State-by-state descriptions of the Democratic and Republican parties. Each state profile covers the history, organizational development, and current organization and activities of the two major state parties. In addition, each profile contains a resource guide to archival information and a list of references for further research on that state's parties. Details the unique characteristics of party politics in each state and identifies patterns across states, regions, and party organizations.
Providing expert analysis of government and politics in all 50 states and the U.S. territories, this innovative two-volume reference fills the critical need for information and analysis of the roles and functions of state government through accessible state-by-state and regional overviews of government and politics.
During the past fifty years American democracy has been transformed by the collapse of non-ideological and decentralized traditional party organizations and also by the emergence of more ideologically distinct and integrated service vendor parties and their allied groups. In this book, Joel Paddock uses several original data sets to provide new insights into the ways parties adapt to politics in the telecommunications age, growing interparty ideological differences, the changing relationship between parties and interest groups, and party nationalization. Well-suited for either graduate or undergraduate courses on political parties or linkage institutions, this book provides a fresh perspective on party transformation and the American democratic process.
This one-volume reference presents the major conceptual approaches to the study of U.S. political parties and the national party system, describing the organization and behavior of U.S. political parties in thematic, narrative chapters that help undergraduate students better understand party origins, historical development, and current operations. Further, it provides researchers with in-depth analysis of important subtopics and connections to other aspects of politics. Key Features: Thematic, narrative chapters, organized into six major parts, provide the context, as well as in-depth analysis of the unique system of party politics in the United States. Top analysts of party politics provide insightful chapters that explore how and why the U.S. parties have changed over time, including major organizational transformations by the parties, behavioral changes among candidates and party activists, and attitudinal changes among their partisans in the electorate. The authors discuss the way the traditional concept of formal party organizations gave way over time to a candidate-centered model, fueled in part by changes in campaign finance, the rise of new communication technologies, and fragmentation of the electorate. This book is an ideal reference for students and researchers who want to develop a deeper understanding of the current challenges faced by citizens of republican government in the United States.
While the media pay the most attention to the actions of the national political committees, political scientists have long emphasized the key role of local party organizations. Despite sweeping changes in the political environment, remarkably little research has sought to understand precisely how these local parties are structured, what they do, and whether they have any impact on the political system. In Local Party Organizations in the Twenty-First Century, Douglas D. Roscoe and Shannon Jenkins use data collected from more than 1,100 local parties in forty-eight states to provide the most thorough examination of the role of local political parties in the US political system, something that has been lacking in contemporary accounts of the role of parties. They show that party organizations take particular forms and engage in certain activities because political actors find these forms and activities useful for winning elections. While past research has centered primarily on the role of national and state political parties in the United States, this book demonstrates the continuing central role of local political parties in the electoral process, providing readers with a more comprehensive understanding of the US party system.
In November 1960, the Democratic party dominated Texas. The newly elected vice president, Lyndon Johnson, was a Texan. Democrats held all thirty statewide elective positions. The state legislature had 181 Democrats and no Republicans or anyone else. Then fast forward fifty years to November 2010. Texas has not voted for a Democratic president since 1976. Every statewide elective office is held by Republicans. Representing Texas in Washington is a congressional delegation of twenty-five Republicans and nine Democrats. Republicans control the Texas Senate by a margin of nineteen to twelve and the Texas House of Representatives by 101 to 49. Red State explores why this transformation of Texas politics took place and what these changes imply for the future. As both a political scientist and a Republican party insider, Wayne Thorburn is especially qualified to explain how a solidly one-party Democratic state has become a Republican stronghold. He analyzes a wealth of data to show how changes in the state's demographics—including an influx of new residents, the shift from rural to urban, and the growth of the Mexican American population—have moved Texas through three stages of party competition, from two-tiered politics, to two-party competition between Democrats and Republicans, and then to the return to one-party dominance, this time by Republicans. His findings reveal that the shift from Democratic to Republican governance has been driven not by any change in Texans' ideological perspective or public policy orientation—even when Texans were voting Democrat, conservatives outnumbered liberals or moderates—but by the Republican party's increasing identification with conservatism since 1960.
The seventeenth edition of Party Politics in America continues the comprehensive and authoritative coverage of political parties for which it is known while expanding and updating the treatment of key related topics including interest groups and elections. Marjorie Hershey builds on the book’s three-pronged coverage of party organization, party in the electorate, and party in government and integrates contemporary examples—such as campaign finance reform, party polarization, and social media—to bring to life the fascinating story of how parties shape our political system. New to the 17th Edition Fully updated through the 2016 election, including changes in virtually all of the boxed materials, the chapter openings, and the data presented. Explores increasing partisan hostility, the status of voter ID laws and other efforts to affect voter turnout, young voters' attitudes and participation, and the role of big givers such as the energy billionaire Koch brothers in the 2016 campaigns. Critically examines the idea that Super PACs are replacing, or can replace, the party organizations in running campaigns. New and expanded online Instructor's Resources, including author-written test banks, essay questions, relevant websites with correlated sample assignments, the book’s appendix, and links to a collection of course syllabi.
During the 1990s, the Republican party surged to majority status in the South after two decades of struggling unevenly to become established in the formerly one-party Democratic section of the country. In this comprehensive, up-to-date study, seasoned observers tell the fascinating story of the GOP’s remarkable advance at the regional level and in each of the eleven states of the former Confederacy, effectively capturing the current partisan dynamics at work throughout Dixie. In Southern Politics in the 1990s eleven teams of political scientists and journalists—all of them long-time observers of the political scene in their own states—offer individual chapters that closely examine partisan and electoral developments in each southern state. Alexander P. Lamis frames the state discussions with introductory and concluding chapters that highlight the evolution of the two-party South and the political transformation the region as a whole underwent during the decade of the 1990s. Together, the authors show that the amazing Republican spurt was fueled by many factors, including the ongoing entrenchment of the partisan competition begun three decades earlier; the national Republican sweep of 1994 that affected all regions of the country equally; and the successful efforts of Republicans to paint the Democrats as hopelessly mired in a corrupt political system and themselves as untainted reformers who represent the future. However, as the separate state chapters illustrate, the pace of change differed from state to state. For example, South Carolina was an early Dixie leader in the GOP’s growth in the 1990s, but Arkansas caught the wave only in the middle of the decade. Offering in-depth political analysis on both the state and the regional level, Southern Politics in the 1990s reveals that the 1990s revolution in southern politics gave the country, for the first time since the 1850s, a truly national party system. The book will prove essential to anyone interested in southern politics at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
This book examines the influence and activities of the Christian Right at the state level. One of the first attempts at studying the Christian Right comparatively across states, this book offers a new theoretically-driven perspective on how political context and constraints shape the Christian Right s strategy and influence. Based on evidence from in-depth case studies of three states - Indiana, Missouri, and Arizona - and qualitative and quantitative data from a wide variety of other states, its conclusions demonstrate that the movement s strategies and behavior are based on the political opportunity structure of each state, the movement s internal resources, and its ability to utilize threat-based mobilization.
Political Marketing in the United States explores how politicians and parties utilize marketing concepts and tools, providing an up-to-date and broad overview of how marketing permeates U.S. politics. The volume focuses on current and recent elections and leaders, and covers a range of topics, including market research, marketing parties and volunteers, strategy and branding, communications, delivery, and marketing in government. The main themes and objectives of the book are to cover: New and emerging trends in political marketing practice Analysis of a broad range of political marketing aspects Empirical examples as well as useful theoretical frameworks Discussion of state/local level as well as presidential politics This is the first comprehensive treatment of the subject available and captures the field as it is rapidly growing. It is a must-read for students and scholars of political parties, political communication, applied politics, and elections.
