State Party Organizations Research Articles

Politics of Notables versus National Machine: Social, Political and State Transformations, Party Organizations and Clientelism during AKP Governments

Politics of Notables versus National Machine: Social, Political and State Transformations, Party Organizations and Clientelism during AKP Governments

Whiteness and the Emergence of the Republican Party in the Early Twentieth-Century South

In the post-Reconstruction South, two Republican factions vied for control of state party organizations. The Black-and-Tans sought to keep the party inclusive and integrated, while the Lily-Whites worked to turn the GOP into a whites-only party. The Lily-Whites ultimately emerged victorious, as they took over most state parties by the early twentieth century. Yet no comprehensive data exist to measure how the conflict played out in each state. To fill this void, we present original data that track the racial composition of Republican National Convention delegations from the South between 1868 and 1952. We then use these data in a set of statistical analyses to show that, once disfranchising laws were put into place, the “whitening” of the GOP in the South led to a significant increase in the Republican Party's vote totals in the region. Overall, our results suggest that the Lily-White takeover of the Southern GOP was a necessary step in the Republican Party's reemergence—and eventual dominance—in the region during the second half of the twentieth century.

Teaching voters new tricks: The effect of partisan absentee vote-by-mail get-out-the-vote efforts

In the last few years policy innovators have implemented a variety of new voting reforms aimed at increasing the ways voters can cast their ballot and with it voter turnout. While these efforts have largely suggested that the net effect of these reforms has been minimal, scholars have not analyzed the effectiveness of the use of these methods by partisan campaigns to increase targeted turnout or to change the methods voters use to cast their ballot. In collaboration with a state party organization, I examine the effect of a partisan get-out-the-vote effort using an absentee vote-by-mail push. I find that these get-out-the-vote efforts to target voters using absentee ballot request forms are effective at shifting more voters to vote absentee. However, while pushing absentee vote-by-mail balloting may bank votes for a campaign before Election Day, the overall effect of partisan campaigns’ use of absentee ballot efforts to increase turnout appears limited.

Party organizational strength and technological capacity

In their study of the state-level party organizations in the US, Cotter et al. (1984) introduce a theory of party organizational strength, arguing that the strongest parties exhibit both organizational complexity and programmatic capacity. In the present era, organizational complexity and programmatic capacity still emerge as the primary dimensions of party organizational strength, but this research demonstrates the importance of new indicators of party technological capacity to our understanding of party effectiveness in the early 21st century. In particular, parties that hire technologically-oriented staff are best equipped to carry out party programmatic activities, as they have the capacity to conduct voter mobilization programs and sophisticated data analytics in an online environment. Using data from a 2011 survey of the state party organizations in the US, this research shows that party organizational strength and party technological capacity are interrelated and overlapping concepts and are essential to understanding the parties’ programmatic and voter outreach capabilities.

The National Effects of Subnational Representation: How Partiess Access to Regional Parliaments Shapes National Elections

According to scholarly wisdom, party competition at the subnational level plays a negligible role in national elections. We provide theory and evidence that qualifies this view. Subnational elections determine entrance into subnational assemblies, which is accompanied by organizational resources. Since in most cases the same political actors compete at all levels of government, they can make use of region-specific resources to improve their status in national party competition. We test our argument employing the discontinuities generated by the five percent electoral threshold in German state elections. We find that parties that marginally cross the threshold for state parliamentary representation perform better in subsequent national elections in that state. We also present evidence regarding the mechanism: Consistent with organizational explanations, bottom-up effects take some time to materialize, are more pronounced where parliamentary parties receive more resources, and as a result of entering subnational parliament, state party organizations recruit more members.

Post-Communist youth: is there a Central Asian pattern?

This article argues that Central Asian youth share more commonalities than differences vis-à-vis young people in other ex-Communist countries. The common features include high rates of unemployment and under-employment, associated poverty and a propensity to become pendulum migrants. Meanwhile, as elsewhere, rates of participation in higher education have risen spectacularly in parts of Central Asia. Central Asia has been part of a global trend towards later marriages and lower rates of fertility, although the region's young people still tend to marry earlier and parent more children than in other parts of the ex-USSR. As elsewhere, Central Asian youth have lost most of the provisions for leisure activities formerly offered by state and Communist Party organizations. These have been replaced by relatively patchy provisions by NGOs, and commercial facilities that are beyond the means of most young people. The article argues that the most distinctive feature of youth in Central Asia is citizenship in newly independent states with no prior history of statehood, hence their difficulties in achieving a collective identity. This has created a metaphorical market place in identities. What young people share with youth throughout East-Central Europe and Eurasia is a dominant personal aspiration; namely, to join their countries' new middle classes.

Integration or separation? Nationality groups in the US and the Republican Party's ethnic politics, 1960s-1980s

Using examples of American Latvians, Estonians and Ukrainians in the states of Minnesota, New Jersey and New York this article explores the ambiguous nature of integration of nationalities groups inside the Republican Party during the 1960s-1980s. Based on the analysis of available archival information, it is shown that the Republican Party intentionally brought in the ethnics during the discussed period and created the Nationalities Sections within specific electoral campaigns, Nationalities Divisions inside the state party organizations and the National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council within the Republican National Committee in order to recruit the ethnics and engage in the partisan struggle with the Democrats. Consequently, the nationalities were given a sense of importance, but little real power to actually influence the internal processes inside the party. At the same time, the nationalities eagerly responded to the invitation to join the Republican national and state-level organizations specifically designed for the ethnics. Yet in doing this they perceived themselves primarily as ethnics with a distinct, mainly anti-communist, agenda and only secondarily thought of themselves as Americans dedicated to Republican politics. Consequently, the Republican political strategy of creating Nationalities Sections and Divisions seemed to integrate the ethnics on the surface, while in reality intensifying political separation and even ghettoization of the ethnics in American politics. This research initiates a larger project, which will compare the Republican and Democratic strategies of directly involving ethnic groups and minorities inside the party organizations in the second part of the twentieth century.

The Ballot as a Party-System Switch

Diverging from the generally accepted argument that Australian ballot adoption in the USA was the work of anti-party forces, this article revitalizes Key's taxonomy of the political party and advances the argument that the merger of party organization and party-in-government interests in part led to adoption of the ballot and facilitated the 1896 party-system change. The pattern of Australian ballot adoption – particularly the rapid adoption of the ballot in Western states – indicates that the state party organization and the party-in-government were united in their frustration prompted by their mutual inability to curb opposition party success and unpredictability of party-in-the-electorate activity at the congressional level. Using the Australian ballot as an outcome variable in a prior-to-adoption model and as an explanatory variable in a subsequent-to-adoption model, findings indicate that state party organizations accepted the ballot partly to obtain control over congressional election outcomes.

State Parties in the 2000 Senate Elections*

Objective. This article examines state party activity in support of U.S. Senate candidates during the 2000 election. The literature on the service role of parties suggests that national parties will be active in support of candidates, while state parties will be inclined to provide mobilization services. However, state parties are also in a good position to provide campaign contributions and technical services usually supplied by national party organizations.Methods. Focusing on the 2000 elections, I use campaign finance data from the Federal Election Commission as well as original data derived from a survey of the state parties to investigate the relationship between state parties and U.S. Senate candidates.Results. The results indicate not only that state parties were remarkably active in support of U.S. Senate candidates, but also that Republican state parties appeared to better target their support to more deserving candidates than did Democratic state parties. Closer scrutiny, however, reveals that the Democrats, by using state party organizations as the conduit of coordinated expenditures, were more successful in providing resources to candidates who would win.Conclusions. Although much of the activity of state party organizations is explained by money transfers from national party organizations, it is the transfer of hard money that accounts for state party activity in U.S. Senate campaigns. This brings into question the impact of recent campaign finance reforms on the relationship between state parties and U.S. Senate candidates.

Soft Money, Hard Money, Strong Parties

Political parties are central to current efforts to reform campaign fi? nance in the United States. Party money constitutes approximately half of all campaign funds raised at the national level. Limiting party money is, thus, integral to campaign finance reform. This Article examines what might be gained and lost if regulations on party money are imposed. Proponents of stronger (and better financed) parties conjecture that strong parties increase the ability of voters to hold their representatives accountable. We find that such benefits are, in practice, minimal. Instead, we argue that the main benefits of party money, especially soft money, derive from the parties' cam? paign activities. Soft money finances state party organizations' voter registration and mobilization efforts, which have substantial effects on turnout. Reducing party money will, thus, reduce participation. The benefits oflimitations on party soft money must therefore be weighed against likely reductions in voting that would result.

The Effects of Eligibility Restrictions and Party Activity on Absentee Voting and Overall Turnout

Theory: The effects of party activity and permissive absentee eligibility on levels of absentee voting and overall turnout are explored. Hypotheses: Liberalizing absentee eligibility reduces the costs of voting while giving political interests a new way of mobilizing supporters and stimulating overall turnout. Methods: Data from the 1992 Current Population Survey and from the author's survey of state party organizations are analyzed using a logistic regression. Results: A state-by-state comparison demonstrates that levels of absentee voting are not solely a function of restrictive state laws but reflect other influences, including the efforts of state parties to send out absentee ballot applications. Controlling for the influences of state registration laws, the data indicate that overall turnout is increased only when liberalization of absentee voter eligibility is combined with party mobilization efforts. The implications of this change for American electoral politics are discussed.

Southern State Party Organizations and Activists.Charles D. Hadley , Lewis Bowman

<i>Southern State Party Organizations and Activists.</i>Charles D. Hadley , Lewis Bowman

A Comparative Analysis of the Policy Development Function of State Party Organizations

Platforms provide a guide to a party's ideological location at a particular time. As such, they can be a useful tool for comparing interparty and intraparty differences over policy alternatives at the subnational level. This analysis of the recent platforms of 40 state Democratic parties and 34 state Republican parties, patterned after Ginsberg’s (1972. 1976) framework, revealed considerable ideological decentralization (across-state intraparty differences) within both parties. Further analysis of platform contents in relationship to Erikson. Wright, and Mclver's (1993) research revealed weak correlations between the ideological content of platforms and the ideological orientations of state electorates, state elected officials, state party activists, and party identifiers, respectively.

Where's the Party?

The condition of state party organizations is unclear. Some argue they are declining, whereas others argue they are making a comeback. Some of the ambiguity stems from incomplete information, but some of it stems from changes in the organization of the "state party." New organizations have emerged and our organizational assessments have not incorporated the changing reality. The traditional state party committees have been joined by legislative party campaign committees, and party resources have become more dispersed. The state party organization is no longer defined by just the traditional state party organization. This article presents a comprehensive case study of these changes. It examines the condition and growth of all state party organizations in New York across three election cycles. The legislative party committees are better financed than the traditional state party committees, and they play a major role in financing state legislative candidates. The focus, it appears, should be as much on the legislative party campaign committees as on the traditional state party committees when trying to understand the condition of state party organizations.

Parties and Elections in America: The Electoral Process, by L. Sandy Maisel

Parties and Elections in America: The Electoral Process, <i>by L. Sandy Maisel</i>

Partisan Realignment, Unconstitutional State Policies, and the U.S. Supreme Court, 1837-1964

This research examines the 670 state statutes and constitutional provisions declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court between 1837 and 1964. The theoretical approach is grounded in the theory of partisan realignment. The cases are analyzed along various dimensions including the legal-political issues involved, the relationship of these issues to the salient political questions surrounding realignment, as well as the partisan and regional origin of the overturned policies. The findings demonstrate that these issues have often constituted a majority of the Court's invalidation agenda. In addition, these salient policies were enacted almost exclusively by states whose partisan majorities differed from the dominant majority on the Court or from states that evidence ideological incongruence between the state and national party organizations. The Supreme Court's invalidation of state policies is closely connected with major political and systemic change.

Party Integration and Party Organizational Strength

In this article, we consider the relationship of party organizational strength and state-national party integration. Specifically, we examine the thesis that national party organizations have made an important contribution to the strengthening of state party organizations. We test the hypothesis that state party organizational strength is a function of national party organization building efforts. Finally, we conclude by speculating on the implications of different development patterns for the performance of traditional party functions and the maintenance of the existing party system.

A Dynamic Model of Partisan Competition in the American States

survey-based research on state politics demonstrates considerable change in the characteristics, attitudes, and party allegiances of state electorates and of change in state party organizations. A multivariate linear model of partisan competition is estimated dynamically using as predictor variables measures of change in the size, composition, and characteristics of state populations and measures of characteristics of state party systems. The resultant model explains approximately 80 percent of variation in change in partisan competition. It provides a portrait of contemporary state politics more consistent with that provided by research using survey data than those studies using existing aggregate data. Partisan competition has often been cast as a fundamental ingredient of democratic government. A classic exposition on the values of two-party competition is found in V.0. Key's Southern Politics in State and Nation (1949), in which the author argues that one-party southern politics aided in the development of issueless, faction-ridden, and often undemocratic state political systems (pp. 299-310). Competing parties, in Key's view, are important in a democratic system because the presence of serious opposition for control of the government promotes discipline within parties and leads parties to inject some issue content into campaigns for office. Without the discipline putatively linked to competition, the rational strategy for parties is to appeal to the median voter by avoiding issues that might only serve to alienate voters (see, e.g., Downs, 1957, pp. 27-33). Thus in one-party systems personalities and other attributes irrelevant to policy become the lifeblood of elections, giving rise to demagoguery, policy systems that consistently favor strong economic interests within a given state, and generally retarding the development of democratic institutions (Key, 1949, ch. 14). Key's discussion of the role of party competition provides the foundation for a large body of research in which partisan competition figures

Do Parties Make a Difference? The Role of Party Organizations in Congressional Elections

Political scientists have expressed concern over the decline of political parties in recent years. This study provides evidence that at least one element of the political party, the party organization, is experiencing a resurgence rather than a decline. Data collected from nearly 400 House candidates reveal that party organizations continue to play an important role in congressional elections. National party committees, particularly the parties' congressional campaign committees, are now providing candidates with valuable assistance in activities that require technical expertise, in-depth research, or connections with the Washington campaign community. Included among these activities are campaign advertising, issue development, and fund-raising. State and local party organizations continue to assist candidates with gauging public opinion and mobilizing the electorate. Republican party organizations, especially the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, provide candidates with more assistance than do their Democratic counterparts. The RNC and the NRCC are more effective at targeting their assistance to candidates involved in competitive races. Party organizations are successfully adapting to the changing political environment. T he last few decades comprise an era of tremendous change for American political parties. Newly enacted campaign finance laws have served as a catalyst for the growth of vast numbers of political action committees (PACs), which now compete with parties for influence over candidates and voters. Party-initiated reforms in the nomination process have restructured the roles of party organizations in candidate recruitment and selection. The emergence of a more independent and more volatile electorate has helped to bring about changes in the tactics that candidates and parties use to garner support. Finally, technological innovations developed in the field of public relations have been adapted to the

Whither the Local Parties?: A Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Analysis of the Strength of Party Organizations

The authors have earlier demonstrated that state and national party organizations have increased in strength in the last few decades. Here they assess the nature of change in the attributes of local party organizations. They find that local parties have not become less active and less organized over the past two decades. Most sustain a fairly high level of programmatic activity and a significant minority of them conduct some party-maintenance activity in nonelection periods. The strength of local party organizations varies significantly by region, but not by party. Local organizational strength is relatively independent of the strength of the state party organizations, despite the substantial assistance state parties give to their local counterparts. These findings complicate the party demise thesis by suggesting that the consequences of change in one component of party must be assessed within the context of possibly dissimilar and maybe even compensatory change in the other components of party. The last 20 years have not been kind to American political parties. Parties appear less able at performing their traditional functions than in the past: the ability to structure the vote is diminished as the partisan attachments of the electorate weaken; control over candidates' access to the party label is loosened as democratization opens primary processes to those with marginal party attachments; candidates eschew party election support and turn to political action committees and campaign consultants instead, thereby reducing the incentives to defer to the party; and the ability of parties to organize the government is waning. Generally, it seems that the forces contributing to the maintenance of the existing parties and party system are badly eroded. But there is also evidence that parties as organizations have grown stronger