Chapter Nine Political Parties. Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.9 | 2...

Chapter Nine

Political Parties

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Objectives

• Define the term political party and contrast the structures of the European and American parties, paying particular attention to the federal structure of the United States system and the concept of party identification.

• Trace the development of the United States party system through its four periods. Explain why parties have been in decline since the New Deal.

• Describe the structure of a major party. Distinguish major from minor parties.

• Indicate whether there are major differences between the parties. Describe some of the issue differences between delegates at Democratic and Republican conventions, and compare these differences with those of the party rank and file.

Political Parties

• A party is a group that seeks to elect candidates to public office by supplying them with a label (party identification), by which they are known to the electorate

• United States parties have become weaker as labels, sets of leaders, and organizations

Parties in the US and Europe

• European parties are disciplined gatekeepers, to which voters are very loyal, though this has been declining recently

• The federal system decentralizes power in U.S.• Parties are closely regulated by state and federal

laws, which weaken them• Candidates are now chosen through primaries,

not by party leaders

The Rise and Decline of Parties

• The founders disliked parties, viewing them as factions

• During the Jacksonian era political participation became a mass phenomenon

• From the Civil War until the 1930s most states were dominated by one party

• Progressives pushed measures to curtail parties’ power and influence

The Results of Reform

• The worst forms of political corruption were reduced

• All political parties were weakened; parties became less able to hold officeholders accountable or to coordinate across the branches of government

Figure 9.1: Decline in Party Identification, 1952-2002

National Election Studies, The NES Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior, 1952-2000, table 20.1, and data for 2002 updated by Marc Siegal.

Party Realignment

• Critical or realigning periods: periods when a sharp, lasting shift occurs in the popular coalition supporting one or both parties

• Two kinds of realignments– A major party is defeated so badly that it

disappears and a new party emerges– Two existing parties continue but voters shift

their loyalty from one to another

Realignments

• 1860: slavery issue fixed new loyalties in the popular mind

• 1896: economic issues shifted loyalties to East/West, city/farm split

• 1932: economic depression triggered new coalition for Democrats

• 1980: Could not have been a traditional realignment, because Congress was left in the hands of the Democrats

Figure 7.3: Cleavages

and Continuity in

the Two-Party System

Map 7.1: The Election of 1828

Figure 7.3: Cleavages

and Continuity in

the Two-Party System (cont’d)

The Election of 1976

The Election of 1992

Party Decline

• Evidence that parties are declining, not realigning

• Proportion of people identifying with a party declined between 1960 and 1980

• Proportion of those voting a split ticket increased

Table 7.2: The Rise of Republican Politics in the

South, 1956-2002

Figure 9.2: Trends in Split-Ticket Voting For President and Congress, 1920-2000

Party Structure• Parties are similar on paper • RNC effectively created a national firm of political

consultants• Democrats moved to factionalized structure and

redistributed power• By the 1990s, DNC had learned from the RNC:

adopted the same techniques, with some success

(THEME A: PARTY STRUCTURE TODAY)

Nominating a President

• Primary: an election in which voters select the candidate who will run on each party’s ticket

• Caucus: a meeting of party followers at which delegates are picked

Table 9.1: Who Are the Party Delegates?

Table 9.5: How Party Delegates and Party Voters Differ in Liberal Ideology

Table 7.6: Political Opinions of Delegates and Voters

Table 7.3: Party Voting in Presidential Elections

National Conventions

• National committee sets time and place; issues a “call” setting the number of delegates for each state and the rules for their selection

• In 1970s, Democrats’ rules were changed to weaken local party leaders and increase the proportions of women and minorities

• In 1988, the number of superdelegates was increased

THEME A: DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• Consider the five types of local political party organizations that the text lists. What advantages and disadvantages does each type have? Rank the five types according to whether they can:

ｷｷ Introduce needed political reforms

ｷｷ Successfully assemble enough power to govern effectively

ｷｷ Induce a broad cross section of society to participate

ｷｷ Avoid corruption

ｷｷ Give the voters a reasonable choice of policy-makers and policies

ｷｷ Allow the voters to hold politicians responsible for the success or failure of their policies

ｷｷ Rejuvenate the political process by allowing “outsiders” in

THEME A DISCUSSION QUESTION (cont.)

• Are some types of parties more likely to be stronger and more electorally successful than others? Under what circumstances should each type of party, with its virtues and disadvantages, be established? abolished?

• The national political parties have little control over the behavior of their members or of the candidates representing them. For example, David Duke—a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan—entered the Louisiana legislature as a Republican despite radio broadcasts by President Reagan calling for his defeat. How is the political system hurt by the loose organization of political parties?

• Voter loyalty to a particular party is diminishing, with many voters unable to distinguish between the two major parties. Would a strengthened party structure prevent defections? Would this be a positive development? Or would the power of the states be restricted? Would candidates be less responsive to local interests?

THEME A DISCUSSION QUESTIONS (cont.)

• Suppose you wanted more powerful parties. Which alternative in each pair would achieve this goal? How?

ｷｷ Public financing of campaigns or private contributions

ｷｷ More primaries or more caucuses

ｷｷ More openness to outside political forces or more control by established political figures

ｷｷ More power in Washington or more power in state and local governments

ｷｷ More people in politics because of ideology or “principle” or more in it for jobs and money

Kinds of Parties• Political machine: a party organization

that recruits members via tangible incentives

• Ideological party: principle is more important than winning election

• Solidary groups: members are motivated by solidarity incentives

THEME B: UNITED STATES PARTIES AS BROAD COALITIONS

Kinds of Parties

• Sponsored parties: created or sustained by another organization

• Personal following: requires an appealing personality, an extensive network, name recognition, and money

Reasons for the Two Party System

• Electoral system—winner-take-all and plurality system limit the number of parties

• Opinions of voters—two broad coalitions work, although there may be times of bitter dissent

• State laws have made it very difficult for third parties to get on the ballot

Table 9.4: The Public Rates the Two Parties

Minor Parties

• Ideological parties: comprehensive, radical view; most enduring

• One-issue parties: address one concern, avoid others

• Economic protest parties: regional, protest economic conditions

• Factional parties: from split in a major party, usually over the party’s presidential nominee

Impact of Minor Parties

• Conventional wisdom holds that minor parties develop ideas that the major parties adopt

• Factional parties have had probably the greatest influence on public policy

THEME B DISCUSSION QUESTIONS• Democratic politics always requires a majority coalition to win. In the United States the coalition

is formed before an election, in the makeup of political parties. In European multiparty systems the coalition is formed after the election, when a political leader bargains for the support of other parties to form a voting coalition of a majority of seats in parliament. What difference might it make whether the coalition is together before or after the election? Which system allows the most meaningful elections? Which allows citizens to express their attitudes best in the polling booth? Which most effectively allows citizens to hold politicians accountable for what they do?

• Why do some voters believe that it is illogical to vote for a party other than one of the two major ones? What would a voter who found the Democrats insufficiently liberal have gained by voting for a presidential candidate such as Democrat Eugene McCarthy, who ran as an independent in 1976? Would this reasoning apply to the presidential elections of 1992, 1996, and 2000?

• In 1996, Jesse Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota, having run on the Reform Party ticket. Ventura was a former pro-wrestler, actor, and radio talk show host; he served as mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota’s sixth largest city, from 1991 to 1995. Does Ventura’s election suggest that the Reform Party may be in a position to challenge the Democratic and Republican parties in the future? Why or why not? For further information about the Reform Party, see: http://www.reformparty.org/

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