Regionalism in the 1976 Presidential Election

No Foreign Despots on Southern Soil:The Know-Nothing Party in Alabama, 1850-1857 Robert Farrell (bio) On july 28, 1851, samuel f. rice announced his candidacy for Alabama's Seventh Congressional District.1 Instead of representing one of the established political parties, however, Rice ran as a "southern rights" candidate, demanding that Alabama immediately secede from the Union because, he believed, an abolitionist spirit dominated northern voters.2 The federal government no longer benefited the South, Rice argued, and southerners could not hope to protect their property, especially their slaves, from northern abolitionists. Secession, he insisted, should occur as soon as possible.3 Though Rice lost his bid for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1851, he found a new political home four years later in in a budding nativist political party. Samuel F. Rice provides a case study for the American or "Know-Nothing" Party in Alabama.4 Like many Know-Nothings, he desired an alternative to existing political parties because he was convinced that the Whigs and Democrats encouraged abolitionism to grow in [End Page 99] the United States by extending the right to vote to immigrants and foreign-born Catholics.5 Rice sarcastically argued: If our opponents are correct in their high estimate of foreigners, why do they not at once reduce the period for naturalization from five years to one year, or one month, and import without delay enough of them to vote down the Abolition party, and to deliver the South and the republic from all troubles and dangers? If foreigners are indeed the friends of slavery and of Southern Rights, they ought to be brought over the ocean speedily and in large quantities, for they are needed.6 By 1855, Rice and other Alabama Know-Nothings maintained that the American Party's focus on the dangers of foreign influence provided the most effective way to curb abolitionist power in America. By restricting foreign influences, the South could successfully destroy abolitionist fanaticism and remain within the Union. In taking this position, Rice demonstrated the importance of nativism to the success of the American Party in Alabama.7 Reflecting existing nativist cultural values, such as anti-Catholic sentiments, Alabama Know-Nothings embodied broader conservative trends already existing within the South.8 Political nativism in Alabama, however, demonstrated different priorities than northern Know-Nothing policies. Southerners emphasized anti-foreign ideology more than anti-Catholic prejudice when crafting public policies. While anti-Catholic bias certainly existed in the South as an acceptable cultural value, it proved dangerous to Know-Nothing political aspirations because of southerners' insistence on maintaining [End Page 100] a strict constructionist application of the Constitution.9 Moreover, states' rights ideology profoundly shaped Know-Nothing attitudes towards immigration policies in Alabama more so than the ideology shaped the party's northern counterpart. Know-Nothing policies proved attractive to Democrats as well as former Whigs. While most southern Know-Nothings originally belonged to the Whig Party, a realistic possibility existed for a new political alliance between Know-Nothings and secessionist "Fire-Eaters" based on nativist ideology.10 The American Party and Fire-Eaters [End Page 101] shared philosophical outlooks regarding the role of foreign-born Catholics and immigrants in American politics. Furthermore, during the mid-1850s, Fire-Eaters and moderate Democrats were divided over the timing and necessity of secession.11 Internal divisions within the Democratic Party and philosophical similarities between Know-Nothings and Fire-Eaters threatened Democratic hegemony in the South. In response, Alabama Democrats attempted to portray their party as more faithful to conservative political and cultural values. To solidify their claim as the most conservative party, southern Democrats in Alabama radicalized their ideology concerning states' rights and slavery. While southern Democrats had been willing to compromise on slavery before 1850, they became increasingly unwilling to do so, hoping to ensure Fire-Eater support in state elections. Thus, the Democratic Party in Alabama became increasingly unwilling to compromise on slavery due to their political battles with southern nativists, which contributed to secession and the outbreak of the Civil War. These intra-state political battles and cultural tensions demonstrate the importance of the Know-Nothing Party in Alabama and national politics. The American...

Caucus Reform? Primary Reform? Delegate Reform? Lessons from the 2016 Political Party Presidential Nominating Process: A 50-State Review of the Legal and Political Mechanisms Deployed by the Republican Party for Selecting Delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention

Medicaid Politics: Federalism, Policy Durability, and Health Reform

Women's participation in legislatures has significant policy consequences.1 In transitional societies, like postcommunist countries, where policy decisions determine economic and political structures, low levels of female representation can have longterm ramifications for women's opportunities. For example, policies enacted early in the transitional period in both Poland and the Czech Republic negatively affected the economic and personal security of women.2 Prior to 1989 the Communist party used ideology and gender quotas to overcome cultural barriers to women's participation in politics. During the Communist period 20-25 percent of nationally elected representatives in eastern Europe were women, and their levels of participation in local and regional politics were among the highest worldwide. Even though many conditions under Communism shaped and limited women's influence in national politics, adherence to Marxist-Leninist ideology insured women a minimum level of participation in national and local party politics.3 Across all the former Communist countries, the first competitive and free elections in 1989-1992 resulted in a marked decrease in the proportion of women serving in national parliaments. However, in almost all of these countries the percent of women's representation has increased slightly with each successive election.4 After the first democratic election women comprised 10 percent of representatives in Poland and 10 percent in Czechoslovakia. Currently, women comprise 20 percent of representatives in Poland and 15 percent in the Czech Republic. Polish and Czech women's participation in politics is a function of the degree to which political parties are willing to place women in electoral list positions that improve their chances of being elected.

DISTINGUISHED INDIAN SCHOLAR recently said that he thought it was a fraud and a mockery to call American parties by that name. They had no program, they had no internal solidarity. The reasoning is familiar and easy to follow. A foreign student finds it hard to designate as a a political group that controls a majority of the Congress but cannot formulate and by its own votes pass a program; that stands together only, and not always then, for national elections, for matters of patronage, and for the organization of the legislative business; that in convention chooses a leader and presidential candidate by unanimous vote and then, in Congress, forces that leader as President to depend upon defections from the other side. The purpose of the following pages is to comment on the functional consequences of this unique party arrangement for the larger governmental system in which it operates. How does the operation of American parties affect the operation of the American government? The argument, in a single sentence, is that the parties function to preserve both the existence and form of the considerable measure of governmental decentralization that today exists in the United States. The focus of attention is, therefore, upon the classic problem of a federal government: the distribution of power between the central and peripheral units. Yet there is little in what follows concerning formal, or constitutional, power relationships. The word sovereignty does not appear. Decisions of the Supreme Court are not emphasized. The concern of the paper is not juridical concepts or the sporadic umpiring of the courts, but the day-to-day pattern of who does what under whose influence; not the theoretical locus of supreme powers, but the actual extent of the sharing of decision-making in legislation and administration among the central, state, and local governments.

Party system is the important factor in the working of representative form of Government. India is a democratic state. In the democratic state, political parties are said to be the life – blood of democracies. Modern democracies are indirect in character. They can function with the help of political parties. In the absence of political parties democracy cannot deliver the goods. Well organized political parties constitute the best form of democracy. India has the largest democracy in the world. It introduced universal adult franchise as the basis of voting right in the country. Now the voting age has been lowered down to 18. Most of the Indian voters are not politically matured and they do not have the political education in the proper sense. Political parties in India are classified by the Election Commission of India. It was classified for the allocation of symbol. The Election Commission of India classified parties into three main heads: National parties, State parties and registered (unrecognized) parties.
 The Regional Political Parties are playing a very significant role in Indian political system, particularly in the post Congress era and in coalition politics. As far as the national level politics is concerned, the regional political parties play a ‘king maker’ role. Whereas, the politics at state level is concerned, the regional political parties have been playing an effective role for working of government machinery. The Assam has also not lagging behind this context. Although the state has produces some small political parties before 1985, but formation of the AGP, BPPF, BPF and the AIUDF playing a very significant role in the politics of Assam. The AGP and the AIUDF not only emerge as an alternative of the Congress party at the state politics but also could able to participate in the national politics. Following are the reasons for the growth of regional parties in Assam -

Russian parties and the political internet

The Party Problem:Political Parties and Civil Order Roman J. Hoyos (bio) Jeffrey S. Selinger. Embracing Dissent: Political Violence and Party Development in the United States. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. 254 pp. Notes and index. $55.00. Sean Wilentz. The Politicians and the Egalitarians: The Hidden History of American Politics. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2016. xix + 364 pp. Notes and index. $28.95. Political parties have posed problems for American politics since at least the beginning of our national history. From George Washington's Farewell Address warning against the dangers of political parties, to Thomas Jefferson's first Inaugural Address, which sought to transcend politics, to the contemporary pejorative "partisan," Americans have struggled to embrace political parties, especially opposition parties. In the United States, a strong anti-party rhetoric has grown alongside the development of political parties and party systems. Jeffrey Selinger and Sean Wilentz continue this discussion about the connection between parties, political order, justice, and more broadly, democracy. For Wilentz, pragmatic party-politicians have always been the critical element in creating and maintaining political order. They have understood well, he tells us, that politics cannot be based upon the unrelenting pursuit of a particular principle, but must be translated into the realm of the possible. Selinger, by contrast, offers a more nuanced account of the relationship between political parties and political order. Emphasizing structure over agency, Selinger argues that prior to the Civil War political parties were perceived as a threat to the continued existence of the republic. Political parties, especially opposition parties, were able to survive only to the extent that they avoided addressing the major social, economic, and political issues of the day. The legitimacy of a political opposition was made possible only as the state (i.e., federal government) acquired a monopoly on legitimate violence following the Civil War. On one level, Wilentz and Selinger agree that parties and party politicians have pragmatically pursued order over justice. Where they disagree is over the [End Page 223] meaning of that history. For Wilentz that order has been in pursuit of justice, while for Selinger it has been at its expense. Wilentz is critical of what he calls the "antiparty current," which he argues somewhat circularly, "is by definition antidemocratic, as political parties have been the only reliable electoral vehicles for advancing the ideas and interests of ordinary voters" (Wilentz, p. 28). Parties are the solution, not the problem in Wilentz's analysis, as they have been singularly successful in translating claims for economic equality into legislative programs that ensure political and civil order. This dynamic between party leaders (i.e., "politicians") and leaders of movements challenging economic inequality (i.e., "egalitarians") are, according to Wilentz, the "two keys" that "unlock the whole of American political history." From emancipation through the Progressive Era and New Deal to the Great Society, the grand policy initiatives that politicians created in order to attempt to address economic inequality were also great party endeavors (Wilentz, p. xiv). Emancipation and Reconstruction, for example, were Republican efforts to create racial justice in the South, while the New Deal and the Great Society were Democratic programs for economic justice. The "moral achievement" of partisan-statesmen, then, has been the simultaneous pursuit of economic equality and political order. For example, as inequality deepened in the early national period, a number of dissenting movements appeared, including trade unions, abolitionists, and utopians, and then a new Democratic Party, whose main economic program sought to destroy the Second Bank of the United States. The struggle between Whigs and Democrats in the Second Party System based itself in part on competing understandings of the sources of economic inequality (privilege v. moral turpitude). Antislavery politics represented an expansion of the idea that all individuals were entitled to their labor. The rise of industrial capitalism transformed political economy into economics, and made inequality the natural consequence of the new corporate capitalism (p. 56). In each case, Wilentz tells us, it was the efforts of party politicians like Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and other presidents, who enacted programs to address and mitigate these problems of economic inequality. In other words, order and justice have been inextricably...

In the Name of the Community: Populism, Ethnicity, and Politics among the Jews of Argentina under Perón, 1946–1955

THE LANDS WERE NOT EMPTY

When the American Revolution was over, citizens of the new nation could not agree about the event's true meaning and the best way to preserve its authentic legacy. After the new federal government was established in the 1790s, these tensions invaded the national political arena and contributed to the formation of the first political parties that became known as Democratic-Republicans and Federalists. Those who supported George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Federalist Party saw the war simply as a battle for home rule. On the other hand, those who gravitated toward Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans interpreted the Revolution as a conflict not only about home rule but also about who should rule at home. For these American women and men, the principles of equality and natural rights were the Revolution's most important legacies. This chapter discusses the national politics of the new nation following the American Revolution, and examines the origins of the first political parties, the French Revolution and mass politicization, and inclusions and exclusions in the first political parties.

In this piece, we argue that the electoral performance of the BJP, and the popularity of Narendra Modi, has significantly altered the dynamic of regional party politics in India. The BJP’s undiluted power at the Centre has created the political context for greater centralization of power. This in turn has generated greater distinctions between regional and national politics. The popularity of Prime Minister Modi combined with his party’s ideological project generates a deeply centralized national politics that can be easily distinguished from regional politics for the voter. This increasingly distinct form of national politics weakens the role of regional parties in national politics, both in electoral terms and in bargaining power, as regional parties rarely have well-defined, credible national policy platforms in India. However, it does, for the moment, appear to strengthen the electoral position of regional parties at the state level.

<em>Abstract</em>.—Regulations are one of the few tools available in the aquatic invasive species (AIS) management toolbox. In a perfect world, they could be used to effectively prevent spread of AIS from watershed to watershed or from continent to continent. But the regulations needed to prevent invasions by species such as Asian carps in North America and the United States are slow to evolve and used reluctantly by federal authorities because they are heavily influenced by regional and national political and economic considerations. State regulations, on the other hand, suffer from the influence of their own local and regional political and economic issues. Some states maintain strict policies and regulations with regard to Asian carp possession and use, but neighboring states may not. And since 48 of the 50 U.S. states are connected by a vast network of rivers, waterways, streams and roadways, invasions continue to occur and to spread. Consequently, Asian carp management in the United States is largely controlled by “least common denominator” state regulation that applies in a given watershed and beyond. This paper presents an overview of Asian carp regulations in the 50 U.S. states and offers suggestions for improved regulations.

This study examines the social practices of Islamic boarding schools in Jombang in the 2019 elections. It aims to analyze the role and capital exchange between Islamic boarding schools in Jombang and political parties. This study is important because the intersection of Islamic boarding schools and politics has been going on since colonial times until now. The political dynamics of Islamic boarding schools cannot be separated from NU because several NU Kiai are in the vortex of local and national politics. In the 2019 presidential election, a Kiai of NU named Kiai Ma’ruf Amin ran as Jokowi’s partner to be a vice president. As a place for the establishment of NU, Islamic boarding schools in Jombang have a magnet in gaining votes both in the legislative and presidential elections in 2019. By using Pierre ’Bourdieu’s theory as an analytical tool, this research conducted a case study approach. Data collection techniques carried out through interviews, observation, and documentation. The informants are determined purposively. The results of this study indicate that the exchange of capital between Islamic boarding schools and political parties is dominated by symbolic capital exchanges of Islamic boarding schools with the social capital of political elites and political parties. The blue bloodline of Islamic boarding schools and seniority of a Kiai or Nyai have an essential role in determining the reproductive strategy and capital exchange with political parties. Also, the dominance of social practices carried out in Islamic boarding schools. The power of symbolic capital and social capital of NU Islamic boarding school became a tool for conducting bargaining positions with elite political parties, including presidential and vice-presidential candidates. In the end, the capital exchange between Islamic boarding schools and political parties became obvious in getting votes in the 2019 elections.

Book Reviews: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, The Political Writings of Dr. Johnson, The Evolution of Dialectical Materialism, Marxism: A Re-Examination, The Political Thought of Harold J. Laski, Reason, Revolution and Political Theory, The Rise of Fascism, Varieties of Fascism: Doctrines of Revolution in the Twentieth Century, The Art of Conjecture, Economic Organizations and Social Systems, The Science of Society, Evolution and