Feminists and Party Politics. By Lisa Young. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2000. 227p. $75.00.

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 248-249
Author(s):  
Jill M. Vickers
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Party System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
University Of British Columbia ◽  
Political Opportunities ◽  
Readable Book ◽  
Feminist Organization ◽  
The Relationship

This comparison of the relationship between organized fem- inism and partisan politics in Canada and the United States addresses two questions. First, Young asks how much orga- nized feminism has influenced partisan and electoral politics in each country. Second, she asks how political parties in each country have responded to organized feminism. She answers these questions by examining the relationship between each country's largest feminist organization and its party system and by showing how each relationship changed between 1970 and 1997. The result is an important and readable book that demonstrates the value of feminist political science as an approach, especially in comparative politics. The book is head and shoulders above many other texts about feminist political activism, mainly because of Young's ability to bridge between feminist ideas about politics and the comparative politics literature about political opportunities.

The Marketing of Haiti

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Fanning
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
The United States ◽  
Current Events ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter looks at the newspapers that were central to those who were advocating a change in the relationship between Haiti and the United States. These newspapers were filled with reports about Haiti and Haitian leaders, including public proclamations, the “progress” of the island, and the commercial opportunities. Even reports that focused on trade offered accounts of Haiti's government and current events as context. Editors such as Hezekiah Niles and Benjamin Lundy and countless others contributed to this public file on Haiti. Niles published Niles' Weekly Register and prided himself on the paper's impartiality in an era when newspapers understood their role as representing particular political parties. Benjamin Lundy, the most famous American abolitionist in the 1820s, also lived in Baltimore to publish Genius of Universal Emancipation. He established his paper specifically to function as an antislavery voice and pushed the cause of Haitian recognition and emigration with it.

Party Realignment in the United States and Britain

1985 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Williams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political System ◽  
Party System ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Party Realignment ◽  
History Of

Realignment theory is a recent but flourishing sub-branch of the study of American political parties. Over the last thirty years, the original suggestions of its inventor, V. O. Key, have been elaborated and refined in several directions and through several phases, gradually being modified to take variations in historical circumstances more carefully into account. Problems of the same kind often occur, and are likely to prove even less manageable, when efforts are made to apply the theory to another political system and culture as authors from both countries (and from neither) have in recent years tried, more or less explicitly, to use it to explain developments in the British party system. Some techniques travel quite well, and some useful insights can be obtained by looking afresh at familiar patterns in the light of similar experiences elsewhere. But the differences between the two nations and states preclude any rigorous attempt to apply a theory derived from the history of one country with a view to explaining the experiences of the other.

The Future of the American Party System

1982 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-50
Author(s):  
C. Edwin Gilmour
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
American Party ◽  
Personal Assessment ◽  
Future Status

A central theme of contemporary literature on American political parties—a theme with a broad consensus that is uncommon in the discipline—is that the party system of the United States is in transition due to significant changes within the past two decades that distinguish the operation of today's party system from what it was before 1960. However, consensus is lacking as to the implications of these changes for the future status of the American party system. This paper has four broad objectives: 1. to review briefly the phenomenon of party re-alignment in American history as a useful perspective on the present party era; 2. to identify and discuss significant alterations in the party system since 1960 ; 3. to note various scenarios in the literature concerning the future of the parly system in ‘the United States and 4. to hazard a personal assessment of the scenarios as to their plausibility and probability.

Types of Primary and Party Responsibility

1965 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ira Ralph Telford
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political System ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Government School ◽  
Party Government ◽  
Party Members ◽  
American Party ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Responsible Party

A chief criticism of the American party system is the lack of party responsibility. In the view of some students, one characteristic of our political system that contributes to this irresponsibility is the practice in some states of allowing individuals to vote in primaries without regard to their partisan allegiances. In such an open primary Republicans may, if they wish, vote in the Democratic primary, and vice versa. The contrasting, and more common, practice is the closed primary, in which participation is restricted to party “members.” Some political scientists think that the closed primary, by subjecting legislators to the presumed discipline of periodic scrutiny by their party's members, induces a greater measure of party regularity than the open primary, in which the official has to satisfy a more motley clientele. This position was taken in the best-known statement of the “party government” school, the 1950 report of the APS A Committee on Political Parties:The closed primary deserves preference because it is more readily compatible with the development of a responsible party system…. on the other hand, the open primary tends to destroy the concept of membership as the basis of party organization.Other political scientists have expressed doubts about this presumed relationship between primaries and party responsibility, but there has been no systematic empirical evidence on the point. This paper will examine the relationship between primaries and party responsibility by comparing the party regularity of senators from open primary and closed primary states.

Political Parties, Public Opinion, and State Policy in the United States

1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (3) ◽  
pp. 729-750 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Erikson ◽  
Gerald C. Wright ◽  
John P. McIver
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Party Control ◽  
True State

When comparing states in the United States, one finds little correlation between state opinion and party control of the state legislature or between party control and state policy. Although these low correlations seeming to indicate that partisan politics is irrelevant to the representation process, the opposite is true. State opinion influences the ideological positions of state parties, and parties' responsiveness to state opinion helps to determine their electoral success. Moreover, parties move toward the center once in office. For these reasons, state electoral politics is largely responsible for the correlation between state opinion and state policy.

What Did They Wish For? Party Government, Polarization and the American Political Science Association

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK WICKHAM-JONES
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Party System ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Party Government ◽  
Core Issue ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Responsible Party

In tracing the development of increased polarization in the United States, numerous scholars have noted the apparent importance of the American Political Science Association's (APSA's) Committee on Political Parties. The committee's influential (and often criticized) report, Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System, called for a wholesale transformation of political parties in the United States. On its publication in October 1950, political scientists quickly concluded that, taken together, the committee's recommendations represented a reworking of a distinct approach, usually known as “party government” or “responsible party government.” (The origins of responsible parties dated back to Woodrow Wilson's classic 1885 text Congressional Government.) Since then, the notion of party government has become a core issue in the study of American political parties, albeit a contentious one. A recent survey ranked the APSA document at seventh as a canonical text in graduate syllabi concerning parties.

The 1938 Elections and the American Party System

1939 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-211
Author(s):  
F. A. Hermas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Constructive Work ◽  
The Government ◽  
American Party

Political parties have been subjected to more vigorous criticism than any other institution of modern democracy. It is charged that their divisions split a country artificially. It is further contended that the line-up into the two camps of government and opposition makes it impossible for a country to avail itself of all its political talent, since those belonging to the opposition party are, temporarily at least, unavailable for constructive work, and are instead making every effort to obstruct the government in power. In the United States the point has frequently been made that the two major parties are no longer justified because neither of them contains anything which it could consider characteristic of itself. “The party term Republican isn't definitive any more. It isn't even descriptive. No more so is the party term Democrat. They are labels on empty bottles, signs on untenanted houses, cloaks that cover but do not conceal the skeletons beneath them.” More recently a similar charge has been made by Dr. Mortimer Adler, a writer who brilliantly combines his analysis of the present with a knowledge of the past. He directs attention to the fact that parties, instead of responding to issues, tend to create them. According to Dr. Adler, parties would be justified if they served only the purpose for which they have been created and then dissolved; of course, in reality, they perpetuate their existence. On somewhat similar lines the famous biographer of the modern party organization, Ostrogorski, proceeded from theoretical criticism to practical suggestions. His plan was to replace existing parties by “leagues,” which were to respond to one issue only, and be dissolved as soon as that issue should be settled.

The New American Political Party

1985 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 1152-1169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Schlesinger
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Party Organizations ◽  
Realistic Theory ◽  
Political Opportunities ◽  
Competitive Relations

To understand changes taking place within political parties we must work from a realistic theory, one that accepts these parties as office-seeking coalitions. On that premise I lay out three interacting sets of variables: 1) The structure of political opportunities, or the rules for office seeking and the ways they are treated, and 2) the party system, or the competitive relations among parties, define the expectations of politicians, and thus lead them to create 3) party organizations, or the collective efforts to gain and retain office. Hypotheses derived from the relations among these variables allow us to examine changes in American parties in the twentieth century. They explain why the Progressive era reforms, in tandem with the post-1896 party system, produced an uneven distribution of party organization and weak linkages among candidates and officeholders. The same theory also explains why changes taking place since the 1950s are producing greater organizational effort and stronger partisan links among candidates and officeholders.

British Chief Constables: The Americanization of a Role?

1981 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Morris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Direct Relationship ◽  
The United States ◽  
Professional Autonomy ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
Corporate Accountability ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Chiefs Of Police ◽  
Oblique Approach ◽  
The Relationship

The accountability of the police has become momentarily as live a political issue in Britain as it has always been in the United States. The relationship implied in the term accountability is essentially one of agency, and presupposes the demonstrability and regularity of the relationship. In both the United States and Britain, the corporate accountability of the police has come to be exercised and articulated through chiefs of police and chief constables. In the United States, however, the professional autonomy of chiefs of police owes much to a strategy of reform designed to free urban police forces from the corrupting influence of partisan politics, whereas in Britain what has been called the ‘uncontrolled authority’ of chief constables is the result of an oblique approach to the entire question of the accountability of the police. While rejecting ‘politics' chief constables are assuming a more prominent politico-administrative role and are endeavouring to establish a more direct relationship with public opinion.

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