The American Direct Primary: Party Institutionalization and Transformation in the North

288 Pages·2002·1.64 MB·English

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The American Direct Primary
This book rejects conventional accounts of how, and why, American
political parties differ from those in other democracies. It focuses on
the introduction of that most distinctive of American party devices,
the direct primary, and argues that primaries resulted from a process
of party institutionalization initiated by party elites. Thus, it over-
turns the widely accepted view that, between 1902 and 1915, direct
primaries were imposed on the parties by antiparty reformers intent
on weakening them. An examination of particular northern states
shows that often the direct primary was not controversial, and only
occasionally did it involve confrontation between party “regulars”
and their opponents. Rather, the impetus for direct nominations
initially came from attempts within the parties to subject previously
informal procedures to formal rules. However, it proved impossible to
reform the older caucus-convention system effectively, and party elites
then turned to the direct primary – a device that already had become
more common in rural counties in the late nineteenth century.
Professor Alan Ware taught at the University of Warwick from 1972
to 1990, and he has been a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford, since
1990. He has been a visiting scholar at American universities, most
especially at the Institute of Governmental Studies, University of
California, Berkeley. He is author or coauthor of six previous books,
most recently Political Parties and Party Systems(1996), and editor or
coeditor of a number of others.

The American Direct Primary
Party Institutionalization and
Transformation in the North
ALAN WARE
University of Oxford
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http://www.cambridge.org
©Alan Ware 2004
First published in printed format 2002
ISBN 0-511-04252-3 eBook (netLibrary)
ISBN 0-521-81492-8 hardback
For Joni, Iain, and Austin
and the many members of the Lovenduski family

Contents
Tables page x
Abbreviations xi
Preface and Acknowledgments xiii
1 Introduction 1
1. Patterns of Social Division and/or Political Ideology 2
2. Political Culture 5
3. Governmental Decentralization 12
4. Explaining the Rise of the Direct Primary 15
5. North and South 18
6. Institutionalization of the Parties 20
7. Organization of the Book 25
a. how the direct primary arose
2 The Catalytic Effect of Ballot Reform 31
1. The Adoption of the Australian Ballot 31
2. Informal Procedures and the Problems of Scale 32
3. Reformers’ Promotion of the Australian Ballot 39
4. Variants of the Australian Ballot in the United States 41
(i) Pure Office Block 41
(ii) Office Block Ballot with Straight Ticket Provision 42
(iii) Pure Party Column 42
(iv) Party Column without Box 42
(v) “Shoestring” Ballot 42
5. The Positions of Reformers and Parties in Relation to
the Type of Ballot Used 43
6. The Weakness of Opposition to the Australian Ballot 45
7. Success and Failure for Antiparty Reformers 47
8. Ballot Reform and Interparty Competition 51
9. Concluding Remarks 55
vii
viii Contents
3 Legal Control of Party Activity 57
1. Candidate Selection in the Nineteenth Century 57
2. The Problems with the Caucus-Convention System 63
(i) Participation 65
(ii) Logistics 68
(iii) Fraud 70
(iv) Control 73
(v) The Interconnections of the Four Factors 76
3. The Impact of the Australian Ballot 77
4. The 1898 National Conference 81
5. Why Legal Controls over Parties were Introduced 84
6. Did Legal Control Turn Parties into Public Utilities? 90
7. Concluding Remarks 93
4 The Spread of Direct Nominations 95
1. The Rising Popularity of the Crawford County System 97
2. The Rural and Midwestern Base of Direct Elections 100
3. The Impact of the Southern Experience 102
4. Direct Nominations Move to the City: Cleveland 105
5. Statewide Legislation and the Direct Primary: Kentucky 108
6. The Legally Mandated Direct Primary in Minneapolis,
1899 110
7. The States Convert to Direct Primaries, 1903–1915 117
8. Insurgency and Party Reform in Wisconsin 124
9. Concluding Remarks 127
b. why the direct primary was introduced 129
5 Reformers versus Urban Machines? 131
1. Massachusetts 132
2. Pennsylvania 138
3. Missouri 145
4. Illinois 150
5. New York 154
6. Concluding Remarks 160
6 The Impact of Party Competition 162
1. Competition in the United States before the Mid-1890s 163
2. Party Competition after the Mid-1890s 168
3. Why the Democrats were Disadvantaged 176
4. Changes in Party Competition and the Rise of the
Direct Primary 178
5. Competition as a Stimulant to Nomination Reform 180
6. Party Competition and Political Exclusion: Southern
New England 183