Parties & Interest Groups Lecture Notes

1. What parties do
1. Parties are a means by which majorities exercise power across both the executive and legislative branches, and thus to an extent counteract the system of checks-and-balances.
2. Parties are a means to organize majorities in societies with wide to universal suffrage (universal white male suffrage emerged in the United States in the 1830s)
3. Parties traditionally linked political leaders with constituents, providing a measure of accountability and a means to build popular support for programs.
4. Parties performed many chores vital to a democracy-getting voters registered and to the polls, disseminating political information, and organizing public meetings and events for expression of opinion.
5. Parties capture and distribute the rewards of political power-jobs, money, support for development, etc.
6. Parties traditionally were institutions that created a sense of community and solidarity that spanned much of the diversity in American society. They were, and to an extent remain, instruments of social cohesion necessitated by the political logic of the electoral system, which requires parties to assembly majoritarian coalitions.
2. Parties versus interest groups
1. Throughout the long period when parties were dominant institutions in American politics-very roughly, from the 1830s until the Progressive era (the turn of the century), and to a lesser extent until the 1950s-groups and individuals who wanted to influence the political system sought to do so through the parties. This included everyone from corporations to most social reformers.
2. With the decline of parties, officeholders on the one side, and interest groups on the other, increase in power. Interest groups, through lobbying, monitoring, and campaign contributions, seek to directly influence officeholders, who in turn look to them for the support they once received from the parties.
3. Party history
1. The first mass party system-Jacksonian era
1. Rapid expansion of suffrage in the 1820s, spurred by the new states of the West (Ohio, Illinois, Indiana), which adopted constitutions that guaranteed all adult white males the right to vote and hold pubic office. Some of the older states, concerned about the loss of population to the west, began to grant similar political rights. This was also the fruit of Jeffersonian ideology with its emphasis on political equality (Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican party dominated the national government from 1800-1820).
2. Patronage-systematically organized for the first time:
1. Federal jobs to party workers
2. Federal bureaucracy doubled during Jackson's presidency, increasing patronage resources
3. A party press. The Washington Globe as mouthpiece of the Democratic party.
1. State newspapers closely tied to the party, with party bosses sometimes serving as editors; e.g., the New Hampshire Patriot (Reichley 1992, 89).
4. Strong state political machines based on a mixture of interest, ideology, and community. The party was a social home for many, a place where they might dine, drink, talk, and pray together. Parties demanded strict solidarity.
5. A theory of the party as a political instrument through which individuals could pool their resources for the control of government-thus a democratizing institution.
2. Breakup of the party system under the strain of North-South conflict
1. Whigs: The Whigs emerged as a major party in the 1830s with a political program that emphasized federal promotion of economic development (high tariffs, internal improvements, a new Bank of the United States), nationalism, and social conservatism (temperance, free public schools, Sunday-closing laws).
1. In the 1850s the Whigs split over the issue of slavery's expansion into the territories gained from the war with Mexico. Most Northern Whigs, while not abolitionists, were morally repelled by slavery. For economic reasons as well, they would not accept slavery's extension into the developing West (Reichley 1992, 107). The result was a swift decline of the party.
2. American Party (originally the Know-Nothings): A brief upsurge of nativist and anti-Catholic prejudice led to the formation of the American Party in 1854. For a time, it appeared that the party might supplant the Whigs; it became the dominant party in Massachusetts, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maryland, and Kentucky. But it, too, divided on the issue of slavery, and disappeared not long after the 1856 presidential election.
3. Democratic Party: The party was torn apart at its 1860 national convention. When the convention endorsed the "popular sovereignty" approach to decided whether new states would be slave or free, delegates from eight states in the lower South walked out and subsequently nominated a Southern Democrat, John C. Breckinridge, for president. Northern Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas.
3. The Republican party system: The Republican party, founded in 1854 in the wake of Northern outrage over the Kansas-Nebraska Act, was opposed to any further extension of slavery. Beyond this, it adopted the Whig program of national economic development-including support for internal improvements and high tariffs-and traditional morality (Reichley 1992, 153). It also, like the Whigs, defended the fundamental unity of the nation against those who argued the right of states to secede. And it was the party of "free land"-eventually embodied in the Homestead Act (1862) and "free labor"-the protection of economic opportunity for all men within a capitalistic economy.
1. The Republican party system initially developed under the extraordinary conditions of the Civil War. When, in 1863 and 1864, it began to appear that disillusionment with the war might enable Northern Democratic advocates of peace to gain substantial power, Lincoln turned the federal bureaucracy into a major source of revenue and labor on behalf of the Republican party. The Capitol buildings were requisitioned for campaign work, campaign contributions were levied on all federal employees, and soldiers from states with hotly contested elections were given furloughs (they were expected to vote strongly Republican) (Reichley 1992, 132-134).
2. Federal patronage: Republicans perfected the use of federal patronage-jobs and favors-after the war, and the system, despite mounting protest, continued to function until passage of the first civil service act in 1883.
3. City machines: The Civil War gave a great boost to industrialization, and the labor requirements of industry led to a flood of new immigrants to the emerging industrial centers soon after the war's end. Urbanization and industrialization in turn gave rise to political machines. City machines used party control of local government to:
1. provide minor services and benefits to ordinary citizens in exchange for their support (a bucket of coals, basket of food, or rent payment, interventions with the law);
2. old style patronage-city jobs for party loyalists;
3. enrich the party (if not also its leaders) through the awarding of contracts or favorable treatment to firms that contributed to the party.
4. City machines also created a party-based social life "picnics, boat rides on the river or lake, and a ready purse at the mention of any charitable collection.." (Reichley 1992, 211).
4. State machines: State machines were especially important because, until passage of the 17^th Amendment in 1913, state legislatures elected each state's Senators. State machines relied to a considerable extent upon federal patronage, which was dispensed via senators (Reichley 1992, 144).
1. Disgust with the federal patronage system eventually led to passage of the Pendleton Act (1883), which established a merit system for a substantial portion of federal jobs, thereby striking a severe blow to patronage. Thereafter, the parties looked to state and city machines as the chief sources of revenue and patronage.
2. Governmental favors: the parties used their control of state governments to reward businesses, professional groups, social agencies, and others with favorable treatment.
3. In Pennsylvania, home of an exemplary Republican machine under Senator Matthew Quay:
1. State employees received an annual letter from the party: "Two percent of your salary is ______. Please remit promptly".
2. Banks receiving deposits of state funds were required to pay kickbacks to the machine.
3. Major corporations made sizeable regular contributions.
4. With all this money, the state party employed 20,000 full and part-time workers at an annual cost of $24 million. "most were in the field, doing political favors for residents of city precincts, small towns, and rural counties, and mobilizing the faithful on election day" (158).
4. The Progressive attack on the party system. The progressives blamed the political parties for the failure of government to adequately address the social problems created by industrialization. Parties were, for them, corrupt, undemocratic, and reactionary (Brinkley 1997, 595).
1. Secret ballot: One of the earliest reforms was the institution of the secret ballot. Prior to the 1880s, political parties themselves printed ballots. A party's ballot listed only its candidates. These were distributed to supporters, who then simply deposited them at a polling station. This allowed party's to monitor voting, and it made split-ticket voting very difficult. It also facilitated vote buying. The new secret ballots were printed by the government and distributed at the polls (this also had the effect of excluding many illiterate and non-English-speaking voters) (Brinkley 1997, 596; Reichley 1992, 203).
2. Local politics: Reformers tried various strategies to reduce the power of the parties, including nonpartisan elections, city managers (cutting off much of the patronage available to the parties), and at-large election of city council members (to reduce the power of ward leaders and district bosses) (Brinkley 1997, 596-598; Reichley 1992, 188-189).
3. State politics:
1. To circumvent state legislatures, progressives supported the initiative and referendum, adopted by more than 20 states by 1918.
2. Direct primaries, which took control of party candidate selection away from party bosses.
1. "The primary system freed forces driving toward the disintegration of party organizations and facilitated the construction of factions and cliques attached to the ambitions of individual leaders" (Austin Ranney quoted in Reichley 1992, 205).
3. Voter registration: Progressive supported registration to make vote fraud more difficult, but also to discourage participation by the those with little education and recent immigrants. The current form of registration, which makes the voter responsible for submitting a registration form, only came into wide use in the 1890s.
5. The New Deal Democratic party system.
1. Roosevelt spurred creation of a permanent national party organization in the 1920s.
2. Some New Deal programs, such as the Works Progress Administration, also became new sources of patronage (Reichley 1992, 258). However, Roosevelt's effort to build a national political machine based on federal patronage was thwarted when Congress passed the Hatch Act in 1939, which prohibited most federal employees from participating in political campaigns or even expressing political opinions in public speeches (Reichley 1992, 278).
3. City machines during the New Deal:
1. In the short term, they benefitted from the flow of federal dollars into the cities. In addition, most still controlled large pools of local government jobs. The Cook County (Chicago) Democratic machine, for example, distributed approximately 30,000 jobs.
2. In the longer term, the New Deal undermined city machines by creating welfare state programs such as Social Security and Unemployment Insurance that provided the kinds of benefits that citizens had looked to the machines for.
6. The end of traditional party organization in the 1950s and 1960s
1. As late as the 1950s there remained many viable city machines. The Democratic machine in Chicago under Richard Daley, for example, still controlled 30,000 patronage jobs as well as the selection of candidates for office from the Cook county area.
2. Five factors finally ended urban political machines:
1. The New Deal welfare state deprived them of the capacity to give handouts to low-income voters.
2. City and state governments began to professionalize their work forces, adopting merit-based civil service procedures for hiring and promotion.
1. See Table, "Civil Service Coverage in Cities, Distributed by Population Groups, 1961"
3. Television gave politicians an effective way to communicate with voters without the need for party workers to do neighborhood canvasses.
4. Changing demographics:
1. Rising levels of income and education reduced the need for local party services and made voters less willing to accept instruction on how to vote.
2. Postwar suburbanization and the weakening of old ethnic and religious attachments diminished the machines' ability to speak in the name of ethnic/religious solidarities, and shifted power at the county level toward suburbs.
5. Racial tensions: the movement of blacks from the South to Northern cities at first benefitted many urban Democratic machines, since blacks became loyal supporters. But as soon as they expected the same rewards for support as white ethnics were accustomed to, the machines were torn apart by racial divisions. White ethnics were not willing to see blacks as just another ethnic group, and blacks were not willing to accept a subordinate position.
6. Image problems: the machines had "acquired an apparently unalterably bad image in American culture" (Reichley 1992, 315), one that gradually spread from the Protestant middle class to the very social groups that the machines relied on-Catholics, Jews, blacks, and working-class white Protestants.
7. The end of the New Deal coalition in the sixties
1. The Democrats and race
2. Vietnam, liberals, and communism
3. Culture wars
4. Middle class economic stagnation
4. Dealignment. Dealignment can be thought of as the consequence of two overlapping historical processes-the end of the traditional party system (whose decline began with the Progressive era attack on it, though it was earlier hurt by passage of the federal civil service act in 1883)-and the breakup of the New Deal coalition which had dominated national politics since the 1930s. "Normally", one might expect a new coalition to appear via the opposition party-the Republicans. But with the dissolution of the party system itself, such an outcome was not possible. Dealignment describes this absence of a missing political center in American society. Both parties strive mightily to claim an historical mandate to lead the nation-the Republicans, for example, with the Contract with America in 1994-yet both have been thwarted by the volatility of the electorate-and to a lesser extent by declining turnout.
1. Citizen alienation
1. Declining turnout
2. Weakening of party identification, increase in proportion of independents
3. Lack of trust in government, politicians, and parties
2. Paralyzed government
1. Rise of split-ticket voting
2. Social polarization around core values.
3. Inability of either party to achieve a definite mandate-mandates tend to be ephemeral (Reagan's) to illusory (the 1994 Contract with America).
3. Party power and resources concentrated at the top, while bases wither
1. Soft money contributions
2. Politically mobilized mass organizations influence the parties while remaining largely independent of them-the Christian right, the revitalized labor movement.
4. Candidate-centered politics. Candidates are often largely independent of parties-they raise their own funds, may de-emphasize party identification, seldom feel bound by party platforms.

References

Reichley, A. James. 1992. The Life of the Parties: A History of American Political Parties. New York: The Free Press, a Division of Macmillan.

Brinkley, Alan. 1997. The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People. Second edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.