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True Blues: The Contentious Transformation of the Democratic Party (American Governance: Politics, Policy, and Public Law) - Hardcover

Buch 20 von 21: American Governance: Politics, Policy, and Public Law

Hilton, Adam

 
9780812252996: True Blues: The Contentious Transformation of the Democratic Party (American Governance: Politics, Policy, and Public Law)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0812252993 ISBN 13: 9780812252996
Verlag: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

An examination of the transformation of the Democratic Party since the late 1960s

Who governs political parties? Recent insurgent campaigns, such as those of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, have thrust this critical question to the center of political debate for casual observers and scholars alike. Yet the dynamics of modern party politics remain poorly understood. Assertions of either elite control or interest group dominance both fail to explain the Trump victory and the surprise of the Sanders insurgency and their subsequent reverberations through the American political landscape.

In True Blues, Adam Hilton tackles the question of who governs parties by examining the transformation of the Democratic Party since the late 1960s. Reconceiving parties as "contentious institutions," Hilton argues that Democratic Party change was driven by recurrent conflicts between groups and officeholders to define and control party identity, program, and policy. The outcome of this prolonged struggle was a wholly new kind of party—an advocacy party—which institutionalized greater party dependence on outside groups for legitimacy and organizational support, while also, in turn, fostering greater group dependency on the presidency for the satisfaction of its symbolic and substantive demands. Consequently, while the long conflict between party reformers and counter-reformers successfully opened the Democratic Party to new voices and identities, it also facilitated the growth of presidential power, rising inequality, and deepening partisan polarization.

Tracing the rise of the advocacy party from the fall of the New Deal order through the presidency of Barack Obama, True Blues explains how and why the Democratic Party has come to its current crossroads and suggests a bold new perspective for comprehending the dynamics driving American party politics more broadly.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Adam Hilton is Assistant Professor of Politics, Mount Holyoke College.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Introduction
Who Governs Parties?

Who governs political parties? The question—a perennial concern among political scientists—was thrust to the center of public debate over the course of the turbulent 2016 presidential election in the United States. From the primaries to the conventions and finally election night itself, the contest to succeed Barack Obama as president delivered one surprise after another. Donald Trump's overt shattering of the norms of American politics brought shock to nearly all concerned. Lacing his campaign promise to "Make America Great Again" with racist and xenophobic messages, Trump doubled down on his disruptive political style by breaking from a number of traditional Republican policy planks. Major party donors refused to fund him. Party leaders denounced him. Still more shocking, however, was how repeated predictions of his inevitable demise continually foundered on rising poll numbers and primary victories. His eventual triumph over Hillary Clinton in November and assumption of the presidency the following year delivered yet more surprises, as many incumbent Republicans retired before the 2018 midterm elections and those that stayed quickly fell into line behind their new leader. In the course of a few short years it seemed the GOP had become the party of Trump.

Questions about who really governs parties swirled on the other side of the aisle too. While overshadowed by the rise of Trump on the right, 2016 delivered its own set of surprises to the Democrats on the left. What many had initially expected to be a straightforward coronation of Obama's heir apparent turned into a drawn-out battle for the nomination and the soul of the Democratic Party. Harkening back to strains of the New Deal tradition and reaching abroad to European social democracy, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and his brand of democratic socialism struck a nerve with the primary electorate and the wider public, especially young people. To draw out his differences with Clinton, Sanders deployed an economic populist rhetoric that transformed the nomination contest into a referendum on the trajectory of American society itself, calling for a "political revolution" to address the rising levels of inequality and frustration that fueled racial populists like Donald Trump. Although Clinton eventually clinched the nomination, her subsequent loss reopened a torrent of debate about the future of the Democratic Party. Sanders began polling as America's "most popular" politician, and, despite the crowded field, the 2020 nomination contest was defined by many of his signature policy issues. In the course of a few short years, it seemed the Democrats had gone from the certainty of purpose of the early Obama era to being mired in an identity crisis.

Beyond the public square, the events of 2016 and their aftermath also seemed to confound recent influential theories of parties in political science, which argued that despite the adoption of primary elections in the 1970s, party officials and officeholders still effectively controlled the nomination process by coordinating with interest groups behind the scenes and clearing the field for their preferred candidates. Confronted with evidence to the contrary, political scientists, like members of the public, could do little more than grope for answers in the face of a party crisis and political transformation that defied easy answers.

The current crisis in American politics is rooted in the decades-long transformation of both political parties, and its resolution, if there is one, will require the parties to change yet again. Therefore, it is imperative to understand the historical processes of party change that led to the current conjuncture if we are to glean what theoretical and practical insights we can to guide further efforts at reform. Yet, as the unanimity of surprise at the 2016 election reveals, the dynamics of modern party politics remain poorly understood. Assertions of either elite control or interest-group dominance both failed dramatically to explain the Trump victory and the surprise of the Sanders insurgency and their subsequent reverberations through the American political landscape.

This book is about the contentious politics of Democratic Party transformation since the end of the New Deal order. Its central argument is that Democratic Party change was a process driven principally by the recurrent conflict between extra-party groups and officeholders to define and control party identity, program, and policy. The outcome of this prolonged struggle was a new kind of party—what I call an advocacy party—which institutionalized greater party dependence on outside groups for legitimacy and organizational support, while also, in turn, fostering greater group dependency on the administrative presidency for the satisfaction of their symbolic and substantive demands. Together, the major claims of this book explain why and how the Democratic Party has come to its current crossroads, suggesting a new perspective for comprehending the dynamics polarizing American politics more broadly.

The central argument of this book rests on three core claims: that political parties are contentious institutions; that entrepreneurial reformers and counter-reformers both played pivotal roles in reshaping the Democratic Party since the late 1960s; and that, paradoxically, despite the increased role of interest groups and movement actors within the party, the Democrats' advocacy-party structure promotes presidential dominance over party governance, reinforcing forms of representational inequality by limiting agenda-setting influence to select groups that retain the capacity to mobilize their constituencies to ensure officeholders pay more than lip service in exchange for group support. My within-case account of Democratic Party transformation uses a combination of methods—causal narrative, process tracing, and pattern matching—to describe, explain, and test processes of party change. Let me unpack these claims and their methodological underpinnings in turn.

Political Parties as Contentious Institutions
The first claim, that parties are contentious institutions, departs from the two prevailing perspectives on parties and party change found in the political science literature. The traditional perspective, stemming from the work of Anthony Downs, see parties as teams of office-seeking politicians whose overriding priority is election rather than enacting specific public policies. Not all politician-centered perspectives share Downs's assumption that party actors care only about reelection or his faith in party convergence around the median voter. Party elites need loyal activists who volunteer their time and money to party activities, and for whom ideological or policy issues are of paramount concern. Social movement mobilization may alter the calculus of officeholders seeking out new positions to build their coalitions and ensure reelection. Finally, party elites themselves may play a formative role in shaping and reshaping voter preferences, using their unique set of material and discursive tools to structure commonsense understandings of the social world and its political cleavages.

Recently, however, the traditional view of parties as creatures of politicians has been challenged by an alternative perspective, one that sees politicians as agents rather than as principals of party activity and change. Over the past decade, this stream of scholarship has extended the concept of party beyond the traditional focus on elite officeholders and their formal organizations to include interest groups, donor networks, issue-oriented advocates, and partisan media organizations. These "extended party networks," it is claimed, are defined by the cooperation among their actors, which signal their preferences through elite...

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Verlag
University of Pennsylvania Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0812252993
ISBN 13 
9780812252996
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
265
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Buchpark GmbH
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Trebbin
Brandenburg
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