American Party Research Articles

The parties respond: changes in American parties and campaigns

List of Tables and Figures Prologue Acknowledgments * From Essential to the Existence of Our Institutions to Rapacious Enemies of Honest and Responsible Government: The Rise and Fall of American Political Parties, 17902000 Joel H. Silbey * State Party Organization: Strengthened and Adapting to Candidate-Centered Politics and Nationalization John F. Bibby * National Party Organization at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century Paul S. Herrnson * Party Identification and the Electorate at the Start of the Twenty-first Century Warren E. Miller (Updated by Kenneth Goldstein and Mark Jones) * Competing for Attention and Votes: The Role of State Parties in Setting Presidential Nomination Rules Bruce E. Cain and Megan Mullin * Party Role in Congressional Competition L. Sandy Maisel, Cherie Maestas, and Walter J. Stone * Following the (Soft) Money: Party Advertisements in American Elections Michael Franz and Kenneth Goldstein * Political Parties in the Era of Soft Money Ray La Raja * Political Parties in the Media: Where Elephants and Donkeys Are Pigs Matthew Robert Kerbel * Congressional Parties and the Policy Process Barbara Sinclair * Governing by Coalition: Policymaking in the U.S. Congress David W. Brady and Kara Z. Buckley * Partisan Presidential Leadership: The Presidents Appointees G. Calvin Mackenzie * Subtle Shifts, Dramatic Days: What the Plate Tectonics of American Politics Say About the Country and Its Future David M. Shribman References Biographies About the Editor and Contributors

International Arbitration

International arbitration has for many years been the preferred dispute resolution mechanism in large cross-border transactions involving Latin American nations, assets, or parties. The region as a whole is moving in the right direction towards perhaps becoming an active force in the promotion of international arbitration globally. It is too soon, however, to advise U.S. companies involved in major cross-border transactions to consider Latin American seats of arbitration in their arbitration clauses, to liberally choose Latin American laws to govern their complex international arrangements, or to select Latin American arbitration institutions to administer their proceedings. International arbitration most likely will continue to develop and expand in Latin America in the coming years. Now the main question is how best to tailor the arbitration clause to meet the specific needs of the deal and the peculiarities of the countries and parties involved.

“Breaking the Monologue?”

In this paper the author tries to understand two movements of subjugated peoples of America and South Africa that claim to be for the political, cultural, and economic advancement of their particular ethnic group—the American Indian Movement (AIM) and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). Both groups actively use symbols and protests to tie their group to the traditional past and to the history of subjugation; both groups look to traditional leadership as a source of legitimacy. Inkatha in particular uses a highly controversial history, invented to suit its political purposes, that ties the current movement to the supposed greatness of King Shaka of the early nineteenth century. There can be no doubt history plays an important role in the construction of AIM and IFP. The prevailing question of this paper is: to what degree do the American Indian Movement and the Inkatha Freedom Party move their groups of people out of the shadow of isolation and achieve breaking the monologue of the colonizer's history?

Effecting a Progressive Presidency: Roosevelt, Taft, and the Pursuit of Strategic Resources

While attracting ardent interest from social scientists on a number of fronts, the Progressive Era is insufficiently examined within presidential studies. Scholars have, instead, portrayed Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as prefiguring a later, modern presidency. For example, Sidney Milkis writes that the emergence of the modern presidency began in the Progressive Era, “especially as shaped by the statesmanship of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.”Sidney Milkis, The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System Since the New Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 8. William Leuchtenburg observes that Franklin Roosevelt contributed to the modern presidency by giving the office “an importance which went well beyond what even Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had done.”William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963), 327. However, scholarship has not explained fully why these two Progressive Era presidents were precociously “modern.”

The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics. Geoffrey Layman

The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics. Geoffrey Layman

The Rise of a Global Party? American Party Organizations Abroad

The Rise of a Global Party? American Party Organizations Abroad

Contested Empire: Peter Skene Ogden and the Snake River Expeditions

Contested Empire: Peter Skene Ogden and the Snake River Expeditions. By John Phillip Reid. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. pp. xiii, 258. Illustrations, maps. Cloth, $29.95.)In late May 1825, Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) clerk Peter Skene Ogden, leading his first Snake country fur-trapping expedition, was encamped on the Weber River in northeastern Utah when he encountered a group of twenty-five trappers working on contract for American fur traders based in St. Louis. Given the intense competition between the British and American trapping parties and the contested territorial claims over the Oregon country, Ogden soon found himself in a precarious situation. Twenty-three of his own free trappers-French Canadians, Metis, and Iroquois-chose to desert to the American party, taking several thousand beaver pelts with them. Ogden also became embroiled in a tense confrontation with John Gardner, unofficial leader of the American party. In the end, Ogden chose to retreat with his depleted expedition rather than risk a violent clash with the Americans.Ogden's encounter with the American trapping party and the mass desertion of freemen from his Snake county party form the cornerstone of John Philip Reid's Contested Empire. In contrast to his previous book, Patterns of Vengeance: Cross-Cultural Homicide in the North American Fur Trade (1999), a large-scale project on the North American fur trade, Contested Empire is a tighter, more focused study. As a legal scholar, Reid again explores questions of law, here probing the relations between British and American fur-trapping parties in a region that was jointly claimed by the United States and Great Britain, but in which no formal legal institutions existed to police those relations. Although the Far West has often been portrayed as lacking law and order, Reid asks why, in fact, violence did not occur between British and American fur-trapping parties in the Snake River Country during the 1820s.Reid opens his investigation with a brief overview of the historical literature on the fur trade, placing his own emphasis on legal questions within this framework and making a convincing argument that the limited attention given to legal matters reveals an important weakness in the field. Reid grounds his analysis in a close reading of the primary sources and asks fresh questions that will stimulate future research about the fur trade in particular and about frontier zones more generally. By arguing that the Snake country was not a lawless region, but a place where westerners attempted to solve real legal problems, Reid demonstrates how legal behaviorism, or lawfulness, operated in the transboundary Oregon country.The Anglo-Canadians, French-Canadians, Metis, French-speaking Native Americans (mainly Iroquois), French-Americans, and Anglo-Americans involved in the Far Western fur trade shared an internalized knowledge of legal principles, especially property rights, that allowed them to avoid violence-though not necessarily misunderstandings-among themselves. The historic dominance of English-speaking peoples in North America is central to Reid's argument about a shared respect for property rights among the trappers. Unfortunately, Reid overlooks the legal tradition in French North America after the Conquest of 1763, especially how this tradition may-or may not-have influenced the perceptions of the francophone French-Canadians, Metis, and Indians. …

Election Campaigning on the WWW in the USA and UK

This article is a comparative analysis of British and American parties and candidate election campaigning on the World Wide Web during the Presidential and General Elections of 2000 and 2001, respectively. The central questions are twofold: (1) Do parties differ across the two systems in terms of how they use the Web as a campaign tool? (2) Does the Web promote a more balanced or equalized exposure for party messages than other media? A combination of interview data, content analysis of sites and analysis of online and offline media coverage of the election is used to investigate these questions. Conclusions are drawn about the similarity of Web campaigning across the two countries and about the increasing dominance of the major parties, particularly in the UK.

"Religion without Restriction": Anti-Catholicism, All Mexico, and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

On May 23, 1847, over 5,000 people gathered the Kensington district of Philadelphia to lay the cornerstone for the new St. Augustine Church. new building sat atop the ashy remains of the old one a nativist mob, incited by leaders of the Native American Party and some local evangelical Protestant clergymen, had burned three years earlier. Bishop Francis Patrick Kenrick, accompanied by a large number of priests, presided over the celebration. In the middle of a keynote speech dealing mostly with the new church and what it would offer to its parishioners, the Rev. Dr. James Ryder of Holy Cross College took a moment to address the nativist accusation that no would bear arms against a nation or support a war against a country. The contrary, proclaimed Ryder, now fully established. He pointed to the many faithful in the field of operations the war against Mexico. What Ryder did not know was that, a few short months, an entire battalion of mostly American deserters would be captured near Mexico City. reaction to the capture of these men, known as the San Patricios, would demonstrate the issue of loyalty during the U. S.-Mexican War had not fact died out by the middle of 1847. Moreover, the same anti-Catholic sentiment had led to the attack on St. Augustine Church 1814 and the questioning of loyalty persisted throughout the war.1The New York Herald remarked on alleged religious affinity with the enemy at the very beginning of the war May 1846:The secret of the desertions from General Taylor we believe is this: A large proportion of the rank and file are Dutch and Irish Catholics. river opposite Matamoras being only three hundred yards wide, the ringing of the bell for matins, vespers, mass, the elevation of the host, c and the next consequence was desertion.2Some accused an Irish priest residing Mexico of inflaming religious tensions among American troops order to induce desertion by soldiers. But an American correspondent Mexico for the Journal of Commerce blamed the desertion of Romish soldiers on the influence of Mexican priests. Nativists commonly viewed the Roman Church as monolithic, and the fact priests Mexico encouraged American to give up arms led many anti-Catholic Americans to believe priests the United States must be doing the same.3Mexican generals and government officials distributed many broadsides throughout the war, offering land and money to American deserters. Oftentimes, Mexican propaganda referred explicitly to religion when addressing German- and Irish-Americans. One broadside particular caught the attention of the American press, because it appeared soon after the capture of the San Patricios. Addressed by Santa Anna to Catholic Irishmen, it appealed to them to Come over to us; you will be received under the laws of truly Christian hospitality and good faith which Irish guests are entitled to expect and obtain from a nation. Santa Anna then asked, Is religion no longer the strongest of all human bonds? Aware of nativist riots and church burnings the United States, he pointedly demanded: What! Can you fight by the side of those who put fire to your temples Boston and Philadelphia? ... Are Irishmen to be the destroyers of temples, murderers of priests, and the founders of heretical rites this pious nation?4In 1847 the vast majority of believed the San Patricios were almost entirely Irish-Catholic, and it is easy to see why. …

Partidos políticos na América Latina

O argumento principal do artigo é mostrar que os partidos e sistemas partidários da América Latina são mais estáveis do que em termos gerais se costuma sustentar. Apesar da percepção hostil dos eleitores sobre os partidos, os sistemas de partidos apresentam certos níveis de estabilidade na região, afora casos como Venezuela e Peru, que parecem ser mais a exceção do que a regra. Foi realizada uma tipologia de quatro cenários em que se compara a oferta partidária na eleição fundacional pós-transição e na última eleição legislativa realizada em cada sistema.

Como se escolhe um candidato a Presidente?: Regras e práticas nos partidos políticos da América Latina

Este trabalho examina a maneira como os partidos políticos da América Latina selecionam seus candidatos às eleições presidenciais. A análise está baseada no estudo de 44 partidos de 16 países da América Latina, e mostra que apesar da crescente tendência para o emprego de processos mais inclusivos na seleção dos candidatos nas últimas décadas, predomina a centralização do processo de tomada de decisões dos partidos da região. O material empírico provém da pesquisa sobre Partidos Políticos e Governabilidade na América Latina da Universidad de Salamanca.

Television News and Political Partisanship in Latin America

This article explores the linkages between television news and the decline of partisanship in Latin America, using survey data for eight countries. After discussing the erosion of traditional Latin American parties during the 1990s, I show that the literature has assumed different types of causal links between television and party dealignment (treatment vs. strategic effects, and cohort vs. short-term effects). Based on comparative research on industrial and new democracies, I present two contrasting hypotheses (television news inhibits partisanship; exposure to television creates political awareness) and test the impact of short-term treatment effects using a multinomial logit model. The results suggest that television news encourages party identification in the short run (through treatment effects), although the development of television may weaken Latin American parties in the long run (through strategic effects).

The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics By Geoffrey Layman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. 435p. $49.50 cloth, $22.50 paper.

Analysts of religion and American politics have been awaiting this book for some time. In The Great Divide, Geoffrey Layman brings together two strands of research in American political behavior in an elegant, systematic fashion: the study of party system change (often described as the literature on “party realignment”) and the analysis of religion in politics in the United States (long something of an esoteric speciality within political science). While Layman is not first to address the connection between the pew and the precinct, his impressive effort is at this point the authoritative source on religion and contemporary party politics.

The Political Party Matrix: The Persistence of Organization. By J. P. Monroe. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. 156p. $49.50 cloth, $16.95 paper.

It used to be an axiom in political science that American parties were weak. Now we are not so sure. During the 1980s and 1990s, the profession produced a great deal of theoretical and empirical work suggesting that U.S. political parties were “resurgent.” J. P. Monroe's book, The Political Party Matrix: The Persistence of Organization, provides an interesting twist on the new literature. It argues that party change is the result not so much of strengthening but of adaptation.

Reviews of Books:The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics Geoffrey Layman

Reviews of Books:The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics Geoffrey Layman

Geoffrey Layman. <italic>The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics</italic>. (Power, Conflict, and Democracy: American Politics Into the Twenty-First Century.) New York: Columbia University Press. 2001. Pp. xiii, 435. Cloth $49.50, paper $22.50

Geoffrey Layman. <italic>The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics</italic>. (Power, Conflict, and Democracy: American Politics Into the Twenty-First Century.) New York: Columbia University Press. 2001. Pp. xiii, 435. Cloth $49.50, paper $22.50

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Marvin Caplan. 1999. Farther Along: A Civil Rights Memoir.Barbara A. Perry. 1999. The Priestly TribeWilliam C. Binning, Larry E. Esterly, and Paul A. Sracic. 1999. Encyclopedia of American Parties, Campaigns, and Elections.

How the Republicans Learned to Love Manufacturing: The First Parties and the "New Economy"

In 1809 Adam Seybert made an odd request. Speaking on floor of House of Representatives, Republican congressman from Pennsylvania asked that Alexander Hamilton's famed Report on Manufactures be reprinted for Congress. Hamilton's report, which had been tabled by House eighteen years earlier, was, according Seybert, document which contained much important matter, and did honor its author. Seybert added that it could serve as the basis on which an important superstructure might be raised.1 Historians long have described Hamilton's three reports-on credit, national bank, and manufactures-as bedrock of Federalist and catalysts in split between first American parties, Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. Yet, here Seybert, a Republican, was suggesting that Federalist Report on Manufactures might serve as blueprint for a American economy. By embracing ideas of his party's old archenemy, Seybert illustrated an important shift in discourse within first party system during events leading up War of 1812. During this period, a time of very heated rhetoric, parties appeared almost switch positions on issue of manufacturing and role of federal government in economy. Two aspects of Hamilton's report, according common wisdom, should have troubled Seybert and his fellow Republicans. The first was treasury secretary's support for manufacturing. In report's introduction, Hamilton acknowledged that, although manufacturing had gained support in nation, there were still some skeptics who were critical of it, particularly those who viewed agriculture as the most beneficial and productive object of human industry. Much of first section of report aimed prove that these skeptics were wrong and show that manufacturing could, in fact, be just as productive as agriculture. Historians generally have placed Republicans in camp of skeptical agrarians. Although simplistic Beardian dualism of Republican rural agrarianism versus Federalist urban capitalism has been replaced with a more nuanced vision of Republicans who, often reluctantly, supported limited forms of manufacturing, most historians still do not describe Republicans as enthusiastic promoters of manufacturing.2 The second potentially troubling aspect of report for Republicans was Hamilton's insistence that power of federal government be used encourage manufacturing. His critics, Hamilton predicted, would argue that to endeavor, by extraordinary patronage of government, accelerate growth of manufactures, is, in fact, endeavor by force and art, transfer natural current of industry from a more a less beneficial channel. Referring recent formulation of French physiocrats and Adam Smith, Hamilton explained that such critics would conclude that to leave industry itself, therefore, is, in almost every case, soundest as well as simplest policy. Hamilton's analysis of his opponents' logic has often been accepted by modern historians, most of whom agree that Republicans were indeed antimercantilist, although not always, as Joyce Appleby has argued, proponents of economic freedom and Adam Smith's invisible hand.3 Hamilton's 1791 report and Jeffersonian opposition it have long been at center of historical understanding of early American reaction industrialization. There was more discussion, however. For one thing, neither Hamilton's nor Jefferson's positions were necessarily broadly representative. Focusing too closely on their thought can blur positions of those below them. Also, last years of first party system, years of embargo and war between 1808 and 1815, were arguably more significant in shaping American attitudes toward manufacturing than were 1790s. This was period when promoters of a new economy based on industry truly came into their own. …

Getting Cured and Getting Drunk: State versus Market in Texas and New Mexico, 1800-1850

Santa Fe, New Mexico, November 1821 The public was just digesting the news of Mexico's independence from Spain when rumors began to circulate that a caravan of Anglo-American merchants from Missouri was approaching town. Foreign merchants had occasionally drifted into New Mexico's settlements before, but they had been turned down by colonial authorities-at least in the official record-if not jailed and their cargoes seized.1 This time, however, no less than three different American parties made their way into New Mexico's capital by year's end, and all three were allowed to trade freely. Never in their lives had the people of Santa Fe seen merchandise in such variety, good quality, and best of all such cheap prices! They spent a third of what they customarily paid for Spanish articles of comparable or inferior quality. News of Mexico's newfound liberal trading policy spread widely among merchants in Missouri, Louisiana, and Illinois who immediately recognized the potential of the largely untapped Mexican markets. It was the beginning of the Santa Fe Trail. Caravans from Missouri kept going to New Mexico every year, but instead of small, intrepid parties like the three pioneering expeditions of 1821, such yearly trips turned into sizable capital ventures moved by hundreds of wagons and protected by military escorts. In 1822 the value of the merchandise imported into New Mexico was estimated at $15,000, two years later that figure had doubled, and by 1826 it had doubled again. The declared value of the merchandise taken to Santa Fe in 1843 was almost half a million dollars, a thirty-fold increase in two decades.2 Elsewhere in Mexico the story was much the same: foreign goods flooded erstwhile protected markets. In Texas there was no momentous event to mark the dawn of a new commercial era. Nonetheless trade rapidly shaped the demography, politics, material culture, and identity of Texas.3 Trade liberalization had its most dramatic effects in Mexico's Far North as this region had suffered the most from colonial trading restrictions at the same time that it was tantalizingly close to the dynamic American market. Most immediately, men and women of the frontier came in contact with colorful, exotic, and cheap efectos de comercio: calicos, hosiery, iron tools, silk, woolens, paper, glass, hats, medicine, women's shoes, shaving kits, billiard tables, and French wine just to name a few items. There is no doubt that frontier peoples' first reaction upon encountering this new material world was elation. Augustus Storrs, a merchant involved in the Santa Fe Trade since 1824, pointed out that in all New Mexican towns the arrival of American merchants was a source of great and universal pleasure.4 There is plenty of evidence both in Texas and New Mexico to substantiate such claims. But the fact that these objects suddenly flowed from the north rather than from south, that they became widely available only after Mexico became independent, and that they were controlled, at least initially, by foreign-born traffickers would impress frontier residents profoundly and elicit contradictory feelings for years to come. Nuevomexicanos, tejanos, and californios were left to ponder how to reconcile an increasing dependence on things foreign at the same time that they were engaged in a determined effort at national construction. The burning question for them was how to become Mexican patriots in an era when the Mexican government seemed to be losing control of the frontier economy, when foreign-born merchants amassed wealth and political influence that very few other frontier residents could match, and when foreign calicos, medicines, and alcoholic drinks became all the rage. For some time anthropologists, sociologists, and historians have analyzed human relations through the prism of material objects.5 In this essay I seek to contribute to this growing literature by showing how the changing ways in which frontier residents obtained and consumed medicine and alcohol showcases a large social transformation as Spanish colonial institutions and mores attempted to cope with de facto integration of Mexico's Far North into the economy of the United States. …

Explaining Women's Rights Realignment: Convention Delegates, 1972–1992

Since the early 1970s, the major American parties have moved from general consensus on women's rights issues to sharp polarization. While previous efforts to explain this realignment have identified pieces of the puzzle, these explanations have been generally incomplete and atheoretical. I argue that party positions are determined by the perceived value of specific issue positions for maintaining and expanding the party's coalition of electoral support. Thus, changes in both the composition of the party's coalition and the way the issue is defined and understood can bring about changes in the issue positions adopted by parties. Using the Convention Delegate Studies (1972–1992), this research suggests that both replacement (coalition change) and in the case of Democrats, conversion (caused by issue change) have been important mechanisms for bringing about party realignment on women's rights. This explanation both encompasses causal factors highlighted by previous scholars and points to other important contributing causes.