Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Postscript: Democratic Fortunes in the Northeast in 2010
- 1 Party Strategies and Transition in the Northeast
- 2 Party Pursuits and the Sources of Change
- 3 The First Republican Losses
- 4 Searching for a Majority, the Rise of Conservatives, and Second Losses
- 5 Interpreting the Goldwater Election and Pursuing the South
- 6 Social Change, Party Response, and Further Republican Losses
- 7 National Parties and the Position of the Northeast
- 8 The Process of Change and the Future
- Index
- References
2 - Party Pursuits and the Sources of Change
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Postscript: Democratic Fortunes in the Northeast in 2010
- 1 Party Strategies and Transition in the Northeast
- 2 Party Pursuits and the Sources of Change
- 3 The First Republican Losses
- 4 Searching for a Majority, the Rise of Conservatives, and Second Losses
- 5 Interpreting the Goldwater Election and Pursuing the South
- 6 Social Change, Party Response, and Further Republican Losses
- 7 National Parties and the Position of the Northeast
- 8 The Process of Change and the Future
- Index
- References
Summary
Over the span of a century, the Northeast has gone from being solidly Republican to solidly Democratic. What explains such a dramatic transition? How does a party lose a region that from 1870 to 1930 was solidly Republican and from 1932 to 1964 was at least divided between the two parties? The answer involves the nature, purposes, and pursuits of parties.
American political parties are loose coalitions of elected officials, activists, and groups with diverse interests. Those who work within a party may be motivated by the desire to win power, to enact specific policies, or both. They presumably have some commonality of concerns, which may involve ideology, regional history, economics, cultural concerns, ethnicity, group identity, or some combination of these and other factors. Although those working within a party may share some common purposes and the desire to win the next election, the party rarely acts as a unified, unitary actor. The “party” is often composed of actors with differing views of what policy positions the party should be pursuing and what strategies will bring victory. Elites seek to shape these internal debates but just as often end up reacting to and trying to cope with competing policy demands. The initiatives for policies come as much from groups wanting some policy as from elites seeking to win the votes of groups.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Counter RealignmentPolitical Change in the Northeastern United States, pp. 15 - 31Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
References
, Parties, Politics, and Pressure Groups, 5th ed. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1965), 344Google Scholar
, “Factional Persistence within Parties in the United States,” Party Politics, Vol. X, No. 3 (May 2004), 251–271CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , and , The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 20–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and , State and Party in America's New Deal (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 51Google Scholar
, Jr., “Secular Realignment and the Party System,” Journal of Politics 21 (1959), 198–210CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and , Politics and Society in the South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987)Google Scholar
, Retrospective Voting in American National Elections (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981)Google Scholar
, Political Parties Matter: Realignment and the Return of Partisanship (Boulder, CO: Lynne-Rienner, 2006), 109–128Google Scholar
, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 1970)Google Scholar
, Electoral Realignment and the Outlook for American Democracy (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2007)Google Scholar
, Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States, Revised Edition (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1983)Google Scholar
, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar
, Building a Democratic Political Order: Reshaping American Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Presidents, Parties, and the State: A Party System Perspective on Democratic Regulatory Choice, 1884–1936 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Electoral College and Democratic Responsiveness,” in Gary Baugh, ed., Electoral College: Challenges and Possibilities, (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2010), 65–76Google Scholar
and , The Persuadable Voter: Wedge Issues in Presidential Campaigns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Uneasy Alliances: Race and Party Competition in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999)Google Scholar
, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: W.W. Nortn, 1970)Google Scholar
, Electoral Realignments: A Critique of an American Genre (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002)Google Scholar
and , “Reassessing the 1896 Realignment,” American Politics Research, 33, no. 1 (January, 2005), 3–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Party Ideologies in America, 1828–1996 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Influence of Metropolitan Party Pluralities in Presidential Elections since 1920: A Study of Twelve Key Cities,” American Political Science Review 43 (December, 1949), 1189–1206CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The Future of American Politics, 2nd ed., Revised (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956)Google Scholar
, “American Political Parties and the Rise of the City: An Interpretation,” Journal of American History 51 (June 1964), 41–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The Politics of Provincialism: The Democratic Party in Transition 1918–1932 (New York: Knopf, 1968)Google Scholar
, The Creation of a Democratic Majority 1928–1936 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979)Google Scholar
and , Party and Constituency: Pressures on Congress, Revised Edition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970)Google Scholar
, The Losing Parties: Out-Party National Committees 1956–1993 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 12–40Google Scholar
and , “The Politics of the Great Society,” in Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur, eds., The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006), 257Google Scholar
, The Decline and Fall of Liberal Republicans from 1952 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar
, Right Face: Organizing the American Conservative Movement, 1945–1965 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusulanum Press, 2002)Google Scholar
and , Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989)Google Scholar
, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribner, 2007)Google Scholar
, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995)Google Scholar
and , Storming the Gates: Protest Politics and the Republican Revival (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1996)Google Scholar