This book grew out of the authors' growing sense of frustration with the tenor of the debate over the health of the American political party system. Conventional party theory, they contend, had become a theoretical straitjacket providing little understanding of the transformed contemporary American party system. Baer and Bositis present a theory--based on a combination of elite, interest group, and social movement theories--in an effort to redefine the terms of the debate. They argue that political action within and outside of the party system is elite and group-based and that the group concept incorporates and accounts for elite-mass interdependence. Coming at a time when many existing explanations of political party behavior are under increasing scrutiny, Elite Cadres and Party Coalitions offers a provocative new theory. It will be essential reading for students, scholars, and members of the general public interested in American politics. The authors have divided their argument into two parts, the first of which is an extensive review of the history of party reform and contemporary assessments of its meaning. Included in this review is a similarly extensive assessment of a variety of party and party-related theory and scholarship. This is followed by an explanation of their own party elite theory of democracy. The second half of the book is devoted to a test of the various theories of party behavior using survey data from The Party Elite Study and from the 1980 and 1984 National Election Studies. These data are used to make comparisons over time among four elite cadres in both parties: nominating convention delegates, national committee members, and state and county chairs in office in 1980 and 1984.

This work explains elite behaviour in authoritarian systems and proposes why elites withdraw their support for the incumbent when faced with popular uprisings. Building upon foundations drawn from institutional authoritarianism and synthesised with local context from the substantial scholarship on the Middle East and North Africa, the book argues that the elite supporting autocrats come from three distinct cadres: the military, the single-party and the personalist. Each of these cadres possesses its own distinct institutional interests and preferences towards regime change. Drawing on these interests, the study constructs a theoretical framework that is assessed through testing it against three variables. Utilising an analytic narrative, the research finds that the withdrawal of elite support is the consequence of long-term processes that see distinct cadres marginalised. First, increased incumbent preference for personalist elements destabilises regimes as the military and single-party cadres reconsider their positions. Second, neoliberal economic policies, implemented via structural adjustment, accelerated this personalisation as the state’s withdrawal from the economy. This, in turn, affected the ability of the military and single-party elites to access patronage. Finally, the degree of military involvement in the formal political sphere contributes to shaping the nature of the system that replaced the incumbent regime under examination. Building upon a wide range of literature the book argues that interest realisation determines whether or not elite actors support regime change in authoritarian systems. The volume will be of interest to scholars researching politics, social sciences and the Middle East.

Senior scholars consider how party elites influence electoral politics in several important countries

Explains how dictatorships rise, survive, and fall, along with why some but not all dictators wield vast powers.

Maps the ways political parties remain vital components in the American political system, especially in the eleven states in the South As Tocqueville noted more than 100 years ago, “No countries need associations more . . . than those with a democratic social state.” Although some contemporary observers see a decline in associations, especially in the political sphere, the contributors in this volume argue not only that political parties remain an essential component of the American political system but also that grassroots political groups have revitalized the political process, especially in the South. Using data gathered from local party officials in the eleven southern states, the authors examine such key issues as: Who becomes involved in local party organizations and why? How do parties recruit and retain workers? What are the ideological and issue orientations of these activists? How does intraparty factionalism affect local party organizations? What is the connection between the party organization and its external environment? The large regional database provides these contributors with the opportunity to extend the study of local party organization and activists, thus addressing some of the significant gaps in previous research. The additional data enable them to clarify the nature of local party organizations and, in a larger sense, the role of the parties in the contemporary American political system.

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.