American Party Research Articles

Don’t Blame Donors for Ideological Polarization of Political Parties

Are campaign contributors to parties and candidates in the United States becoming more ideological? Popular and scholarly accounts suggest that political contributors have disproportionate influence in politics, which suggests an important role for them in shaping party ideology and widening the divide between the major American parties. Using the American National Election Studies (ANES) time series data from 1972 to 2008, we find that although the importance of ideology in motivating donations fluctuates from election to election, there is substantial ideological stability in the donor population over time until 2002 when the proportion of ideological donors sharply increases. Ideological extremism has not become a stronger predictor of contributing money. We conclude that mass donors are not necessarily driving partisan polarization. The implication is that politicians are not so much responsive to ideological extremism as they are strategic in mobilizing ideologues in pursuit of resources and electoral goals.

The Illinois Political Realignment of 1844-1860: Revisiting the Analysis

The Illinois Political Realignment of 1844-1860:Revisiting the Analysis James L. Huston (bio) In Illinois as well as the rest of the nation, parties underwent continuous upheavals between the inaugurations of James K. Polk and Abraham Lincoln. The Free Soil Party flared into existence in 1848, the Know-Nothing Party (American Party) ruled numerous states for several years in the mid-1850s, the northern Democrats confronted a humiliating decline in numbers, and ultimately the Republicans came to dominate the northern landscape. Quantitative political historians between 1962 and 1990—the new political history—investigated this phenomenon extensively, referred to it as the realignment of the second-party system, and offered an interpretation that has since gone statistically uncontested. They argued that by 1850 the major political parties began to look alike on economic issues, and both the Whigs and Democrats underestimated the forces of temperance agitation and immigration that were upsetting the northern public. At the same time, the slavery issue came to a head in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, simultaneous with, to the eternal frustration of historians, the emergence of the American Party. These forces pulled a goodly portion of northern Democrats away from their party, brought new voters into the system, and realigned group party preferences. By 1860, the Republicans had eliminated the Know-Nothings as an alternative opposition party to the Democrats; the Republicans became the party of evangelical/pietists and especially New Englanders, while the Democrats represented immigrants/non-Yankees and liturgical/non-evangelicals—the latter reflecting the famous ethnocultural interpretation of nineteenth-century politics.1 Since 1990, only a few studies using the statistical apparatus of the new political history have appeared, and instead historians have drifted away from quantitative analysis and have focused instead on the multiple ramifications of the slavery issue by using literary sources. Historians have retreated from quantitative analysis too quickly, however, for the interpretation of the realignment of the 1850s had some holes and omissions. This [End Page 506] essay intends to explore those omissions by scrutinizing the experience of the state of Illinois between 1844 and 1856. Interpretation of the events of Illinois's antebellum politics comes in three versions. The first, and the traditional one, is that the slavery issue generated the upheaval of the party system.2 The second comes from the quantitative school in the form of the famous ethnocultural interpretation, most notably propagated by Paul Kleppner. The ethnocultural school belittled issues (e.g., slavery, tariff, internal improvements) and instead insisted that religious affiliation and ethnic identification determined party affiliation—evangelicals versus non-evangelicals, Anglo-Saxons versus Irish.3 The third interpretation of antebellum Illinois politics derives from the works of Stephen Hansen and William E. Gienapp. Hansen's monograph, explicitly rejecting ethnocultural considerations, posited that the state had an especially strong North-South division, and the greatest predictor of party strength was geography: the Democrats' stronghold was in southern counties and waned as politics moved northward; the Republicans were the reverse. Hansen detailed the realignment of the 1850s, and, although he dealt with the sudden appearance of the Know-Nothings, he emphatically emphasized the issue of slavery as the generator of the upheaval. Following ideas worked out by Michael F. Holt, Gienapp offered a different version of the ethnocultural interpretation for northern politics. As one of the molders of the new political history interpretation of the realignment of the 1850s, he held to its central propositions of the decline of economic issues and the emergence of the cultural issues of nativism and temperance. In Illinois Gienapp found a weakened nativist movement, but he held that both nativism and the slavery issue enticed Yankees of New England descent to desert the Democrats and become pillars of the Republican Party by 1856, an outcome that reflected Hansen's North-South party division. However, Gienapp summarized that new and young voters flooded into the Republican ranks and that the gateway to their final destination was the Know-Nothing Party.4 These studies had omissions that deserve attention. First, they failed to investigate the Democrats, focusing most attention on the Republicans and nativists. Second, the analyses commenced in 1848 or 1850, but the timing needs to be extended back...

Book Review: Latin American Party Systems

Book Review: Latin American Party Systems

American political affiliation, 2003–43: A cohort component projection

The recent rise in identification with American political parties has focused interest on the long-term dynamics of party support. Liberal commentators cite immigration and youth as forces that will produce a natural advantage for the Democrats in the future, while conservative writers highlight the importance of high fertility amongst Republicans in securing growth. These opinions are not based on demographic analysis. We addressed this omission by undertaking the first ever cohort component projection (up to 2043) of populations by American party allegiance, based on survey and census data. On current trends, we predict that American partisanship will change much less than the nation's ethnic composition because the parties are similar in age structure. Nevertheless, our projections suggest that the Democrats will gain 2–3 per cent more support than the Republicans by 2043, mainly through immigration, although the higher fertility of Republicans may eventually offset that advantage.

Why parties?: a second look

Since its first appearance fifteen years ago, Why Parties? has been essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the nature of American political parties, but in the interim, the party system has undergone some radical changes. In this landmark book, now rewritten for the new millennium, John H. Aldrich goes beyond the clamor of arguments over whether American political parties are in resurgence or decline and undertakes a wholesale reexamination of the foundations of the American party system. Surveying critical episodes in the development of American political parties - from their formation in the 1790s to the Civil War - Aldrich shows how they address three fundamental problems of democracy: how to regulate the number of people seeking public office, how to mobilize voters, and how to achieve and maintain the majorities needed to accomplish goals once in office. Aldrich brings this innovative account up to the present by looking at the profound changes in the character of political parties since World War II, especially in light of ongoing contemporary transformations, including the rise of the Republican Party in the South, and what those changes accomplish, such as the Affordable Care Act. Finally, Why Parties? offers a fuller consideration of party systems in general, especially the two-party system in the United States, and explains why it is necessary for effective democracy.

President Obama, the Tea Party Movement, and the Crisis of the American Party System

This paper examines the reasons that, in the US, the first major mass movement in response to the economic crisis that began in 2007 was from the right, and assesses the possibility that the labor protests in Madison WI in the winter of 2011 may be the beginning of a similar movement on the left.

Party over Section: The Rough and Ready Presidential Election of 1848 (review)

Reviewed by: Party over Section: The Rough and Ready Presidential Election of 1848 Matthew Isham Party over Section: The Rough and Ready Presidential Election of 1848. By Joel H. Silbey. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009. ISBN: 978-0-7006-1640-3, 224 pp., cloth, $34.95. This slim volume by Joel Silbey marks the first significant historical treatment of the landmark 1848 election in roughly forty years. It is a brisk and cogent analysis of an election campaign that many historians have seen as a harbinger of the breakdown of the two-party system and the coming of the Civil War. Nearly forty years ago, Joseph Rayback hailed the third-party Free Soil campaign of 1848 as the first conscious attempt in American history to found a political party dedicated to the pursuit of human rights. Indeed, the political antislavery movement was akin to democratic revolutions that spread across Europe that same year, before being snuffed out by state power. Free Soilers destabilized the existing party system by changing the terms of the national debate over slavery's expansion. However, Silbey contends that this romanticized view of the election misses the real lessons of 1848. Instead, that election demonstrated the strength and stability of the major parties and the weakness of the nascent political antislavery movement. Silbey dispassionately and incisively concludes, "as in Europe in 1848, in the end, the dominant forces proved not to be the challengers but the more traditional players in the political arena who were able to retain control of the process and the outcome" (153). Those traditional players were the Whigs and Democrats who had defined the second American party system since 1832. Echoing familiar themes of partisan development, Silbey succinctly describes how these parties subsequently became deeply embedded in society, reflecting and reifying the ethno-cultural divisions of an increasingly diverse society. Democrats tended to appeal to a [End Page 179] diverse array of immigrants, faiths (particularly Catholics), small producers and laborers, while Whigs appealed largely to commercially minded, nativeborn Protestants. Both parties fused ethno-cultural appeals with divergent principles and platforms. Through systematic organization and frequent, boisterous campaigning, the parties garnered the deep loyalty of voters who internalized their political principles. Silbey's deft and detailed description of organized electioneering is one of the pleasures of this book, illustrating how the partisan campaigns entertained and edified the electorate, soliciting voters' emotional as well as intellectual investment in the political system. The parties' deep roots in the electorate enabled them to withstand the political storm that erupted over the potential extension of slavery into federal territories gained in the Mexican War. Those who were dissatisfied with the parties' reluctance to restrict slavery from these territories coalesced into the Free Soil Party. However, despite attracting thousands of disaffected Democrats in New York to their standard, the Free Soilers gained few defectors from the major parties. In explaining this result, the book reiterates familiar conclusions from the author's prolific scholarship. Slavery did not supersede the issues that had traditionally divided the major parties, and a significant drop in voter turnout in 1848 suggested that voters preferred to abstain rather than abandon their party when dissatisfied with their electoral options. This low voter turnout, not the Free Soil challenge, determined the outcome of the election in the Whigs' favor. Party over Section is a useful primer on the second-party system, as well as a sharp analysis of traditional partisan strength in the 1848 election. However, one wonders if one campaign can accurately indicate the relative strength or weakness of a political party, or the system in which it operates. Though the Democrats and Whigs turned back the Free Soil challenge relatively easily in 1848, they remained stricken by persistent intra-party factionalism (over economic policy, slavery and host of other issues) in several states. Indeed, this factionalism is a vital factor in assessing the relative health of these organizations. Tightly focused on the election itself (it is part of the American Presidential Elections series by the University Press of Kansas), the book eschews that issue. Despite this concern, this volume will be eminently useful for scholars of this momentous campaign in particular and students...

Education and the creation of capital in the early American republic

This book argues that schools were a driving force in the formation of social, political, and financial capital during the market revolution and capitalist transition of the early republican era. Grounded in an intensive study of schooling in the Genesee Valley region of upstate New York, it traces early sources of funding and support for education (including common schools and various forms of higher schooling) to their roots in different social and economic networks and trade and credit relations. It then interprets that story in the context of other major developments in early American social, political, and economic history, such as the shift from agricultural to non-agricultural production, the integration of rural economies into translocal capitalist markets, the organization of the Second Great Awakening, the transformation of patriarchy, the expansion of white male suffrage, the emergence of the Secondary American Party System, and the formation of the modern liberal state.

More than a Dime's Worth: Using State Party Platforms to Assess the Degree of American Party Polarization

AbstractHow polarized are American political parties? Recently, Kidd used an automated content analysis program to demonstrate that American party platforms reveal only minor policy differences. In contrast to his conclusions, this analysis produces three main findings. First, at the state level, state party platforms reveal considerable ideological differences between the parties. Second, differences in state public opinion do not account for these differences; rather, they are more closely correlated with activist opinions and increases in state party competition. Finally, the conflict is not simply ideological but applies to specific issues in the platforms. As such, American state parties are highly polarized on different measures. Automated content analysis programs clearly represent an important methodological advance in coding political texts, but the results here call attention to the importance of policy and agenda content in party platforms. Moreover, studies of American politics, particularly research focusing on parties and ideological polarization, need to take into account the diversity of agendas that is inherent in a federal party system.

The Apportionment Act of 1842: ‘an odious use of authority’

In July 1842 the Twenty-seventh Congress of the United States enacted the Sixth Apportionment Act to recalculate the number and distribution of the States' Representatives. For the first time in history, the act led to a contraction in the number of the members of the House. Furthermore, the Apportionment Act of 1842 also included an amendment calling for the adoption of a federal uniform system for the election of the States' Representatives. Both these issues immediately became the subject of a long and heated discussion that exposed many of the political, sectional, and ideological fractures that had been building up in Congress. On the one hand, the long debate on the Apportionment Act of 1842 mirrored the political and sectional dynamics of the Second Party System, and, on the other, it pictured an important transition in the evolution of the representative systems in the United States. The relations between State and Federal powers, and the divergences on political representation had inflamed the political debate since the Revolution, but it was in the party-centred climate of extreme conflict that characterized the 1830s, that the planning of national electoral strategies, the party control of district apportionment, and the other equipment of political ‘campaigning’ such as a federal, uniform electoral system, became central in defining the new political universe that would generate the Third American Party System.

Columbia rising: civil life on the upper Hudson from the Revolution to the age of Jackson

In Columbia Rising, Bancroft Prize-winning historian John L. Brooke explores the struggle within the young American nation over the extension of social and political rights after the Revolution. By closely examining the formation and interplay of political structures and civil institutions in the upper Hudson Valley, Brooke traces the debates over who should fall within and outside of the legally protected category of citizen. The story of Martin Van Buren threads the narrative, since his views profoundly influenced American understandings of consent and civil society and led to the birth of the American party system. Brooke's analysis of the revolutionary settlement as a dynamic and unstable compromise over the balance of power offers a window onto a local struggle that mirrored the nationwide effort to define American citizenship.

Latin American party systems

Latin American party systems

Exceptionalism, Political Science and the Comparative Analysis of Political Parties

AbstractFor more than four decades the analysis of party organizations in the European democracies has been completely separated from analyses of American party structures. The first part of this article examines how and why such a separation was to emerge in the aftermath of Duverger's and Epstein's path-breaking original work. It then goes on to outline how an analytic framework might be developed so that more wide-ranging comparative studies of party organizations in democratic regimes can be undertaken in future. Only with such research can the limitations of ‘exceptionalist’ and ‘regionalist’ explanations of party structure development and change be overcome.

Dominican Party System Continuity amid Regional Transformations: Economic Policy, Clientelism, and Migration Flows

AbstractIn the 1980s and 1990s, economic crisis produced ideological convergence in many Latin American party systems. Much scholarship explores how this convergence frequently provoked system change that enabled renewed ideological differentiation, but little research examines instances where convergence persisted without destabilizing the system. Through comparative historical analysis of Dominican continuity amid regional change, this study identifies factors that sustain or challenge party systems. Then, through analysis of Americas Barometer surveys, it assesses the causal mechanisms through which these factors shape support for the traditional Dominican parties. The findings demonstrate that maintaining programmatic and clientelist linkages facilitates continuity. In addition, the article argues that the threats political outsiders pose to existing party systems are constrained when people excluded from the system are divided and demobilized. In the Dominican case, Haitian immigration divides the popular sector while Dominicans abroad sustain ties to the parties, with both migration flows facilitating party system continuity.

Swine Semantics in U.S. Politics: Who Put Lipstick on the Pig?

Swine Semantics in U.S. Politics: Who Put Lipstick on the Pig?

Litmus Test Conformity in American Politics: Republican Party Platforms and the Presidential Politics of Abortion, 1976-2008

Abortion was legalized in the United States in 1973, and the Republican Party platform voiced its support of a constitutional amendment to ban the procedure in 1976. Throughout the last three decades, abortion has been one of the most contentious and emotional issues in American politics, and it serves as one of the best examples of the intertwined nature of politics and religion in the United States. The abortion issue has been on the agenda in every presidential election since 1976, and during the same period, several journalistic accounts have described Republican presidential candidates’ changing positioning on abortion upon running for the Republican presidential nomination. With this as a backdrop, the thesis focuses on the relationship between the abortion related content of Republican Party platforms and Republican presidential candidates’, presidential nominees’, and presidents’ positioning on and framing of abortion in the period between 1976 and 2008.The thesis demonstrates, contrary to the conventional view that American party platforms are close to being meaningless pieces of paper, that there is a clear relationship between the abortion related content of Republican Party platforms and Republican presidential candidates’, nominees’, and presidents’ positioning on and framing of abortion. The analyses show that the saliency of the abortion issue has increased significantly within Republican Party platforms in the period between 1976 and 2008, and that eight of the presidential candidates and nominees covered in the material grew more conservative on abortion upon seeking the presidency. “Litmus test conformity” thus refers to the fact that every Republican presidential nominee since 1976 has opposed abortion, and that there is a tendency among Republican presidential hopefuls to conform to the party platforms’ anti-abortion plank upon seeking the presidency.

The Conservative Avant-Garde

The avant-garde, regarded as “radical” or “new,” is conservative. To understand what and why this is, we must not only understand what “conservative” is, but also look at the historical circumstances of the epoch 1960s-present. The avant-garde is conservative in the “reduce, recycle, re-use” sense, not in the Tea Party sense. The avant-garde is a brand, a niche, a circulating stasis. Far from being the domain of youth, today’s avant-garde includes many older artists whose work has been around for decades. Today’s avant-garde is of superior quality but it is not innovative. When innovation is low, quality of execution is high; and vice-versa. The causes for this situation include the emergence of “restoration of behavior” and poststructuralism as dominant theories and the emergence of colleges and universities as primary training for artists.

Barack Obama, the Democratic Party, and the Evolution of the American Party System

This paper analyzes Obama’s relationship to the Democratic Party in historical perspective. It shows that Obama has established a complex and ambivalent relationship with the Democratic Party, in some ways strengthening, and in others enervating, his party. Nonetheless, nationalized, disciplined, and programmatic political parties appear to be a fixture of the contemporary political scene.

Activists and Conflict Extension in American Party Politics

Party activists have played a leading role in “conflict extension”—the polarization of the parties along multiple issue dimensions—in contemporary American politics. We argue that open nomination systems and the ambitious politicians competing within those systems encourage activists with extreme views on a variety of issue dimensions to become involved in party politics, thus motivating candidates to take noncentrist positions on a range of issues. Once that happens, continuing activists with strong partisan commitments bring their views into line with the new candidate agendas, thus extending the domain of interparty conflict. Using cross-sectional and panel surveys of national convention delegates, we find clear evidence for conflict extension among party activists, evidence tentatively suggesting a leading role for activists in partisan conflict extension more generally, and strong support for our argument about change among continuing activists. Issue conversion among activists has contributed substantially to conflict extension and party commitment has played a key role in motivating that conversion.

The center cannot hold: the 1960 presidential election and the rise of modern conservatism

This book takes a close look at the key party leaders and constituencies who pushed the party to the right. Most historians agree that, by the end of the 1960s, the conservative branch of the Republican Party had largely taken control of party direction. 'Reagan Revolution' of 1980 secured the GOP for conservatives, and while the events of the 2008 election may prompt considerable soulsearching, the party of Lincoln has maintained an undeniably conservative ideological orientation for almost 30 years. Too often, scholars have regarded the process of conservative transformation as a foregone conclusion. Historian Laura Gifford offers an innovative examination of the 1960 presidential election that restores an essential sense of contingency to the process. In the years prior to 1960, the GOP could have taken its agenda from a number of sources and pursued a number of directions. By the end of the 1960 campaign, however, Republican liberals had lost the battle over the party's future, and thereafter conservatives would take the lead in formulating GOP policy. initial establishment of control over the party's future direction marked conservatives' first step toward the culmination of modern conservatism - Reagan's election. While liberals and conservatives were equally optimistic about their futures in the Republican Party in January 1960, by December a fundamental shift in power had taken place. The Center Cannot Hold provides an analysis of interactions between three key party leaders - liberal Nelson Rockefeller, conservative Barry Goldwater, and moderate Richard Nixon - and six key constituencies: liberals, African Americans, conservative intellectuals, youth, Southerners, and ethnic Americans. Gifford's study of these interactions demonstrates that conservatives successfully used grassroots organizations to develop networks that could push the Republican Party in a rightward direction. Furthermore, conservative leaders responded to their supporters more effectively than did liberal and moderate leaders. Ultimately, individuals and groups possessed the means to alter the shape of the American party system.