Growing Tea With Subnational Roots: Tea Party Affiliation, Factionalism, and GOP Politics in State Legislatures

2021 ◽  
pp. 1532673X2110411
Author(s):  
Stella M. Rouse ◽  
Charles Hunt ◽  
Kristen Essel
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
State Level ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Original Dataset

Most research has examined the influence of the Tea Party as a social movement or loose organization, but less is known about its influence within legislative party politics, especially at the state level. In this paper, we argue that in this context the Tea Party is primarily an intraparty faction that has caused significant divisions inside the Republican Party. Using an original dataset of legislators across 13 states for the years 2010 to 2013, we examine legislator and district-level characteristics that predict state legislators’ affiliation with the Tea Party. Our results reveal that in some respects legislators affiliated with the Tea Party are a far-right wing of the Republican Party. However, by other measures that capture anti-establishment political sentiment, Tea Party affiliated legislators comprise a factional group attempting to transform the Party in ways that go beyond ideology. These findings have important implications for the future prospects of the GOP.

This Was the One for Me

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-125
Author(s):  
Christina Xydias
Keyword(s):  
Political Party ◽  
State Level ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
The One ◽  
Politically Active ◽  
Alternative For Germany

Next to the Alternative for Germany (AfD)’s nationalism and anti-immigrant attitudes, natalism and support for traditional gender roles are key components of the party’s far right categorization. Women are not absent from parties like the AfD, though they support them at lower rates than men and at lower rates than they support other parties. In light of women’s lower presence in far-right parties, how do women officeholders in the AfD explain their party affiliation, and how do their explanations differ from men’s? An answer is discernible at the nexus between AfD officeholders’ publicly available political backgrounds and the accounts that they offer for joining the party, termed “origin stories.” Empirically, this article uses an original dataset of political biographical details for all the AfD’s state and federal legislators elected between 2013 and late 2019. This dataset shows that AfD women at the state level are less likely than their men counterparts to have been affiliated with a political party, and they are less likely to have been politically active, prior to their participation in the AfD. Regardless of the facts of their backgrounds, however, women more than men explain their support of the AfD as a choice to enter into politics, and men more than women explain their support of the AfD as a choice to leave another party. The article argues that these gendered origin stories can be contextualized within the party’s masculinist, natalist, and nationalist values.

National Policies, Agendas, and Polarization in American State Legislatures: 2011 to 2014

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 939-979 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Garlick
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
State Level ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
National Policies ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
The Media ◽  
American State

Why are some states polarized and others not? This article argues that state legislators are provided with more information by lobbyists and the media about national policies, or state-level bills that are prominent in the national political discourse. Compared with state-specific issues, this additional information encourages legislators to vote along party lines to secure reelection or prepare for a run for higher office. It identifies national policies using lobbying registrations in state legislatures and Congress to show there is more party difference on roll-call votes on national policies in 25 states over 2011 to 2014. It also argues that the notoriety of national issues may encourage party leaders to put these bills on the agenda to build their party brand, or for individual legislators to raise their profiles. It finds that states with more national agendas have more polarized sessions.

scholarly journals Cultural Politics: Legislating Morality in the States

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 157-174
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Stiles
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Political Process ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Christian Right ◽  
Resource Mobilization ◽  
Movement Behavior ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Original Dataset

We derive predictions from several social movement theories-grievance, resource mobilization, and political process-regarding social movement behavior with respect to bill introductions and bill progress in state legislatures. We test these predictions using an original dataset gathered in six states on legislation in issue areas important to the Christian Right. Results show some support for predictions generated by all three theories. In the introductions model, Christian Right strength in the Republican Party and Republican control of lawmaking in the state are positive predictors of the amount of socially conservative bill introductions. Liberal state ideologies are also, counter intuitively, associated with more conservative bill introductions. The dispositions model shows that liberal socio-moral bills are actually more likely to pass than conservative ones and that socio-moral bills (regardless of ideology) enjoy more legislative success in states with conservative political ideologies.

Exchange Politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David K. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
State Level ◽  
Term Limits ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
State Control ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Impact ◽  
State Cooperation ◽  
Powerful Interest

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) required that each state set up a health insurance exchange or lose control to the federal government. Because Republicans had supported the concept before it became part of Obamacare, virtually every state was expected to cooperate and implement this core part of the law. However, 34 states refused to participate. This is a stunning miscalculation by the Obama administration. This book tells the story of what happened in the final two states to choose state control and the two that came the closest. The most intense split was not between Republicans and Democrats, but within the Republican Party. Governors were the most important people in the fight over exchanges, but did not always get their way. The Tea Party defeated the most powerful interest groups. State-level and national conservative think tanks were important allies to the Tea Party. The relative power of these groups was shaped by differences in institutional design and procedures, such as whether a state has term limits and the length of legislative sessions. Opposition was more easily overcome in states whose conditions facilitated the development of legislative “pockets of expertise.” This is a dramatic example of opponents using federalism to block national reform and serves as a warning of the challenge of inducing state cooperation in other policy domains such as the environment and education. Understanding the state-level fights over the ACA’s implementation is crucial to understanding the impact of future reforms.

scholarly journals Women and Men's Legislative Success in the 21st Century Professional and Citizen State Legislatures

2011 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 213-231
Author(s):  
Donald E. Whistler ◽  
Mark C. Ellickson
Keyword(s):  
State Legislatures ◽  
State Level ◽  
Nationwide Survey ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Institutional Factors ◽  
Personal Attributes ◽  
Lower State ◽  
Leadership Positions ◽  
Women Legislators ◽  
Essential Components

The bill-passage success of women and men legislators in professional and in citizen state legislatures is evaluated using a path analytical model. The model consists of exogenous personal, institutional, district, and state-level variables, an intervening variable of legislative leadership positions, and the direct and indirect effects of these variables on bill-passage success. With data from a 2004 survey of all fifty lower state houses compared to a similar 1992 nationwide survey of state legislators, women legislators display increased legislative positions and bill-passage in both professional and citizen state legislatures. The model predicts that institutional factors and, to a lesser extent, personal attributes are essential components for acquiring legislative positions as well as bill-passage success for women and men in both types of legislatures.

The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Williamson ◽  
Theda Skocpol ◽  
John Coggin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Business Elites ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Electoral Defeat ◽  
Conservative Media

In the aftermath of a potentially demoralizing 2008 electoral defeat, when the Republican Party seemed widely discredited, the emergence of the Tea Party provided conservative activists with a new identity funded by Republican business elites and reinforced by a network of conservative media sources. Untethered from recent GOP baggage and policy specifics, the Tea Party energized disgruntled white middle-class conservatives and garnered widespread attention, despite stagnant or declining favorability ratings among the general public. As participant observation and interviews with Massachusetts activists reveal, Tea Partiers are not monolithically hostile toward government; they distinguish between programs perceived as going to hard-working contributors to US society like themselves and “handouts” perceived as going to unworthy or freeloading people. During 2010, Tea Party activism reshaped many GOP primaries and enhanced voter turnout, but achieved a mixed record in the November general election. Activism may well continue to influence dynamics in Congress and GOP presidential primaries. Even if the Tea Party eventually subsides, it has undercut Obama's presidency, revitalized conservatism, and pulled the national Republican Party toward the far right.

Role Models or Partisan Models? The Effect of Prominent Women Officeholders

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Cory Manento ◽  
Marie Schenk
Keyword(s):  
Role Models ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
The Political ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
Prominence Effect ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Office

Abstract Women remain underrepresented in electoral politics compared to their share of the population. Using an original dataset spanning 1975–2019, we examine whether the presence of women in prominent political office leads to an increase in the number of women serving in state legislatures. We define prominence in two ways: the total number of women elected to statewide office and the length of a state’s history of electing women. We find that the prominence effect diverges by party. The election of prominent Democratic women leads to an increase in the proportion of Democratic women state legislators, while the election of Republican women leads to a decrease in the proportion of Republican women state legislators. Rather than serving as role models for women of both parties to enter the political pipeline, electing more women to prominent office is contributing to a greater representational gap between the parties in state legislatures.

scholarly journals The Tea Party and American Populism Today: Between Protest, Patriotism and Paranoia

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-296
Author(s):  
Michael Minkenberg
Keyword(s):  
Cross Section ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Christian Right ◽  
Mirror Image ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Wing Movement ◽  
European Parties

This article takes a closer look at the Tea Party by adding a transatlantic perspective. Its aim is to show that the Tea Party is a genuine right-wing movement with strong affinities to the Republican Party which revives particular American traditions of conservatism and the radical right. Its support base is not ‘the mainstream’ but a particular cross section of the white middle classes. In this, it is the American mirror image of many European parties and movements of the populist radical right which share the Tea Party’s anti-establishment message, its ultra-patriotism and ethnocentrism. It also shares some of its characteristics with the Christian Right with which it competes and cooperates when aiming at influencing the Republican Party and Washington while marking the merger of the Christian Right with Southern conservatism.

The Koch Network’s Long Game and Its Implications for Progressive Organizing

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-33
Author(s):  
Nancy MacLean
Keyword(s):  
State Level ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Democratic Accountability ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Policy Initiatives ◽  
Connected Network ◽  
Government Institutions ◽  
The Right

This chapter takes a long view of the emergence of libertarian ideology and the development of the Far Right. It argues that it is these ideas, promoted through a deep, broad, densely connected network of right-wing think tanks, foundations, and sponsored academics, that have driven an ideological agenda. In this way, these parties weaponized these ideas and deployed a series of policy initiatives at the state level. The chapter argues that the right knew early on that voters would reject their policy agenda, which would benefit only a minority of citizens. Consequently, right-wing activists pushed a stealth campaign of incremental changes that obscured the true motives of their radical agenda. Their goal, as the chapter suggests, was to turn America back to the way it looked in 1900—a nation without workers' rights, without public regulation, run by business-dominated government institutions free of democratic accountability.

Gendered Polarization and Abortion Policymaking in the States

The Forum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-69
Author(s):  
Abigail A. Matthews ◽  
Rebecca J. Kreitzer ◽  
Emily U. Schilling
Keyword(s):  
State Legislatures ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Women's Issues ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Count Model ◽  
Shared Interest ◽  
Abortion Rights ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
Policy Representation ◽  
The U.S

AbstractWidening, asymmetric polarization is evident in both the U.S. Congress and state legislatures. Recent work unveils a new dimension to this polarization story: newly elected Republican women are driving this polarization. Women are more likely to legislate on women’s issues than men, yet women’s shared interest in representing women doesn’t preclude their identity as partisans. In this article, we explore the effect of today’s political climate on state legislators’ policy representation of women’s issues. We ask what effect does gendered polarization have on women’s issues? To test this, we evaluate bill sponsorship in the states on the quintessential “women’s issue” of abortion. Our research design focuses on bill introductions and uses on an original dataset of pro- and anti-abortion rights bill introductions, which we analyze using an event count model. We find that overall polarization leads to the introduction of fewer restrictive abortion bills, but as polarization between women lawmakers grows, legislators are more likely to introduce anti-abortion rights legislation. Gender polarization has consequences on the types of bills legislators introduce and for how scholars should study polarization.

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