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How Local Factions Pressure Parties: Activist Groups and Primary Contests in the Tea Party Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2023

Rachel M. Blum Open the ORCID record for Rachel M. Blum [Opens in a new window]  and
Mike Cowburn Open the ORCID record for Mike Cowburn [Opens in a new window]
Rachel M. Blum
Affiliation:
Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center and the Department of Political Science, University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma, US
Mike Cowburn*
Affiliation:
European New School of Digital Studies, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Brandenburg, Germany
*
*Corresponding author. Email: cowburn@europa-uni.de
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Abstract

The contemporary Republican Party has been the site of asymmetric partisan entrenchment and factional infighting. We test whether factional pressure from a far-right faction (the Tea Party) exacerbated the party's rightward movement with a granular analysis of Republican factionalism at the congressional district level. We develop a measure of local factionalism using novel datasets of activist presence and primary contests. Then, we conduct a difference-in-differences analysis to assess whether local factionalism in the Tea Party era heightened Republican partisanship and legislative extremism at the district level. We find that districts that experienced factional pressure moved rightward on both measures. These findings help clarify how the Tea Party captured the Republican Party and support a focus on the role of party factions in fomenting partisan conflict.

Keywords

party factionsTea PartyUS party primariespolitical activismdifference-in-differences
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , January 2024 , pp. 88 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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