Convention Delegates Research Articles

“For the Advancement and Betterment of Humanity”: The Fight for Women's Suffrage at Utah's Constitutional Convention

“For the Advancement and Betterment of Humanity”: The Fight for Women's Suffrage at Utah's Constitutional Convention

Schools for Statesmen: The Divergent Educations of the Constitution’s Framers by Andrew H. Browning

Detailed and compendious, Schools for Statesmen performs a valuable service. It breaks down every conceivable factor in categorizing the backgrounds of the fifty-five framers of the U.S. Constitution, who represented twelve states (Rhode Island boycotted the convention). Rather than simply analyzing eighteenth-century college life, Browning focuses at length on delegates who were largely self-taught in addition to those who had tutors or attended college, examining which group was the better prepared. That kind of boldness marks the strength of this book.What about the college experience? Classes were small and students—who entered at various ages, between thirteen and eighteen––were keenly aware of each other’s class status at the outset. Browning draws clear distinctions among America’s oldest colleges (Harvard, Yale, and William and Mary), showing next how the later emergence of Princeton and King’s College (Columbia) liberalized learning. He engages with the relative significance of church affiliation for curriculum, the outsize influence of college presidents, the uniform reliance on ancient authors (read in Latin), and the growing significance of Scottish moral philosophy on the younger delegates.Beyond its synthetic purpose, the book examines a range of affinities and individual quirks, venturing into what shaped the framers’ discordant personalities. Some of the framers exhibited provincial outlooks; others were more worldly. William Livingston (New Jersey), educated by his grandmother, later lived among the Mohawk Indians with his Yale-educated tutor. Those who breathed in the atmosphere of Oxford or went to Edinburgh or Glasgow to imbibe the spirit of moral philosopher Francis Hutcheson (regarding, most dramatically, popular consent and right of resistance) were forever changed by the experience.America’s early college presidents were all men of the cloth, but Scottish Presbyterians and Scottish thought contributed most to the republic’s founding. The straightforward statistics that Browning compiles tell a story: Four of the framers studied in Scotland; many more profited from their experience. After Princeton’s Edinburgh-educated John Witherspoon (nine of the framers, including James Madison, fell under his sway), came an unheralded schoolmaster named Francis Alison, a grammarian and an ethicist, whom Yale’s long-serving patriot-president Ezra Stiles called “the greatest Classical Scholar in America.” Alison, also a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, divided his time between Delaware and Philadelphia, teaching boys as young as seven—three of whom were to sign the Declaration of Independence, two to help frame the Constitution, and another to serve with distinction as secretary of the Continental Congress. At William and Mary, despite its Anglican affiliation, Virginians of Thomas Jefferson’s peer group benefited from the teaching of the Scot William Small, who lectured on ethics and belles-lettres. Gouverneur Morris and James Wilson, two of the most outspoken delegates, were especially responsive to Scottish political philosophy. A teenaged Alexander Hamilton, too, learned from a Scot.The threads that Browning connects are tantalizing. The touchy Oliver Ellsworth (Connecticut), an unsung but influential convention delegate, hated Yale and transferred to Princeton. Ellsworth’s Yale classmate Waightstill Avery made the same switch, later moving to North Carolina, where he helped to establish the school that readied William Richardson Davie, a Revolutionary officer and future delegate (North Carolina), for Princeton.The connections that emerge in this book extend even to the next generation’s experiences. Future president Andrew Jackson received his legal training from Davie’s law tutor; not long afterward, he issued his first dueling challenge to attorney Avery. Early America was a small, peculiar world. Browning reports that five of the framers who had colleges named after them never attended a single class at any college.Schools for Statesmen is so well-constructed that it might at first appear to be a blueprint for political theorists and historians of education. But it has a more creative tenor than that: In supplying evidence of the role that school ties played at the Constitutional Convention, it offers a colorful palette, mixing personalities and painting a compelling picture of copyists who grew to be inventors of what these days counts as tradition.

A Rigged Game? How Candidate, Partisan, and Electoral Factors Shape Elite Support for the Party Nomination Process

The 2016 presidential nominations revealed deep, yet distinct, divisions within each major party. These divisions persisted and permeated the general election campaign and were reflected in voters’ dissatisfaction with the candidates. Movements such as the “Bernie or Bust” supporters and the “Never-Trumpers” indicated that vocal portions of the parties were dissatisfied with the party nominees or the processes that selected those candidates. There were also indications that many party elites were not pleased with the nomination processes or the outcome; yet, we lack a comprehensive understanding of the extent to which party elites support the nomination process and their party’s nominee and what explains this support. By combining the 2016 Convention Delegate Study and an original dataset of the nomination electoral rules utilized by the states, we assess how candidate, partisan, and electoral factors shape delegate support for the nomination process and nominee. Our analysis reveals that candidate and party-centric explanations better explain delegate views toward the nomination process and nominee than factors related to the electoral context.

Issues versus Affect: How Do Elite and Mass Polarization Compare?

Conventional wisdom holds that political elites harbor more ideologically constrained issue attitudes and are more polarized on such issues than their mass counterparts. In contrast, the mass public is more polarized in its emotional reactions to political stimuli. How affective polarization among the mass public compares to affective polarization among elites is, however, an open question. Using items common to the Convention Delegate Studies and American National Election Studies, I compare the mass public to political elites when it comes to both affective and ideological polarization. I find that elites are more affectively polarized than the mass public and more affectively polarized than they are ideologically polarized, although mass affective polarization has increased over time. These findings provide context for understanding the extent to which the mass public has affectively polarized and demonstrate that elites, despite ideological capabilities, exhibit extreme emotional reactions toward political groups just like their mass counterparts.

The life of the parties: Party activists and the 2016 presidential election

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump secured their respective party’s 2016 nominations only after raucous, spirited debates among delegates at the start of each party convention. Groups and their preferred candidates behaved consistently with the policy demanders view of parties, which identifies parties as comprised of coalitions of groups with strong policy preferences that negotiate with one another for influence in the party decision-making and policy process. Using the 2016 Convention Delegate Study, the longest standing survey of Democratic and Republican Party activists, we examine intra-party groups as new delegates are folded into the framework along with returning delegates. We assess how the theory of parties as comprised of policy-demander groups works in a context of high external party polarization. The competition between these groups to recast their party in its preferred image in the absence of a standard party bearer for either party holds important implications for Democrats and Republicans in future presidential and congressional elections.

The Judicial Bookshelf

The Judicial Bookshelf DONALD GRIER STEPHENSON, JR. Reflecting about a century ago on elec­ tions in the United States, James Bryce observed in The American Commonwealth that Europeans “are struck, by the faults of a plan which plunges the nation into a whirlpool of excitement once every four years, and commits the headship of the state to a party leader chosen for a short period.” However, he continued, there is another aspect in which the presidential election may be re­ garded, and one whose importance is better appreciated in America than in Europe. The election is a solemn periodical appeal to the na­ tion to review its condition, the way in which its business has been car­ ried on, [and the] conduct ofthe two great parties. It stirs and rouses the nation as nothing else does, forces everyone not merely to think about public affairs but to decide how he judges the parties. It is a direct expression of the will of voters, a force before which everything must bow.1 As the quadrennial “whirlpool of excite­ ment” began to swirl well in advance of the 2020 elections, Americans were reminded of a notable silence in the Constitution: While the framers were careful to include methods for electing representatives (by the people), senators (by state legislatures), and the President (by the virtual assembly ofwhat has come to be known as the Electoral Col­ lege), they included nothing about selecting candidates for those offices. Elections have thus given rise to vari­ ous devices to supply names for the ballot. At the presidential level, early nominating procedures were vastly different from what one sees today. By 1800, party caucuses in Congress recommended presidential nom­ inees to the state legislatures, which in most states directly chose members of the Electoral College. In 1832, the new AntiMasonic party tried an alternative nominat­ ing device—the convention. In this instance, necessity was truly the mother of invention in that with no substantial congressional representation, Anti-Masonics resorted to a meeting outside Congress and convened in a Baltimore saloon. Members of the new Whig 86 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY party did the same thing and even met in the same saloon. A gathering composed of state party delegates who had been selected by local party leaders impressed many as an ideal way of choosing a candidate who could in turn command widespread support. Democrats were convinced and so also con­ vened in Baltimore to re-nominate Andrew Jackson for a second term.2 Although the convention as a nominating device has persisted, it has been only since the 1970s that ordinary voters in most states have had a major say in the selection of presidential nominees. By the 1860s, for ex­ ample, delegates to the national conventions were selected by state party chieftains, a practice that persisted into the early twentieth century. It was in reaction to this situation that the presidential primary emerged. Pro­ gressive era figures such as Senators Robert La Follette of Wisconsin and Hiram Johnson of California demanded a larger role for the people in the nomination process, whereby the voters would be empowered to select delegates to the national party convention and in the process to express a preference for their party’s presidential nominee. The idea was contagious. As early as 1912, nearly one-third of the states provided for some kind of popular election of con­ vention delegates. By 1916, half the states had a Democratic or Republican presiden­ tial primary, and a few had both. In that year, among Democrats, fifty-four percent of the convention delegates were chosen by primaries—a figure that would not be sur­ passed until 1972. For Republicans, fifty-nine percent of the delegates were the products of primaries, a proportion not exceeded until 1976.3 However, popular participation went only so far in that most primaries did not generate binding results, as party leaders often dictated how delegates voted. As the Progressive movement itself de­ clined nationally after 1920, states began to abandon the primary as a delegate-selection device, so that, by 1936, only forty percent of the convention delegates of the two ma­ jor parties were chosen in primaries...

Trump-ing Foreign Affairs: Status Threat and Foreign Policy Preferences on the Right

President Trump is often at odds with the conservative establishment over a range of issues, not least of which is foreign policy. Yet it remains unclear whether supporting “Trumpism” is commensurate with coherent foreign policy views that are distinct from conventionally conservative positions. We evaluate whether the foreign policy views of Trump’s supporters, both in the voting public and among activists, differ from those of other Republicans. We use the 2016 ANES to examine Republican primary voters and the new 2016 State Convention Delegate Study to assess Republican activists. In doing so, we reveal systematic differences in foreign policy preferences between Trump supporters and more establishment conservatives. We demonstrate that the status-threat model need not be confined to domestic politics. Indeed, it may be extended to explain foreign policy preferences on the political right, that of Trump’s supporters in the present case. In doing so, we also find evidence that status threat may well be the source of fracture in the Republican Party.

Group Commitment Among U.S. Party Factions: A Perspective From Democratic and Republican National Convention Delegates

Parties need to win elections, but they also heed the policy preferences of activists to provide the incentive to mobilize. Moving beyond the debate as to whether parties as a whole are policy or office driven, we examine groups within parties and identify different factions that place differential emphasis on office-seeking versus policy-demanding. Using data from the 2012 Convention Delegate Study of Democratic and Republican Party national delegates, we identify distinct factional groups within each party. We map these factions within each party, finding policy-driven and office-driven factions of delegates in both Republican and Democratic parties. We evaluate each group’s response to political and party involvement, support for the larger party organization, and response to both intra- and interparty conflict. Finally, we make clear the picture of factional relationships within each party by accounting for how factional goals are integrated into the party organization over time.

Ideology and Participation: Examining the Constitutional Convention of 1787

This article looks at the effect of ideology on delegate participation at the Federal Convention of 1787. Making use of an original data set on delegate verbosity and delegate speeches at the Constitutional Convention, analysis reveals that ideologically extreme Convention delegates were more likely to participate at the Convention. This leads to two conclusions. First, ideology affected delegate participation in a meaningful way. Second, claims made about the intent of the writers of the Constitution based on Convention records are biased in favor of ideologically extreme Convention delegates, as extreme delegates were more likely to be recorded.

Party–Group Ambivalence and Voter Loyalty: Results From Three Experiments

Renewed emphasis on the group-based nature of political parties makes understanding the relationship between partisan and group identities essential. How do citizens respond to the internal disconnect between their partisan identity and their other politically salient identities? In addition, do differences in the group-based nature of each party lead to asymmetric effects of party–group ambivalence? Using data from an original survey experiment across three samples—the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, the 2012 Convention Delegate Study, and a 2015 sample from Amazon Mechanical Turk—I find that party–group ambivalence diminishes party loyalty, making respondents less likely to vote for, contribute to, or volunteer for their political party’s candidate. Moreover, the strength of this impact is consistently larger among Republican identifiers than Democratic identifiers. These results suggest that party asymmetry in party coalitions may have an impact on party loyalty.

To Be Underestimated Can Be a Good Thing

To Be Underestimated Can Be a Good Thing Helen M. Ingram The curse of low expectations often diminishes women's lives. Growing up in the 1950s, as I did, young women were presented with only two options for their futures: Become wives, mothers, and helpmates to their husbands; stay single and pursue a career. My saintly mother was my role model for the first option. I believed that she worked way too hard, neglected herself, and got too little credit. The second path was clearly not preferable because giving up on romance was difficult, and jobs open to women were usually not high status. The only thing that I was really good at was school. I adored politics, but I never got elected to anything, not even in Rainbow Girls, a Masonic- sponsored secret society with lots of offices to fill. I knew of few successful female politicians. The handful of women elected to Congress tended to be the widows of congressmen. Other women in politics were like my mother, dedicated, but under-appreciated precinct officials and party convention delegates. Both my grandmother and mother were teachers before they were married, and teaching credentials were considered "fallback" insurance. My decision to teach politics seemed a way to vicariously stay politically involved while pleasing my parents. My ambition and intellectual ability were clearly underestimated in my family's choice of a tiny, all girls, junior college for me, and reflected their vast overestimation of my likelihood of getting into trouble unless closely supervised. While I was not part of the discussion, I do remember that I was pleased to be going to someplace out of state. As my daughters recount in their essay, the school was a poor fit, but subjected me to very useful life lessons. How fine it felt to be at the top of the class, and later on when academic expectations got higher, mine rose as well. Fitting in got a lot less important to me as I survived being profoundly unpopular among my junior college classmates. Having no social status to lose among my peers relieved me from fears that my ideas and opinions would be badly received. If invisibility was the price of acceptance, I was not willing then, or now, to pay it. [End Page 6] There is a school of thought among conservative feminists that "affirmative action" is more damaging than beneficial to women who are advanced on the basis of gender. My own experience suggests that whatever the rules say, being female always matters. As my daughters write, I had to "talk" my way into the graduate program at Columbia University as an exceptional female worth the trouble. That stigma never went away. A male colleague and I took a first-year seminar together. He never did the reading in preparation for class discussion, but I explained the literature to him during long walks we took before class. When my male friend got a better grade in the class than I did, I decided to congratulate myself on being a better teacher than our professor. Further, my slavishness about getting the best grades dimmed, and I learned to rely more on the opinions of a network of critical colleagues. When entering the job market, the males in my graduate program were benefited by personal calls to recruitment committee chairs from their advisers. Newly married with a small baby, I am sure my adviser did not believe I would ever be a credit to him. He told me to set up a file in the placement office to which he would write a general letter. I was a "walk-on" to my first academic job at the University of New Mexico (UNM). It was there that I began water resources research, a subject matter choice any political science mentor would have vetoed. It was also at UNM that Dorothy Cline, an astute commentator on New Mexico politics, the only other woman in the department, smoothed the way for me. She might have seen me as a threat but never treated me as such. Ever since, I have tried to pass along this generosity. At UNM my teaching load was heavy and my publications...

Reframing the Fathers' Constitution: The Centralized State and Centrality of Slavery in the Confederate Constitutional Order

BENJAMIN H. HILL ROSE BEFORE A RAPT AUDIENCE IN ATLANTA, Georgia, on April 4, 1861. Months earlier, he had spoken against secession in state senate. His message had now changed. As delegate Montgomery, Alabama, constitutional convention and member of Provisional Congress of Confederate States of America (CSA), Hill did not need his famed oratory secure crowd's attention. He came bearing constitutional meaning: have not abandoned provisions of old nor set at nought wisdom of its framers. The framers of new do not claim be more wise than those of old. Nevertheless, Hill continued, They have improved upon old--not because they were wiser--but because they had light of years' guide them. this strange constitutional moment, Hill made one principle clear his constituency. In short, he proclaimed, the General Government, in all its jurisdiction, is required protect Slavery. bloody clash with United States ensued, Confederacy stood ready because [w]e can keep negroes at work support us while we send young men war. On prospects for reunion, once cautious Hill vowed, If it is go back Old ... I am UTTERLY, UTTERLY, AND FOREVER opposed it! Musing on changes and continuities, this constitutional framer plausibly fulfilled his promise to speak candidly with you to-night. But there was much Hill could not say. Those seventy-three years' experience separating an eighteenth-century Philadelphia hall from Montgomery framers' convention ensured that meaning of Confederacy's constitutional order would only become visible over time and under duress. (1) Deratification swept lower South in early 1861. Constitutional tissue was severed by word, perception, and deed. With ceremony of conventions and formality of ordinances, six southernmost states had purported resume perfect sovereignty by February 1861. Texas soon followed, and four states of upper South had cut their national sinews by May's end. Yet unbridled statehood was fleeting, as southern leaders sought consolidation with existential haste. Gathering in Montgomery on February 4, delegates scripted political community and legal identity, Confederate States of America. The convention created provisional constitution four days after convening and began drafting Permanent Constitution, adopted on March 11. The body rendered itself into Provisional Congress, wielding authority throughout following year. (2) The Confederacy awoke under looming dangers with an appetite for order, security, and state capacity. must meet [Abraham] Lincoln with President of own. We want military resources of South concentrated at once, U.S. assistant secretary of state William Henry Trescot urged in January, upon resigning his post. (3) Before abandoning U.S. Senate, Florida's David L. Yulee proposed a Southern Government as soon as possible, adopting present Federal Constitution for time, and Southern Army. (4) Attentive risks, financier Gazaway B. Lamar counseled Provisional Congress on imperative of constitutional bonds, to clinch people for their support hereafter, when things change and burdens become onerous. Lewis M. Stone, an Alabama secession convention delegate, anticipated a real, substantial Government--one armed with all power resist any shock which we may be subjected; Government complete in all its parts, established upon an immovable basis, and possessed of all elements of national strength. (5) At stake was viability of secessionists' aims: slaveholding republic, South without North. (6) State conventions swiftly ratified new Confederate constitution. Only Texas held referendum. (7) As Alabama delegate Robert Jemison Jr. concluded, it is our duty . …

Gender Attitudes, Gendered Partisanship: Feminism and Support for Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton among Party Activists

ABSTRACTActivists in the Democratic and Republican parties have distinct concerns about women’s place in American politics and society. These views lead them to evaluate female candidates through different ideological lenses that are conditioned, in part, on their divergent attitudes about gender. We explore the implications of these diverging lenses through an examination of the 2008 candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, using data from an original survey of Democratic and Republican National Convention delegates. We find that delegate sex did not affect their evaluations but that evaluations were influenced by the interaction of partisanship and attitudes about women’s roles.

Dynamic Delegation-Based Efficient Broadcast Protocol for Asynchronous Wireless Sensor Networks

In broadcast for asynchronous wireless sensor networks (WSNs), delegation refers to a sender node delegating an uncovered node to a neighbor node already received the broadcast packet. Conventional delegation schemes make their delegation decision based on incomplete information and do not change the decision anymore, which may induce inefficient transmission or collision. We propose a dynamic delegation-based efficient broadcast (DDEB) protocol for asynchronous WSNs. DDEB dynamically delegates an uncovered node to a sender with the best link quality to it so far. It can adapt to the change of link quality and broadcast process. Moreover, it can solve the inefficient transmissions and conflicts problem in quadrilateral topologies. Simulation results show that DDEB can reduce the energy consumption, message cost, and broadcast delay.

Religion and Secularism among American Party Activists

AbstractPrior work has shown party activists and religious divisions to be two of the leading causes of party polarization in American politics. Using the Convention Delegate Studies, we examine the interaction between these two culprits and their impact on party polarization. We leverage a novel measure of secularism in the latest wave of the Convention Delegate Studies to demonstrate that active secularism is distinct both conceptually and statistically from low religiosity. Furthermore, we show that both religiosity and secularism drive party activists to take more extreme policy positions, to identify themselves as more ideologically extreme, and to exhibit less support for compromise. As the Democratic and Republican Parties have become more secular and religious, respectively, these results suggest religious polarization may compound existing divisions between the two parties and exacerbate the partisan divide in American politics.

The Long Road toward a More Perfect Union: Majority Rule and Minority Rights at the Constitutional Convention

AbstractOn the eve of the Constitutional Convention, James Madison developed a new theory of republicanism, one that would allow union on a scale previously thought impossible. The extended republic, buttressed by constitutional safeguards republican in nature, would, he argued, protect the rights of minorities without compromising the majority’s right to rule. But Convention delegates, unimpressed with Madison’s new theory, gravitated toward constitutional safeguards more mixed-regime in nature and so produced a constitution incompletely republican. This article examines the three minority interests that most occupied the delegates’ attention: small states, all states, and southern states; further, it employs three criteria for determining the presence of republican or mixed-regime protections: strength of constitutional barrier, cohesion of defenders, and duration of defense. The article’s conclusion reflects on the consequences of a constitution partly republican and partly mixed-regime.

The 1847 Illinois Constitutional Convention and Persons of Color

In 1847, ILLInoIS hELd ItS SECond constitutional convention. Voter disgust with the Illinois General Assembly’s profligate spending habits and enormous distrust of Illinois’ nascent banking industry were the principal triggers for convening “the people.” The Progressive era historian Arthur Cole compiled a transcript of the 1847 convention from contemporaneous reports in the two major Springfield newspapers, the Sangamo Journal, a paper sympathetic to the Whig Party, and the Illinois State Register, the Democraticleaning publication. Cole commented that, “Illinois was to the point where it chafed at the restraints of its constitutional swaddling clothes.”1 The delegates voted to modernize Illinois government by, among other things, democratizing the selection of state and county officials, including the election, rather than the appointment of judges, and requiring the legislature to enact general incorporation laws, thus ending the monopolistic and corrupt system of special charters.2 Progressive reform did not, however, characterize the new constitution’s treatment of people of color. Neither contemporary newspapers, nor available documents of convention delegates, nor nineteenth century histories demonstrate that the treatment of the state’s black population was a significant issue in either the drive to hold a convention or the campaigns to serve as convention delegates. That is not at all surprising, given the small size of the state’s black population. According to the 1840 census, the state’s total population was 478,929, of whom only 4,065 were black, well less than one percent.3

PERANAN PERSON IN CHARGE DALAM PENYELENGGARAAN MICE DI BICC THE WESTIN RESORT

Nowadays Bali has developed into a MICE tourist destination. Several events hav been a successfuly held in Bali. The event such of the ASEAN Summit and Climate Change Summit 2012, ASEAN Summit and the ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting. Behind the success of the international MICE events in Bali, there are the role of person who are competent to make it happen. Human resources in the area of MICE services have a very important role for MICE events took place. They are the one who hold the key to the success of the event. One of them is a representative of the hotel (venue) where the convention was held as a person in charge who will be contacted by the organizers to communicate all necessary purposes. The person in charge holds the key to the success of the hotel (venue) in providing the best service to convention delegates, and play crucial part of convincing the organizers to use hotel as a venue. This study was conducted to determine how the specification of the role of the person in charge in the organization of international MICE event.

Ideological Structure and Consistency in the Age of Polarization

Decades of research establish that political elites hold more ideologically consistent and structured policy preferences than ordinary citizens. Since the late 1970s, American politics, at the elite level, has become increasingly polarized and changes in the news media have made it easier for citizens to find news catering to their ideological tastes. We capitalize on these developments to examine whether ideologically engaged citizens–those who hold strong ideological identities, who are politically informed, and who participate actively in public affairs–match elites in ideological consistency and structure during the age of polarization. We test this hypothesis by applying correlation and measurement modeling techniques to data from multiple National Election Study and Convention Delegate Study surveys. We find that (a) ideologically engaged masses hold more tightly organized opinions than the less engaged every year, but lagged elites by a wide margin in 1980; (b) convention delegates manifest impressive levels of consistency every year; (c) by 1992 engaged citizens had caught up to political elites; and (d) ideological consistency increased substantially over time in the mass public, but only among the most ideologically engaged.

Mobilizing Marginalized Groups among Party Elites

The Democratic Party has long used a system of caucuses and councils to reach out to marginalized groups among convention delegates. This article tests two hypotheses about how this system works within the party. First, the Parties in Service to Candidates Hypothesis holds that caucuses and councils mobilize elites from marginalized groups to increase support for the party nominee. Second, the Group Solidarity Hypothesis holds that caucuses and councils mobilize elites from marginalized groups to enhance group solidarity. Regression analysis of data drawn from an original survey of delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention provides no support to the Service Hypothesis, while the evidence supports the Solidarity Hypothesis in the case of the Women’s Caucus, which became a rallying point for women who were disappointed that Hillary Clinton was not the Democratic Party nominee. A similar survey of delegates to the 2008 Republican National Convention did not uncover a parallel system of representing marginalized groups within the Republican Party.