") faction of the English Civil War, were conservative royalist supporters of a strong monarchy as a counterbalance to the republican tendencies of Whigs, who were the dominant political faction for most of the first half of the 18th century; the Whigs supported the Hanoverian succession of 1715 against the Jacobite supporters of the deposed Roman Catholic Stuart dynasty, and were able to purge Tory politicians from important government positions after the failed Jacobite rising of 1715 . The leader of the Whigs was Robert Walpole, who maintained control of the government in the period 1721--1742; his protégé was Henry Pelham (1743--1754). </P> <P> As the century wore on, the factions slowly began to adopt more coherent political tendencies as the interests of their power bases began to diverge . The Whig party's initial base of support from the great aristocratic families widened to include the emerging industrial interests and wealthy merchants . As well as championing constitutional monarchy with strict limits on the monarch's power, the Whigs adamantly opposed a Catholic king as a threat to liberty, and believed in extending toleration to nonconformist Protestants, or dissenters . A major influence on the Whigs were the liberal political ideas of John Locke, and the concepts of universal rights employed by Locke and Algernon Sidney . </P>

When did parties formally appear on the political scene
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