Responsible Party Government Research Articles

Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the House of RepresentativesSetting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the House of Representatives. By Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins. (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Previous articleNext article No AccessSetting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the House of Representatives Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the House of Representatives. By Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins. (Cambridge University Press, 2005).Jeffery A. JenkinsJeffery A. Jenkins1Northwestern University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Politics Volume 68, Number 3August 2006 Sponsored by the Southern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2006.00459_6.x Views: 192Total views on this site Copyright © 2006, Southern Political Science AssociationPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Setting the agenda: responsible party government in the U.S. House of Representatives

Scholars of the U.S. House disagree over the importance of political parties in organizing the legislative process. On the one hand, non-partisan theories stress how congressional organization serves members' non-partisan goals. On the other hand, partisan theories argue that the House is organized to serve the collective interests of the majority party. This book advances our partisan theory and presents a series of empirical tests of that theory's predictions (pitted against others). It considers why procedural cartels form, arguing that agenda power is naturally subject to cartelization in busy legislatures. It argues that the majority party has cartelized agenda power in the U.S. House since the adoption of Reed's rules in 1890. The evidence demonstrates that the majority party seizes agenda control at nearly every stage of the legislative process in order to prevent bills that the party dislikes from reaching the floor.

The Responsible Party Government Model in House and Senate Elections

The Responsible Party Government Model in House and Senate Elections

The Responsible Party Government Model in House and Senate Elections

Responsible party government theory requires that voters hold parties electorally accountable for their performance in control of government. Existing literature suggests that voters do this only to a limited extent—holding the presidential party's candidates responsible for government performance on Election Day. While this method of voting may hold the executive accountable for his performance, it is not really an effective way to hold the party in control of Congress accountable for its performance. The method falls short particularly when Congress is controlled by a different party than the president, but also whenever a Congress controlled by the same party pursues policies different from the president's. Using surveys of voters leaving the polls in the 1990, 1994, and 1998 midterm congressional elections, this study tests whether voters' evaluations of Congress's job performance also affect their support for majority party candidates in House and Senate elections, during both unified and divided government.

Political representation in the networked society: the Americanisation of European systems of responsible party government?

The Internet provides a new technological opportunity structure for political representatives to communicate with constituents. Its potential for decentralised, interactive mass communication allows MPs to bypass intermediary organisations such as political parties and to establish a direct relationship with their constituents. Students of electronic democracy are divided over the political consequences of this technological change in telecommunications. While cyber-optimists envisage a transformation of responsible party government into a more direct, individualised type of political representation, cyber-sceptics adopt a more cautious approach and predict a reinforcement of established systems of political representation in the networked society. This article aims to develop a theoretical foundation as well as to carry out an empirical test of both positions. In the theoretical section, these two contradictory positions are modelled on the assumption that party government is a rationalistic concept. In the empirical section, both positions are tested in a statistical analysis of the use of personal websites in the German Bundestag, the Swedish Riksdag and the US House of Representatives.

Party Competition and Responsible Party Government: A Theory of Spatial Competition Based on Insights from Behavioral Research. By James Adams. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. 256p. $52.50 cloth, $24.95 paper

James Adams provides a compelling and innovative book on elections and political party competition in France, Great Britain, and the United States. It unites theoretical modeling and data analysis to help us understand how parties in multiparty democracies compete when citizens both are partisan and care about the issue positions of the parties.

Party Competition and Responsible Party Government: A Theory of Spatial Competition Based on Insights from Behavioral Voting Research. James Adams

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsParty Competition and Responsible Party Government: A Theory of Spatial Competition Based on Insights from Behavioral Voting Research. James Adams Christopher KamChristopher Kam Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Politics Volume 64, Number 3Aug., 2002 Sponsored by the Southern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/jop.64.3.1520136 Views: 24Total views on this site Copyright 2002 Southern Political Science AssociationPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Responsible, Representative and Accountable Government

As an evaluation of the health of Australia's political system, this article offers a perspective different from the lament over the loss of responsible government. It finds that responsible government is not compatible with representative democracy. Peculiar to Australia is conflict between ‘responsible party government’ and ‘responsible parliamentary government’. Nevertheless, the system is healthy. A parliament‐as‐a‐whole approach identifies key holistic functions of manifest and latent legitimation and accountability that bolster legitimacy. Political accountability is enhanced by the watchdog role of the media. Public accountability is enriched by the links between citizens and administrative review. Critical changes include the guarantee of senate independence and the removal of senate power over supply. These changes would confine the theory and practice of responsible government to the House of Representatives, promote accountability, and thus increase the legitimacy of Australian parliamentary democracy.

Toward a More Programmatic Democratic Party? Agenda-Setting and Coalition-Building in the House of Representatives

In 1981 House Democrats adopted a new set of mechanisms-the Committee on Party Effectiveness, task forces to draft issue manifestos, and the Message Board to perform public relations activities-intended to unite their membership around a core set of issues, put forward a national political agenda, and elect a Democrat to the White House. Although only a few of the participants were familiar with the notion of responsible party government, the goals, activities, and products of this effort bore a striking resemblance to the reforms advocated by the American Political Science Association's Committee on Political Parties. We describe the House Democrats' efforts, note similar efforts among the Republicans, assess how closely they approximated the APSA recommendations, and discuss the obstacles in the way of developing responsible parties in the United States.

Gender and Representation among Legislative Candidates in Australia

Some feminist theory suggests that women have different value priorities compared to men, which should lead to different political perspectives and political behavior among candidates for elected office. By contrast, the theory of responsible party government predicts that there should be few gender-based differences in perspectives and behavior among candidates, due to party discipline. Studies conducted in the United States and elsewhere, however, have consistently shown that legislators are district-oriented, irrespective of party affiliation. In this article, the authors apply multivariate analysis to matched mass-elite survey data collected during the 1987 Australian federal election to analyze the policy views of male and female candidates and to compare them to attitudes among their constituents. For candidates, party dominates political attitudes, with much less influence for constituency opinion and little at all for gender except on the question of advancement for women. These findings are somewhat at variance from similar studies in the United States and Britain.

E. E. Schattschneider, the New Deal, and the Rejection of the Responsible Party Doctrine

E. E. Schattschneider's Party Government, published fifty years ago, is one of the early classics of behavioral political science. The enduring popularity of this book, however, stems less from its impressive analysis of the actual workings of American party politics than its advocacy of democratic reform. Party Government was a strong blow in behalf of “responsible party government,” a creed that has had an important influence on political science. Schattschneider later chaired the Committee on Political Parties of the American Political Science Association, which produced the famous report “Towards a More Responsible Two-Party System,” published in 1950. Much of the argument of the report was anticipated by Party Government, which advocated “party centralization” to overcome the local and sectional tendencies that defined traditional partisan politics in the United States (Schattschneider 1942; Committee on Political Parties 1950).Schattschneider considered political parties as perhaps the most archaic institutions in the United States: the American party system continued to operate as it had before the Civil War, that is, as two loose coalitions of state and local organizations, with very little national machinery and cohesion. The major parties were able to control the electoral process and bring people to the polls. Nevertheless, they failed to organize the nominees they elected to office into an effective, cohesive team for control of government. “Nearly all of the conflict and confusion of American government,” Schattschneider (1942, 30) claimed, “can be traced to the failure of the parties on this point.”With the growth of the federal government's responsibilities during the twentieth century, this failing of the traditional decentralized parties represented a distressing deterioration of representative democracy.

E. E. Schattschneider, the New Deal, and the Rejection of the Responsible Party Doctrine

E. E. Schattschneider's Party Government, published fifty years ago, is one of the early classics of behavioral political science. The enduring popularity of this book, however, stems less from its impressive analysis of the actual workings of American party politics than its advocacy of democratic reform. Party Government was a strong blow in behalf of “responsible party government,” a creed that has had an important influence on political science. Schattschneider later chaired the Committee on Political Parties of the American Political Science Association, which produced the famous report “Towards a More Responsible Two-Party System,” published in 1950. Much of the argument of the report was anticipated by Party Government, which advocated “party centralization” to overcome the local and sectional tendencies that defined traditional partisan politics in the United States (Schattschneider 1942; Committee on Political Parties 1950).Schattschneider considered political parties as perhaps the most archaic institutions in the United States: the American party system continued to operate as it had before the Civil War, that is, as two loose coalitions of state and local organizations, with very little national machinery and cohesion. The major parties were able to control the electoral process and bring people to the polls. Nevertheless, they failed to organize the nominees they elected to office into an effective, cohesive team for control of government. “Nearly all of the conflict and confusion of American government,” Schattschneider (1942, 30) claimed, “can be traced to the failure of the parties on this point.”With the growth of the federal government's responsibilities during the twentieth century, this failing of the traditional decentralized parties represented a distressing deterioration of representative democracy.

Responsible Party Government in America

(1992). Responsible Party Government in America. Perspectives on Political Science: Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 80-90.

Introduction: Crisis and Continuity in Canadian Federalism

In 1876, almost ten years after Confederation, an Italian publicist, Enea Cavalieri,' traveled throughout most of what was then Canada to see how the new social, economic, and political order worked. Cavalieri observed that all the reading he had done on federalism had not prepared him for what he found in Canada: a union of various colonies and peoples in a single, great Dominion, itself created by fusing two seemingly antithetical principles of organization: federalism and responsible party government. Europe, Cavalieri observed, was paying little attention to this new country, even though its constitutional development and political economy were worth studying. In his view, the Canadian Confederation signaled the beginning of a new political economy equilibrium in North America and presaged the possibility of novel solutions to contemporary problems in Europe.2 The making of Canada was indeed one of the most notable political achievements of the nineteenth century. Unlike most countries, Canada was created through peaceful means within an international imperium. But the history of Canada, at least until the proclamation of the Canada Act on 17 April 1982, is not only the history of fragile freedom' but also the history of a political system that has not worked as its creators intended, of constitutional reform efforts that have generally ended in stalemate, and of

Fear of Fear: A Survey of Terrorist Operations and Controls in Open Societies

speed with which political information is transmitted to a mass audience. Yet television newscasting, in adhering to conventions of fairness or balance and reflecting the Progressives' distrust of political party, tends to promulgate anti-partisan views of politics, a tendency most pronounced in its depicting the primary process as the genuinely democratic way of nominating presidents. The effect, says Rubin, has been to grease the downward slide of parties in the political process. The bureaucratic specialization of the print press, he might have added, facilitates dissemination of demands by non-party groups in the polity. One consequence of the new politics has been a succession of one-term presidents, each enjoying only brief moments of political effectiveness. The author traces the weakened presidency to an erosion of what Neustadt calls prestige, the perception in the eyes of Washingtonians of how their publics-and the president's-are likely to react to the president's acts in office. (It is often confused with popularity, as measured by the president's approval or disapproval rating in the Gallup poll.) Without a stable base for public prestige in party loyalty, presidential popularity has become very volatile. More broadly, presidents today suffer from the lack of correspondence among the coalition they need for getting the nomination, the coalition they need for gaining election, and the coalition they need for governing, once in office. One possible response to this new political environment is the traditional favorite of political science: a disciplined and responsible party government. That was, more or less, the response of the Reaganauts, who ran for election on a set of national themes with centralized financing. The election of 1980 was the triumph of party organization, not of single-issue groups. Rubin's book, in directing attention away from the direct political effects of the news media and toward their indirect effects, especially on institutions, addresses a significant set of questions, propounds a concisely and provocatively stated thesis, and performs a service for those who teach, study, and practice American politics in the 1980s.

Responsible Party Government and Stable Coalition: The Case of the German Federal Republic

The paper examines the internal stability of the S.P.D.–F.D.P. coalition which has governed the Federal Republic since 1969 and in particular the way in which foreign policy determined relations between government and opposition between 1969 and 1972. It also examines the ideological divisions within the S.P.D. and C.D.U./C.S.U., their exacerbation by the close result of the 1976 election and the effect this could have on further developments. It concludes that the ‘stable coalition’ in power since 1969, even if it fails to last its full term, is an important variant in the recognized typology of governments, and therefore of interest to the student of comparative government.

The Impact of Party Recruitment Activity upon Legislative Role Orientations: A Path Analysis

This study examines the linkage between party organization and party government by measuring the impact of party recruitment upon role orientations of legislators. Path analysis is utilized to test the central hypothesis, which is: The greater the recruitment activity of a party, the more competitive the legislative primary election as perceived by the legislator, and the stronger the perceived party organizational strength, the more likely the legislator will adopt a party (delegate, district, and gubernatorial) role orientation. The three independent variables of the model explain 44 percent of the variance in party role orientations, 32 percent in representational role orientations, 35 percent in constituency role orientations,and 38 percent in gubernatorial role orientations; and a strong relationship between the recruitment activity and role orientations is substantiated. The linkages between voters, party organizations, and legislators are central to representative popular government and American democracy. While the relationship between party organization and party government has never been fully studied, the involvement of the party as a recruitment agent in the selection of the political leaders is central to this linkage. Two major questions concerning the relationship between party organization and party in government will be analyzed. First, what is the direct impact of party recruitment activity upon the role orientations of legislators? Second, what is the indirect influence of party recruitment activity upon legislative role orientations through the legislator's perception of party organizational and electoral strength? Most political scientists agree that the control of candidate recruitment, as well as the responsiveness of public officeholders to a party program, are two major prerequisites to party government. Responsible party government has never been completely achieved in the American party system at any level of goverment. Federalism and the separation of powers are two strong forces which work against responsible parties at the national level in the United States, although recent reforms in Congress, in the Democratic

The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government: Its Origins and Present State.Austin Ranney

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Doctrine of Responsible Party Government: Its Origins and Present State. Austin Ranney JeDon A. EmenhiserJeDon A. Emenhiser Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Politics Volume 25, Number 2May, 1963 Sponsored by the Southern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2127495 Views: 8Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Woodrow Wilson and the Democratic Party

Few Presidents in American history established so complete and far-reaching a control over his party as did Woodrow Wilson during the first years of his tenure in the White House.* Indeed, before the end of his first term he had become almost the absolute master of his party, able to effect revolutionary changes in party policy without the previous knowledge and consent of Democratic leaders in Congress and the country. He attained this stature in part by his methods of public leadership—his bold representation of public opinion and his incomparable strategy in dealing with the legislative branch. He won this position of authority also through less obvious and more subtle means—a systematic use of the immense patronage at his command as an instrument by which to achieve effective and responsible party government. Confronted by no entrenched national party organization and no body of officeholders loyal to another man, he was able to build from the ground up and to weld the widely scattered and disparate Democratic forces into something approximating a national machine. Let us see how he used his power to mold the character of his party, and with what consequences.

The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government; Its Origins and Present State.Austin Ranney

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Doctrine of Responsible Party Government; Its Origins and Present State. Austin Ranney Kenneth G. OlsonKenneth G. Olson Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Politics Volume 17, Number 2May, 1955 Sponsored by the Southern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2126472 Views: 4Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.