Suchergebnisse

Two major traditions of belief, democracy and capitalism, have dominated American public life from its inception. Although they have not always coexisted in perfect harmony – indeed their union has often been torn by conflict – they have managed to accommodate to each other with sufficient flexibility to have forged a viable political culture.

Throughout the contest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, politicians and voters alike worried that the outcome might depend on the preferences of unelected superdelegates. This concern threw into relief the prevailing notion that-such unusually competitive cases notwithstanding-people, rather than parties, should and do control presidential nominations. But for the past several decades, The Party Decides shows, unelected insiders in both major parties have effectively selected candidates long before citizens reached the ballot box.Tracing the evolution of presidential nomination

ABSTRACTPolitical scientists have devoted vastly more attention to general presidential elections than to party nominations for president. This emphasis might be reasonable if parties could be counted on to nominate generic representatives of their traditions. But it is clear that they cannot. Since the party reforms of the 1970s, regulars like Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, and Al Gore have sometimes won fairly easy nominations, but outsider candidates like Jimmy Carter and Howard Dean have made strong runs or even won. 2016 has produced extremes of both types: ultimate regular Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side and far outsider Donald Trump on the Republican side. It seems, moreover, that party regulars are having more difficulty in recent cycles than they did in the 1980s and 1990s. There is therefore some urgency to the question: when and why do party regulars tend to win nominations?We examine this question from the point of view of two well-known studies, Nelson Polsby'sConsequences of Party Reformand our own,The Party Decides. The former explains why incentives built into the reformed system of presidential nominations make outsider and factional candidates like Trump likely. The latter argues that, following the factional nominations of the 1970s, party leaders learned to steer nominations to insider favorites. This article uses the logic of these studies to argue that major trends over the past two decades – the rise of new political media, the flood of early money into presidential nominations, and the conflict among party factions – have made it easier for factional candidates and outsiders to challenge elite control of nominations.

Though lightly regarded by many observers, political parties have been able to steer presidential nominations to insider favorites in all nine of the contested cases from 1980 to 2000. Democrats had more trouble in 2004, but still managed to avoid insurgent Howard Dean. This paper explains how today's presidential parties -- understood as coalitions of elected officials, interest and advocacy groups, and ideological activists -- have learned to work together in the so-called Invisible Primary to affect the outcome of the state-by-state primaries and caucuses. The paper concludes with a discussion of the influence of parties in the pre-Iowa phase of the 2008 nominations. Adapted from the source document.

Though lightly regarded by many observers, political parties have been able to steer presidential nominations to insider favorites in all nine of the contested cases from 1980 to 2000. Democrats had more trouble in 2004, but still managed to avoid insurgent Howard Dean. This paper explains how today's presidential parties -- understood as coalitions of elected officials, interest and advocacy groups, and ideological activists -- have learned to work together in the so-called Invisible Primary to affect the outcome of the state-by-state primaries and caucuses. The paper concludes with a discussion of the influence of parties in the pre-Iowa phase of the 2008 nominations.

Scholars routinely cite the landslide defeats of Barry Goldwater and George McGovern as evidence that American electorates punish extremism in presidential politics. Yet systematic evidence for this view is thin. In this article we use postwar election outcomes to assess the electoral effects of extremism. In testing ten models over the seventeen elections, we find scant evidence of extremism penalties that were either substantively large or close to statistical significance.