Political Parties in American Society

448 Pages·2000·28.911 MB·English

by  Samuel J. Eldersveld, Hanes Walton Jr. (auth.)

Political
Parties in
American
Society
SECOND EDITION
Samuel J. Eldersveld
University ofM ichigan
Hanes Walton, Jr.
University ofM ichigan
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
To Alice and Els
For Bedford/St. Martin's
Political Science Editor: James R. Headley
Senior Editor; Publishing Services: Douglas Bell
Production Supervisor: Cheryl Mamaril
Project Management: Stratford Publishing Services, Inc.
Cover Design: Lucy Krikorian
Cover Photo: Liaison Agency, Inc. Copyright © Rod Rolle
Composition: Stratford Publishing Services, Inc.
Printing and Binding: Haddon Craftsman, an R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company
President: Charles H. Christensen
Editorial Director: Joan E. Feinberg
Director ofE diting, Design, and Production: Marcia Cohen
Manager; Publishing Services: Emily Berleth
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-64268
Copyright © 2000 by Bedford/St. Martin's
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 2nd edition 2000 978-0-312-22688-6
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, except as may be expressly permitted by the applicable copyright statutes or
in writing by the Publisher.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
5432 1 0
f ed cba
For information write: Bedford/St. Martin's, 75 Arlington Street, Boston, MA 02116
(617-426-7440)
ISBN 978-0-312-24164-3 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-349-62492-8 ISBN 978-1-137-11290-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-11290-3
Preface
Major changes have taken place in American politics since our earlier book. There
has been turnover in party control of the presidency-from the Democrats to the
Republicans (1980) and from the Republicans to the Democrats (1992). In addi
tion, Democratic control of Congress gave way to Republican control in 1994. And
public disaffection with the major parties led to a vigorous third-party challenge in
1992 by Ross Perot. Public alienation seemed also to be responsible for a continu
ing decline in voter turnout, reaching a low of 48.8 percent of the eligible adults in
1996. The parties have launched major efforts at reform of their organizations and
operations during this period-in Congress, in the national party committees, and
at the state and local levels. Scholars have claimed that these reforms have revital
ized the parties, arrested their decline, and led to more effective campaigns and
more party cohesion in Congress. The leadership selection process, particularly
for presidential candidates, although continuously modified during this period still
appears flawed and subject to much criticism. Scholars continue to debate the
virtues and consequences of party reform in the past twenty years and disagree on
the centrality and relevance of American parties today. It is within this context of
political change, as well as change in the American society, that this survey of
American parties is presented.
This study of American political parties is a radical revision of the 1982 book.
It is the result of a reexamination of the working of our system, which led to a new
description of how that system has changed, as well as how and why it has
endured. It is an update incorporating new data from all recent elections, including
1998, as well as the findings from reports on party development in the eighties and
nineties. We focus primarily on the importance of parties as structures of action in
American society. We ask a series of critical questions about the character and per
formance of our parties: How well are they organized, nationally and locally; what
changes have occurred in the functions they perform in our political system; in
what ways has party leadership-national, state, and local-changed; how have the
nature and basis of party competition for political office changed; how has the pub
lic's involvement with the parties been altered over the years; how well have the
parties met the challenges of political action committees and interest groups; how
responsibly do parties represent the interests of the critical groups in the United
States, including ethnics, women, and racial groups; how have party conflict and
divided government contributed to or inhibited the development of sustained
social and economic policy? The emphasis is on adaptation by our parties to the
changing needs and demands of the American public.
iii
iv Preface
Our present two-party system has survived for over 130 years, since the Civil
War. Ninety percent of American voters still cast ballots for either the Republican
or Democratic parties. Two-thirds say they"identify"with one of these two parties.
The Republican and Democratic parties win virtually all elections and run all the
governments. This is as true today as in the past, despite many challenges over the
years from third parties. Perot's Reform party in 1996 is just another example of
the brevity of third-party challenges. Our two-party system is thus quite perma
nent, dominant, and durable. It commands the support of the majority of American
citizens who are attentive to politics.
The persistence of our party system presents a puzzle. It has survived despite
many third-party challenges, despite great changes in American society, and above
all despite the predictions of its demise by scholars and commentators. There has
been in fact a considerable controversy over the relevance, the viability, and the
state of health of our major parties. Writers have declared at one time or another
that the party system was at the point of extinction. One scholar predicted "the
gradual disappearance of the political party in the United States.»~ Others warned,
"a partyless era ... may be settling on us."2 However, another recently stated flatly:
"America's political parties are alive and well."3 One commentator wrote a book
entitled The Party's Over4; another wrote The Party's just Begun. 5 Many scholars
are on the fence, uncertain how well parties are doing and what their future will
be. One scholar describes three possible models of what is happening to our sys
tem: party decline, party stabilization, and party resurgence. He then concludes
that "each model captures a part of reality."6 While there is great disagreement and
ambivalence, few political scientists would agree with the extreme position that
"the United States actually has no political parties at all."7 The student of American
parties thus faces the task of sorting out the evidence on the state of the parties
and interpreting that evidence carefully, aware that American scholars have wildly
conflicting images and evaluations of our party system.
How has it happened that the American party system has survived, despite
many predictions to the contrary? Our answer is that the parties have adapted suc
cessfully by changing significantly in the past 138 years. Party systems are complex
institutions, constantly changing, just as the world they work in is constantly
changing. The types of parties we have today are very different from those of 1860,
or 1900, or 1930, or even 1960. Parties must have the capacity to change, in certain
positive and responsive ways, if they are to survive. Not all major parties (to say
nothing of minor parties) do survive. A study of European parties revealed that 23
percent of their major parties disappeared and another 22 percent made major
structural changes in order to survive. 8 Our system has also undergone consider
able structural and functional change and has survived. One important question
we will examine in this book is what changes have been made and how successful
are they, are they actually linked to survival? A systematic analysis of party change
and its effect on party survival is necessary.
All modern societies are in a state of dynamic change, manifested in the con
stantly altered character of their populations, the emergent political interest
groups, the new types of issues which dominate political discourse, the social and
Preface v
economic transformations which occur, the periodic increase in international ten
sions and pressures, and the fluctuation in the depth of the public's interest in, and
involvement with, political matters. Parties everywhere need to respond to these
changes, and the American system is no exception. Our society and political sys
tem impose an additional set of burdens on our parties: the heterogeneity of our
society, the federal and fragmented nature of our political institutions, and the very
populist elements of our political culture. We elect more people to public office,
we hold elections more frequently, we impose more burdens on citizens to make
political choices than any other nation. We confront citizens with more mass media
exposure for longer campaign periods, requiring parties to secure and spend more
money in elections, than anywhere else in the world. The tasks of the parties are to
organize effectively, recruit able leaders, campaign efficiently, finance adequately,
communicate with voters convincingly, and govern responsibly-more demanding
and challenging today than ever. It is within this context that party performance
must be understood and evaluated.
Our aim in this book is to lead students to enlightened, and more confident,
interpretations of our party system. We are convinced of the relevance and central
importance of the parties for this complex democratic system of ours. Their rele
vance exists at the individual as well as the system level. Parties have complex
meanings for the lives of American citizens. Thousands of Americans are contacted
by party workers in each campaign, thousands belong to local party organizations
and run for local or state or national offices. Above all, they are exposed daily via
the mass media to the Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington, DC, or
the legislators in their state capitals, or their county commissioners, or their city
councils as these leaders search for solutions to our basic social and economic
problems. The meaning of all this exposure to, and involvement with, parties varies
of course for the individual. Clearly, however, for a large part of the American pub
lic the parties are periodically, if not regularly, salient. They are reference groups
for many people, social groups for many activists, political action groups for po
litical careerists, and policy groups affecting all of us. For a few they are career
groups. The reality of the political party for the individual citizen is thus highly
diverse, but for all of us the actions of the party can have a decisive impact. We
therefore need to systematically acquaint ourselves with who the parties are, what
they do, and how well they do what they do.
A controversy has persisted for many years among scholars of our party sys
tem over what type of system the American party system is. Many writers have
seen our parties as nonideological, issueless, and primarily power driven; they see
the party system, then, as centrist, divorced of real issue alternatives, a system of
benign moderation. Sundquist noted this emphasis early, calling it "the centrist
theme in the literature on party behavior."9 He cited as an example a statement by
Scammon and Wattenberg that "the center is the only position of political power." 10
But other great scholars of American parties have pictured our parties somewhat
differently. V. 0. Key long ago noticed the "policy cleavages" between the Repub
lican and Democratic parties, based on early survey data, and described our sys
tem, while moderate, as a "dualism" with significant differences in issues and group
vi Preface
support.U He quoted Charles Beard's conclusion that "the center of gravity of
wealth is on the Republican side while the center of gravity of poverty is on the
Democratic side."12 Later textbooks have also discussed at length the ideological
role of parties, but are inclined to diminish its relevance. Sorauf in his early book
discussed policy and issue differences at length, but concludes that in the last
analysis "the party in the government and its candidates cannot give up their total
commitment to electoral victory."13 Beck, in his revision of Sorauf's book, also
describes the "important differences of principle between the parties;' but settles
for the basic conclusion that "throughout their long histories, the American politi
cal parties have been remarkably nonideological."14 On the other hand, another
recent scholar of American parties, Aldrich, arrives at a different conclusion: "the
public has perceived the parties as quite distinct," in recent years particularly; "the
good reason [for this] is that the parties actually are distinct.15
We are inclined in this text to put more emphasis on the nature of ideological
divisions in American society, linked to social cleavages, and the way in which par
ties as conflict structures represent these cleavages as they compete for power. In
the first version of this book in 1982, we defined the American parties as "ideologi
cal competitors," although "not polarized;' and presented evidence of the distinc
tiveness of party supporters, activists, and leaders in ideology and program. We
shall continue to argue here that American parties can be very ideological, pro
grammatic, issue oriented and dualist, rather than "centrist;' unprincipled, and ex
clusively power driven.
Some of the disagreement about the linkage between parties and ideology
stems perhaps from the different interpretations of Downs' classic book on democ
racy, written in 1957. His spatial model of a two-party system assumes, he says, that
parties will move closer together to appeal to those voters clustered at the center
of the public opinion spectrum, hence becoming more moderate to win middle-of
the-road voters.16 However, he also reminds us that "political parties are caught in
the classic dilemma of all competitive advertisers. Each must differentiate his prod
uct." 17 And "any party which is both responsible and reliable will probably have an
ideology. ... parties find ideologies useful in gaining the support of various social
groups ... and, thus, "ideologies develop out of the desire ... [for] gaining office."18
This set of theoretical assumptions has guided us in the past and will guide us in
this book.
Another goal we seek to pursue in this book is to describe and analyze how
our parties have appealed to, and have represented, the interests of minorities,
especially racial and ethnic minorities, over the years. Early scholars avoided ~he
race issue or argued it was not important to focus attention on this matter. A
renowned early student of parties, Charles Merriam, was an exception. In 1923 he
wrote: "among the significant factors in the composition of the political party is
that of race affiliation-Sometimes this is the decisive element in determining
party allegiance .... In a great section of the U.S. it places the question of race
above all other issues, for this one problem seems to overshadow them all."19 In
this way Merriam conceptualized "race" as a major variable in party behavior. Yet
no one followed up with a systematic analysis for a long time. In fact, there were
Preface vii
those who downplayed African American suffrage rights and suggested the defen
sibility of disenfranchisement. 20 Most early textbooks devoted at most only a few
sentences to the subject of race. As Rossiter put it, they "tiptoed around diversity
issues like race."21 There were, however, notable exceptions that gave somewhat
more attention to the issue. Sundquist particularly challenged the omission of the
racial question in studies of our parties and traced the treatment of it since 1948 by
both parties, calling it a "crosscutting" and "realigning" issue.22 The consensus on
avoidance of the subject was shattered in 1989 by Carmines and Stimson in their
book Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation ofA merican Politics. They
argued that parties had come to terms with the issue of race and had responded
to it in their search for political power. They wrote:"the progressive racial tradition
in the Republican party gave way to racial conservatism [in the mid-1960s] and
the Democratic party firmly embraced racial liberalism. These changes unleashed
political forces that permanently reshaped the contours of American politics."23
Although the importance of this analysis is now acknowledged, 24 American party
textbooks have not systematically incorporated data on race in their discussions of
party system change. We hope to remedy that omission in this book.
We see our system as essentially one of considerable political conflict and
competition, more so today than previously. The divergent coalitional character of
our parties reveals this, as do their stands on the critical issues of the day and their
basic ideological orientations. We find this conflict healthy and central to demo
cratic belief and practice: Democracies like ours emerged from political struggle,
and institutions such as the party system were founded on the principle of the
legitimacy and necessity of political opposition. The sharp contest between parties
for political office, grounded in programmatic dissent and argument, is a major
component of our system. We will explore, describe, and analyze how well our par
ties function as power contestants and ideological competitors and whether they
thus fulfill the requirements for effective party democracy and meaningful social
change.
The periodic process of reanalysis and review of the developments in Amer
ican political parties, an area of intellectual inquiry of great importance for our sys
tem, is necessary. The process requires evaluation of developments based on an
appraisal of the evidence from important research conducted over the years by
able scholars in the field. Only then can useful and valid statements be made about
the state of our parties and the impact of changes on party performance. Ad hoc
critiques and generalizations not informed by systematic research evidence are too
gratuitous and tend to be unreliable. We seek in this book to be as data based in our
theoretical conclusions as the available research permits us to be.
Special studies like this of the party system in a particular country are neces
sary. This study describes and analyzes how the parties in this American system
function and how they adapt over time-and thus how the two-party system sur
vives. As a case study of a party system in one country, it identifies the conditions
influencing party development and the key factors responsible for successful orga
nizational adaptation. We need such detailed studies of this system and of other
party systems in other countries. Our analytical findings help us develop a theory
viii Preface
of party system change that we hope will be useful for understanding other party
systems, most of which are quite different from ours. Thus, the American party sys
tem case study can contribute to a broader knowledge of party performance and
change in democratic societies.
ACKNO~DGEMENTS
Our hope is that this book will again be useful to students of the American party
system. Insofar as that is true, we must give much credit to many others, while
accepting the criticisms as ours. We are particularly indebted to the many scholars
who over the years have engaged in excellent research about our system, and com
paratively have done excellent research comparing our system to others. Since
1982, much research has been completed, on which we have relied heavily. The
quality of this scholarship over the entire postwar period has been very high, well
informed, and stimulating. It has been a tremendous task to become acquainted
with this body of literature, and we are sure we have not adequately covered it, or
represented it, in our book. We apologize for omissions. Our students over the
years have also contributed to our research and to our insights about American pol
itics, for which we heartily thank them. Several able secretaries helped tremen
dously in putting this volume together: Holly Bender, Amy Napolitan, Jan Williams,
Crystal Williamson, Margaret Mitchell Ilugbo, and Greta Blake. We thank them for
their long-suffering assistance. We also were helped a great deal by our graduate
students who assisted with preparation of materials: Adam Berinsky, Paul Freed
man, Anne M. Bennett, and Volker Krause. Finally, we thank our political friends
whom we interviewed in many places. It was through the contacts and discussions
with them that we gained a better understanding of the functioning of our parties
at the grass roots, in their organizations, and in government. This book, thus, is the
product of a tremendous amount of excellent research, the insights of many writ
ers, and experience in the classroom teaching of the parties course, as well as the
intellectual interactions with other scholars, students, and politicians. This book
also arises in part from some of our mentors: the late Harold Gosnell and Robert
Brisbane, and Professors Samuel DuBois Cook and Tobe Johnson to name a few. All
were indispensable for this study, whose aims are theoretical relevance, empirical
evidence, and practical wisdom about the historical development and contempo
rary performance of our party system.
Samuel J. Eldersveld
Hanes Walton, Jr.
Preface ix
NOTES
1. Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings ofA merican Politics (New York:
Norton, 1970), 133.
2. William J. Crotty and Gary E. Jacobson, American Parties in Decline (Boston: little, Brown,
1980), 255.
3. Joseph A. Schlesinger, "The New American Party;' American Political Science Review 79
(December 1985): 1152.
4. David Broder, The Party's Over (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).
5. Larry J. Sabato, The Party's just Begun (Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman/Little, Brown, 1988).
6. James W. Ceaser, "Political Parties-Declining, Stabilizing, or Resurging?" in Anthony King, ed.,
The New American Political System, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC:AEI Press, 1990), 90.
7. RichardS. Katz and Robin Kolodny, "Party Organization as an Empty Vessel: Parties in American
Politics," in Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair, eds., How Parties Organize (London: Sage Publications,
1994), 24.
8. Richard Rose and Thomas T. Mackie, "Do Parties Persist or Fail? The Big Trade-Off Facing
Organizations," in Kay Lawson and Peter H. Merkl, When Parties Fail (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1988), 543.
9. James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution,
1973), 301.
10. Ibid., 300. Richard M. Scammon and Ben}. Wattenberg, The Real Majority (New York: Coward
McCann, 1970), 200.
11. V. 0. Key, Jr., Politics, Parties and Pressure Groups, 5th ed. (New York: Crowell, 1964), 217-18,
222.
12. Ibid., 215.
13. Frank Sorauf, Party Politics in America (Boston: little Brown, 1968), 360.
14. Paul Allen Beck, Party Politics in America (New York: Longman, 1996), 360.
15. John H. Aldrich, Wlry Parties? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 169-70.
16. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory ofD emocracy (New York: Harper, 1957), 116-17.
17. Ibid., 97.
18. Ibid., 109-13.
19. Charles E. Merriam and Harold F. Gosnell, The American Party System (New York: Macmillan,
1922), 12.
20. Edward M. Sait, American Parties and Elections (New York: The Century Company, 1927),
31-32.
21. Clinton Rossiter, Party and Politics in America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1960), 58.
22. Sundquist, Dynamics, 314-19,355-69.
23. Edward Carmines and James Stimson, Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of
American Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 58.
24. Alan Abramowitz, "Issue Evolution Reconsidered: Racial Attributes and Partisanship in the
American Electorate," American journal ofP olitical Science 38 (February 1994): 1-24.