Partisan Context Research Articles

Midterm Elections, Partisan Context, and Political Leadership: The 2006 Elections and Party Alignment

This essay is an effort to delineate an important factor shaping the context of congressional and presidential leadership—the results of midterm elections—and to investigate the responses of leaders in the dramatic situation of the loss of majorities by the president's party in both houses of Congress.

Political Disagreement in Context: The Conditional Effect of Neighborhood Context, Disagreement and Political Talk on Electoral Participation

Despite scholarly interest in determining how exposure to disagreeable political ideas influences political participation, existing research supports few firm conclusions. This paper argues that these varied findings stem from an implicit model of contextual influence that fails to account for the indirect effect of aggregate social contexts. A model of contextual influ- ence is outlined which implies that the neighborhood partisan context mod- erates the effect of political disagreement in social networks on campaign participation. The evidence shows that network disagreement demobilizes people who are the political minority in their neighborhood, but has no influence on people in the majority. When viewed together, these findings indicate that a person's relationship to the broader political environment sets distinctive network processes in motion.

Influence without Confidence: Upper Chambers and Government Formation

In most parliamentary democracies, governments must maintain the confidence of a single legislative chamber only. But in bicameral parliaments, upper chambers can affect the fortunes of government policy proposals. Recent work shows that parliamentary governments that lack control over the upper house also tend to collapse sooner than those with upper-house majorities. In this article, we show that coalition builders anticipate the importance of upper-chamber status (majority or minority) in making their formation decisions. After controlling for a host of “usual suspect” variables concerning the institutional, ideological, and partisan context of coalition building, and examining 15,590 potential governments in 129 bargaining situations, we found that potential coalitions that control upper-house majorities are significantly more likely to form than are those with upper-house minorities. Our findings are important for students of bicameralism, government formation, institutions, and, perhaps most significantly, for those who study policymaking in parliamentary democracies.

O Other, Where Art Thou? Support for Multiparty Politics in the United States*

Objective. We test hypotheses about support for multiparty politics in the United States. We expect that individual‐level attitudes and state‐level partisan context determine who supports having more parties.Methods. Survey data are used to model attitudes about having additional parties to challenge Democrats and Republicans.Results. Self‐identified partisans are opposed to additional parties, but independents who “lean” toward a major party are most supportive. Independents who say they are closer to Democrats, as well as independents who say they are closer to Republicans, tend to support having new parties. The latter effect is contingent on a state's partisan context. Independents closer to Republicans are most receptive to additional parties in states where fewer conservative representatives are elected.Conclusions. Support for multiparty‐ism among “leaning” independents challenges our understanding of how they may be similar to partisan identifiers, and illustrates that a base for new parties may exist in the “mainstream” public if electoral rules were changed.

Influence Without Confidence: Upper Chambers and Government Formation

In most parliamentary democracies, governments must maintain the confidence of the lower chamber only. But in bicameral parliaments, upper chambers can affect the fortunes of government policy proposals. Recent work shows that parliamentary governments that lack control over the upper house also tend to collapse sooner than those with upper house majorities. In this paper, we show that coalition builders anticipate the importance of upper chamber status (majority or minority) in making their formation decisions. Controlling for a host of usual suspect variables concerning the institutional, ideological, and partisan context of coalition building, and examining 15,590 potential governments in 129 bargaining situations, we find that potential coalitions that control upper house majorities are significantly more likely to form than are those with upper house minorities. Our findings are important for students of bicameralism, government formation, institutions, and, perhaps most significantly, for those who study policy making in parliamentary democracies.

The House That Abe Built: The "House Divided" Speech and Republican Party Politics

The House That Abe Built: The "House Divided" Speech and Republican Party Politics Michael William Pfau Lincoln's House Divided speech has received considerable critical attention from historians, as well as literary and rhetorical critics.1 Of the literature concerning the House Divided two readings in particular have significantly contributed to a uniquely rhetorical understanding of the speech. Don Fehrenbacher's authoritative analysis has contributed most substantially to our understanding of the House Divided speech as Lincoln's engagement with a particular set of concerns relating to the political context in which it was delivered. Fehrenbacher, however, while exhibiting a clear recognition of the speech as a response to exigence, lacked the rhetorical sensitivity that would have allowed him more fully to explain how the speech text was a response to the occasion in question.2 Michael Leff, on the other hand, has contributed to our understanding of the House Divided speech in the particular mode of a rhetorical critic—providing a close reading of the speech that reveals the intricacies of the action within the text. As a rhetorically minded close reading of the text, Leff's criticism is unsurpassed.3 However, even the fruitful dialogue between text and context represented by the intersection of the Leff and Fehrenbacher pieces is far from exhausting the hermeneutic possibilities of the House Divided speech. In this article I propose that it is possible to supplement, expand, and at times adjust, the solid interpretive foundation for the House Divided speech laid by Fehrenbacher and Leff by enriching and complicating particular aspects of the speech's context. I begin with the assumption that the text is but a trace of a complex rhetorical transaction that took place at the Illinois Republican state convention on June 16, 1-858; a trace that was once "inextricably interwoven with its world."4 Careful attention to the House Divided speech as such a transaction embedded within its own many-faceted context will enable a better appreciation of what actions Lincoln was performing in delivering the speech, and offer one way of achieving a more "exacting reading of texts as they are situated in history."6 The task of "expanding the hermeneutic burden of context" in relation to the House Divided Michael William Pfau is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. © Rhetoric & Public Affairs Vol. 2, No. 4, 1999, pp. 625-651 ISSN 1094-8392 626 Rhetoric & Public Affairs speech is complicated, however, by the breadth and vagueness of the concept of "context" in rhetorical studies. One recent commentator has gone so far as to suggest that rhetorical studies has "failed in finding a way to conceptualize context."6 While it may not be possible or desirable to develop a conceptualization of context applicable to all texts in all times and places, it is nevertheless important to determine , on a case-by-case basis, what aspects of context are especially salient to understanding particular rhetorical texts. In the case of the House Divided speech, the concept of political party and the particularities of the Illinois Republican Party in 1858 provide one mode of mediating the text-context divide that promises to expand our understanding of the speech in important ways. This mode of contextualizing the House Divided is initially validated by the fact of its delivery at the Illinois state Republican convention of 1858. Here Lincoln addressed an audience of party leaders, operated within the generic constraints of partisan conventions, and invoked partisan ideologies of several kinds as he acted to build and unify the Illinois Republican Party. Careful attention to the partisan component of the House Divided's original context will not only allow me to better negotiate disputed portions of the text, but also has implications for the issue of how what most agree was such a masterful speech became "an albatross for Lincoln during the ensuing Senate campaign."7 The puzzle regarding the speech's reception context becomes clearer if we follow Celeste Condit in asking "why, for a given time, and specific peoples, a given speech was particularly masterful."8 When considered in the light of its partisan context and immediate partisan audience the...

Public Support for European Integration: An Empirical Test of Five Theories

Public opinion, through its impact on mass behavior, shapes and constrains the process of European integration Why do citizens vary in their support for European integration? Previous research offers a variety of sometimes conflicting explanations, but the available evidence is insufficient to determine which explanations are valid. This article seeks to contribute to the resolution of this controversy by empirically examining five prominent theories of support for integration. Through regression analyses of Eurobarometer surveys from the period 1978-1992, the analysis shows that the partisan context of integrative reforms and the utilitarian consequences of integrative policy provide robust explanations for variation in support. In contrast, two other prominent theories-political values and cognitive mobilization-are only valid in a limited context, and in this context they exert a small substantive impact on support.

The House of Falk: the paranoid style in American health politics.

The onset of the Cold War had a blighting effect on the campaign for a national health insurance program in the United States. In the highly charged atmosphere of the late 1940s, proponents of social insurance spent considerable time and energy denying that they were agents of foreign powers. In one widely promoted conspiratorial formulation, some on the right traced the origins of subversion not only to Moscow but also to Geneva, Switzerland, home of the International Labor Organization. In the fractiously partisan context of the period, conservative political leaders amplified concerns over disloyal bureaucrats' manipulating the levers of legislative politics as well as the design of health policy. One federal official in particular, I. S. Falk, became the object of outright demonization. The paranoid attacks took their toll on the drive to extend social protection. The reformers' difficulties suggest the limitations of heavy dependence on bureaucratic expertise in the pursuit of health security.

Partisan Reinforcement in Context and Cognition: Canadian Federal Partisanships, 1974-79

This paper investigates the structures and reinforcement of partisanships in Canada and proposes that political sophistication of the individual and the partisan context mediate the reinforcing effects of partisan consistency. Data from the 1974-79 Canadian National Election Panel Study reveal that political sophistication is related to identifications with more than one party and also that it weakens the reinforcing effects of provincial votes on federal partisanships. The reinforcement effects of provincial votes on federal partisanships varies with the level of similarity between the provincial and federal party systems. The paper concludes with implications for the study of partisan reinforcement in other contexts.