Voting Contagion
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Political Parties in a Critical Era by John H. Aldrich
Political Parties in a Critical Era1 by John H. Aldrich Duke University Prepared for delivery at “The State of the Parties: 1996 and Beyond,” Bliss Institute Conference, University of Akron, October 9-10, 1997 Political Parties in a Critical Era 2 Democracy, we often forget, is a process, and thus is continually in the making. It is not, as we usually like to think of it, an outcome. The central questions to ask about this process concern, first, the relationship between the beliefs and actions of citizens and of those whom they choose to govern them. The second question concerns the consequences of elite actions, that is, the policies and other outputs of the political system. This relationship between the mass and elite evolves over time, and as a result so does the pattern of policy produced by the government. That evolution is, indeed, the consequence of democracy being a process and not an outcome. Richard Niemi and I (Aldrich and Niemi, 1990; 1996; Aldrich, 1995) proposed a slight generalization and redefinition of V.O. Key's concept of a critical election (1955). We also offered a method for demonstrating at least some of the features of what we called "critical eras" and the period of stability (perhaps even equilibrium) in between. In our view, the 1960s were a critical era, and the 1970s and 1980s were a period of stable alignment.2 We dubbed the stable era that of the "candidate-centered party system," due to the importance of candidates and their assessments in shaping citizens’ choices, of the individual impact of incumbency on elections, and of related aspects of candidate-centered elections that so mark this period. -
An Examination of Voter Groups That Make up the Emerging Democratic Majority Thesis
University of New Orleans ScholarWorks@UNO University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations Dissertations and Theses Fall 12-18-2015 An Examination of Voter Groups That Make Up the Emerging Democratic Majority Thesis Jason Waguespack [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td Part of the American Politics Commons Recommended Citation Waguespack, Jason, "An Examination of Voter Groups That Make Up the Emerging Democratic Majority Thesis" (2015). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 2117. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2117 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by ScholarWorks@UNO with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Dissertation has been accepted for inclusion in University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. An Examination of Voter Groups That Make Up the Emerging Democratic Majority Thesis A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Political Science by Jason Waguespack B.A.,University of New Orleans, 2003 M.A.,University of New Orleans, 2007 December, 2015 Copyright 2015, Jason Waguespack ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................ -
Political Campaigns, Candidates & Discourse
Published & Distributed by Grey House Publishing For Immediate Release May 7, 2018 Contact: Jessica Moody, VP Marketing (800) 562-2139 x101 [email protected] Salem Press Announces the Newest Addition to the Popular Defining Documents series: Political Campaigns, Candidates & Debates (1787-2017) Defining Documents in American History: Political Campaigns, Candidates & Debates offers in-depth analysis of sixty-four speeches, letters, inaugural addresses, pamphlets, and debates. The set begins just as a new nation has been declared, in 1787, and continues through the 2017 election of the nation’s first openly transgender official. These documents provide a compelling view of what makes America’s political system so engaging and enduring: discussion, debate, and free, open elections leading to the order transfer of power. The documents prove that the system is not always polite, but it is always vibrant, as well as vital to a strong democratic government. The material is organized under seven historical groupings: The First and Second Party Systems, 1787-1854, beginning with James Madison’s Federalist Papers and George Washington’s inaugural address and concluding with the Kansas-Nebraska Act; The Third Party System, 1854-96 features Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech, hotly contest presidential campaigns such as Greeley versus Grant, and William Jennings Bryan’s fiery “Cross of Gold” speech; The Fourth Party System, 1896-1932 includes Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Party platform, Woodrow Wilson’s second inaugural speech, and the establishment of the country’s national anthem; The Fifth Party System, 1932-60 begins with a fireside chat from Franklin Delano Roosevelt and includes the ratification of the twenty-second amendment, and the famous Truman versus Dewey presidential campaign. -
1790-1824 First Party System
History of American Political History of American Parties Parties • Six “party systems” or historical eras • Changes in the nature of the two parties – Which voters support which party – What issues each party adopts • This change called a realignment 1848 Whig Party candidates Zachary Taylor & Millard Fillmore First Party System: First Party System: 1790-1824 1790-1824 Federalist Party Democratic-Republican Party • No parties in Constitution • Develop at elite level • Issues – National bank – Relations with France and England Alexander Hamilton Thomas Jefferson James Madison Strong national government Strong state governments 1 First Party System: Constituencies 1790-1824 • Develop inside Congress • Constituency – Loose coalition of supporters or opponents to – Limited electorate Hamilton versus Jefferson/Madison – Weakly organized • facilitates passage of legislation • Federalists: New England, English ancestry, – Coordination needed to win presidency commercial interests • Democratic-Republican: South and Mid-Atlantic, Irish/Scot/German ancestry, farmers and artisans, prosperity through western expansion First Party System: 1790-1824 All election maps from nationalatlas.gov • Electoral outcomes Source: http://nationalatlas.gov/elections/elect01.gif – 1796 John Adams (Federalist) • Thomas Jefferson, Vice President – 1800 tied vote and 12th Amendment – Democratic-Republican won next three • Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams 2 Second Party System: Federalists disappear by 1820 1828-1852 • Policy disputes within party • Old Democratic-Republican -
Overview U.S. Two-Party History
Modern American Party Systems: an Overview I. The terms “modern Political Party” and “Party System” are important for understanding the history of American party development and may be defined as follows: According to political scientists Donald Herzberg and Gerald Pomper, the modern Political Party is a competitive political organization that has two defining characteristics:1. its goal is to win public office and power and 2. its method is to to seek office and power peacefully and constitutionally through the ballot box. Other scholars assign additional characteristics to the definition of the American political party such as: durability, ideology, agenda, and a grass-roots organization. But the idea of a quest for office and power peacefully and constitutionally through the ballot box is most important. The term Party System as used by political scientists and historians signifies a durable arrangement of political competition in which political parties contest for votes and power and abide by the verdict of the voters in a regularized environment of alternating party primacy. Although historians and political scientists are not unanimous, probably most students of American political would agree that at least five, possibly six, party systems can be identified as having played major roles in American political history. 1 They are: 1. The Jeffersonian party system (1800-1820) 2. The Jacksonian party system (1828-1854) 3. The Civil War party system (1854-1896) 4. The Progressive Party system (1896-1928) 5. The New Deal Party system (1928-1980) 6. The Reagan party system (1980- ) ? Each of the above party systems developed when a new political party or parties organized in response to the pressure of a new or neglected problem, or when an existing party or parties adopted a new agenda in response the pressure of a new or neglected problem. -
Freedom in the World 1988-1989 Complete Book
Freedom in the World Freedom in the World Political Rights and Civil Liberties 1988-1989 Raymond D. Gastil With contributions by Stephen Earl Bennett Richard Jensen Paul Kleppner FREEDOM HOUSE Copyright © 1989 by Freedom House Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For permission, write to Freedom House, 48 East 21st Street, New York, N.Y. 10010. The Library of Congress has cataloged this serial title as follows: Freedom in the world / Raymond D. Gastil.—1978- — New York : Freedom House, 1978- v. : map ; 25 cm.-(Freedom House Book) Annual. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISSN 0732-6610=Freedom in the world. 1. Civil rights—Periodicals. I. Gastil, Raymond D. II. Series. JC571.F66 323.4'05-dc 19 82-642048 AACR 2 MARC-S Library of Congress [8410] ISBN 0-932088-32-5 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN 0-932088-33-3 (alk. paper) Distributed by arrangement with University Press of America, Inc. 4720 Boston Way Lanham, MD 20706 3 Henrietta Street London WC2E 8LU England CONTENTS Tables vii Preface ix PART I. THE SURVEY IN 1988 Freedom in the Comparative Survey: 3 Definitions and Criteria Survey Ratings and Tables for 1988 31 PART II. POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN AMERICA: A Report of a Freedom House Conference Introductory Note 89 Opening Remarks 90 Who Has Been Eligible to Vote? 93 An Historical Review of Suffrage Requirements in the U.S. -
V·M·I University Microfrlms International a Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road
Social movement activity and institutionalized politics: A study of the relationship between political party strength and social movement activity in the United States. Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Bunis, William Kane. Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 09/10/2021 08:59:04 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/186323 INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. -
Is Th;E New Right Flipping Its Whig?
~o/ THE DEMOCRATIC LEFT June 1975-Vol. Ill, No. 6 ...... 217 Edited by MICHAEL HARRINGTON Is th;e New Right flipping its Whig? by JIM CHAPIN tion, after years of work and the Great Depression A large proportion (probably a majority) of the and with an electoral system that favored minor par- leaders of the American Right have concluded that ties. Put in that light, Wallace's 13 percent of the the Republican Party, like its Whig predecessor, is vote in 1968 is very impressive. Also impressive, al- doomed. though completely unnoticed, was John Schmitz's mil- Indeed, the "Whig analogy," put forward most di- lion votes plus as the 1972 nominee of the American rectly in recent books by Kevin Phillips (author of Party. These votes, solicited in what Phillips calls a The Emerging Republican Majority) and William "credibility and media vacuum,'' were collected de- Rusher (publisher of the National Review) has be- spite the presence of an opponent who used the same come a cliche in conservative circles. But the serious- sort of "lesser-evil" rhetoric that destroyed left par- ness and strength of the Right's determination to ties in the 1930's. Polls now predict that Wallace will bring down the Republicans has been and is persis- collect 20 percent of the vote next year; that would tently underestimated by liberals, by the media and (Continued on -page 2) by most politicians. Yet the mass strength of the Right over the last dozen years is the most startling new fact in American politics. Black and white together: Walter Dean Burnham, probably the most sophisti- cated expert on political realignment in the United strategies for a movement States, repeatedly points out the significance of the Wallace phenomenon. -
INTRODUCTION CHALLENGING the TWO-PARTY SYSTEM in the CONTEXT of AMERICAN POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT on Average, 60 Percent of America
INTRODUCTION CHALLENGING THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM IN THE CONTEXT OF AMERICAN POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT On average, 60 percent of Americans tell pollsters that they are in favor of third party alternatives.1 Whereas early polls showed high support for the two-party system, in the last 30 years Americans have developed more negative opinions.2 The Republicans and the Democrats, however, have been able to maintain their dominance. No third party has representation in the U.S. Congress or is in contention for control of any state legislature. As Joan Bryce put it in her dissertation on third party constraints, "The extent and scope of two-party dominance within the United States is unique."3 John Bibby and Sandy Maisel explained that the two-party system has come as a surprise to observers of American society: That the United States should have the oldest and strongest two-party system on the globe is for many, particularly for foreign observers, a bewildering phenomenon. America appears to have all the ingredients for a vibrant and enduring multiparty system--an increasingly multiracial and multiethnic population, substantial regional variation, diverse and conflicting economic and social interests, a history of sectional conflicts, and substantial disparities in the distribution of wealth.4 1 John F. Bibby and L. Sandy Maisel, Two Parties--or More? The American Party System, Dilemmas in American Politics, ed. L. Sandy Maisel (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 76. 2 Christian Collet, "The Polls--Trends: Third Parties and the Two-party System," Public Opinion Quarterly 60 (1996): 433. 3 Joan Bryce, "The Preservation of a Two-Party System in the United States" (M.A. -
The Long Decline of the Republican Party in New England
The Long Decline of the Republican Party in New England A Thesis Submitted to The University of Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Honors Bachelor of Arts Department of Political Science Tom Duvall March 2010 Table of Contents Table of Contents ……………………………………………...…………………… 2 Authors Note ………………………………………………………………………… 3 Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………… 4 Introduction ………………………………………………………………………….. 5 Literature Review ……………………………………………………………………. 7 New England as a Region …………………………………………………………… 9 1850 to the Civil War ……………………………………………………………….. 12 Post Civil War era to 1896 ………………………………………………………….. 17 1896 to 1928 ………………………………………………………………………... 20 Al Smith and the New Deal Realignment ………………………………………….... 23 Assimilation and the End of Ethnic Politics ……………………………………….. 27 The Sixth Party System ……………………………………………………………… 31 Afterword …………………………………………………………………………… 43 Appendices ………………………………………………………………………… 47 Bibliography……………………………………………………………..………… 49 2 3 Author’s Note I was born and lived in Connecticut until the age of 11. On my bus ride to school, we would first pass by the Methodist church at the end of my street that was white and had the traditional look of what New England was supposed to look like. Just before we got to school, we passed the much larger Catholic Church that everybody I knew went to. This project was a way to examine that change in New England and understand how the region and its politics were so different than its traditional image. Our politics were highly contested on the local level, but almost uniformly Democratic on the national level and I wanted to examine how the region changed from being the most Republican in the country to the most Democratic. I would like to acknowledge and thank Professors Jowei Chen and Andrei Markovits for their help and guidance in this process. -
Free Markets and Carceral States: the Sixth Party System of America
1 Free Markets and Carceral States: The Sixth Party System of America 2 Introduction Franklin Delano Roosevelt is widely recognized in American political history for leading America out of the Great Depression and through WWII with the U.S. coming out of it an economically prosperous country. FDR achieved this by first proposing and then implementing his New Deal economic and social policies, which created a coalition of voters, I will refer to as the New Deal Coalition (NDC). As a result of the formation of the NDC, Democratic candidates and their policies dominated national politics between the years of 1932 and 1964, winning every presidential election apart from the moderate Dwight Eisenhower’s two terms from 1953 to 1961. This thirty-year period is known as the Fifth Party System and is characterized by large economic-interventionist policies such as the New Deal and Great Society and for passing civil rights legislation. The results of these policies created a large organized labor force that, at its height would comprise a third of the American workforce, as well as the growth of many progressive initiatives such as civil rights legislation. While many scholars recognize that the Fifth Party System ended, a scholarly consensus has yet to form regarding whether a new party system has developed and taken hold of American politics. In this paper I will demonstrate how union-busting strategies developed and refined throughout the 1930, 1940’s, and 1950’s led to an attitude change among the American working class that organized labor was antithetical to traditional American democracy and mitigated organized labor’s ability to strike. -
Introduction to American Government POLS 1101 the University of Georgia Prof
Introduction to American Government POLS 1101 The University of Georgia Prof. Anthony Madonna [email protected] Nature of Parties Important questions: If the first generation of leaders elected under the Constitution rejected political parties on principle, why did they create them anyway? Why does a nation as diverse as the United States sustain only two major parties? Today national party conventions merely certify the winners of primary elections instead of choosing the presidential nominees, as they did in the past. So why do the parties continue to hold these gatherings? Ninety percent of Americans claim they always vote for the person best suited for the job, regardless of party. Why then is party line voting so prevalent and why are partisans so polarized? 1 Nature of Parties Scholars have proposed a variety of formal definitions of political party. Two of the most prominent stand in contrast. • Burke (eighteenth century) –A body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed. • Downs (twentieth century) –A team of men seeking to control the governing apparatus by gaining office in a duly constituted election. The Constitution’s Unwanted Offspring The Constitution. • No mention of political parties. Parties were widely considered to be a threat to good government and public order. • Pervasive fear of parties/factions => not taking into account society as a whole/leading to internal strife • Based on historical evidence => England, Greece, Rome “If I could not get to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.” – Thomas Jefferson “A division of the republic into two great parties […] is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.” – John Adams 2 Unwanted Parties: Why Create Them? BUT, major incentives for party building.