scholarly journals Party Domination and Base Mobilization: Donald Trump and Republican Party Building in a Polarized Era

The Forum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-168
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Galvin
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
Dual Approach ◽  
Demographic Groups ◽  
Party Building ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Strong Resemblance ◽  
The Stability

AbstractSince the 2016 election, President Trump has achieved unparalleled dominance over the Republican Party. He has also given his party a central role in his reelection campaign and invested heavily in its organizational capacities. This dual approach to party leadership – domination paired with organizational investment – bears a strong resemblance to the way every Republican president since Eisenhower interacted with his party, different only in degree. Where Trump’s party leadership diverges qualitatively from past patterns is in its apparent purposes. Previous Republican presidents dominated and invested in their party for the explicit purpose of building a new majority in American politics. Reaching out to new demographic groups and trying to persuade them to join the party was integral to this project. Trump, in contrast, has (thus far) predominantly pursued a base-mobilization strategy. Rather than fan out horizontally in search of new groups to join the party coalition, Trump’s strategy drills down vertically to penetrate and deepen his base. Instead of trying to diversify the GOP and extend its reach, his strategy aims to swell the number of like-minded supporters who are active in electoral and party politics (while suppressing, demobilizing, and delegitimizing the opposition party). By setting into motion a mutually reinforcing cycle of party domination and base mobilization, and amplifying its effects through organizational investment, Trump has turned his party into a formidable vehicle for advancing his personal purposes and augmenting his power – while raising troubling questions about the stability of American democracy. This article examines Trump’s party leadership to date, compares it to previous presidential party leadership projects, and considers the implications.

Putting Donald Trump in Historical Perspective

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doug McAdam
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
And Behavior

The tumultuous onset of Donald Trump’s administration has so riveted public attention that observers are in danger of losing a historical perspective. Trump’s rhetoric and behavior are so extreme that the tendency is to see him and the divisions he embodies as something new in American politics. Instead, Trump is only the most extreme expression of a brand of racial politics practiced ever more brazenly by the Republican Party since the 1960s. His unexpected rise to power was aided by a number of institutional developments in American politics that also have older roots. In the spirit of trying to understand these historical forces, the chapter describes (a) the origins and evolution of the exclusionary brand of racial politics characteristic of the Republican Party since the 1960s, and (b) three illiberal institutions that aided Trump’s rise to power, and that, if left unchanged, will continue to threaten the survival of American democracy.

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.

Getting Partisan

2020 ◽  
pp. 181-218
Author(s):  
Adam Slez
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Third Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Field ◽  
People's Party ◽  
To Come ◽  
Over Time

This chapter traces the rise and fall of electoral Populism in southern Dakota. It begins by examining the transformation of the political field in Dakota Territory, where politics was traditionally organized around the fight for patronage. Excluded from power by the dominant faction of the Republican Party, the leaders of the Farmers’ Alliance turned to third-party politics as a means of waging war on their more elite rivals. I show that support for Populist candidates was closely with Alliance strength, though this relationship weakened over time as the People’s Party took on a life of its own. Major victories were hard to come by in the absence of electoral fusion. The free silver question served as a rallying point for pro-fusion forces, which succeeded in taking power. Unable to manage the distribution of patronage, the fusionist coalition quickly collapsed, taking what was left of the Populist movement with it.

Paternalism and the Birth of Professional Police Organization

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Mitrani
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Daily Activity ◽  
Police Department ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Police Organization ◽  
Chicago Police Department ◽  
Chicago Police

This chapter examines how the Chicago Police Department evolved into a professional police organization based on the ideology of paternalism. The election of Thomas Dyer as mayor in 1856 started a five-year period of contestation over the basic shape of the new police force. On the surface, this fight pitted law-and-order Republicans against Democratic supporters of immigrants and looser law enforcement. But party politics tells only a fraction of the story. The underlying dispute was between two conflicting visions of the police, each of which had supporters particularly within the Republican Party. Some members of both parties, most notably Dyer, a Democratic, and Republican Mayor John Wentworth, sought to fit the police into the older paternalistic method of keeping order. This chapter considers how the Chicago police came to occupy a central place in city machine politics and discusses Wentworth's organizational police policies that were consistent with his broader paternalistic vision of the institution. It also describes the police's daily activity between 1855 and 1862, including dealing with the problems arising from the Civil War.

Antis Adjust to Enfranchisement, 1917–1932

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Goodier
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Political Involvement ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Specific Goal

This chapter offers an alternative—but far more logical–end to the story of anti-suffrage. In the process of preventing their enfranchisement, many former anti-suffrage women came to see the value of political involvement and power. This represents the experience of most New York anti-suffrage leaders and their supporters after enfranchisement. Quite a few former anti-suffragists, including, in particular, Alice Hill Chittenden, appeared to welcome the new political role for women and became involved in party politics with the specific goal of educating women to make good use of the franchise. The chapter discusses the politicization of former anti-suffragists and the ways they chose to play their role as enfranchised members of the polity. Many of these women became active members of the Republican Party, carrying on their political activity in much the same way as they had for anti-suffragism, this time voting and loyal to a political party.

scholarly journals “I Was Going to Build a new Republican Party and a New Majority”: Richard Nixon as Party Leader, 1969–73

2005 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 463-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT MASON
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
The Political ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
White House ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
Modern Era

Richard Nixon gained a poor reputation as President for his work as leader of the Republican Party. His attitude towards the party was seen as neglectful at best, destructive at worst. It was clear that Nixon revelled in the details of electoral politics as far as his own position was concerned, but it seemed equally clear that he had little concern for the political fortunes of his party at large. Among the most partisan of American politicians during his earlier career, Nixon seemed to shrug off this partisan past when he reached the White House in 1969. But this understanding of Nixon's relationship with the Republican Party is in some respects misleading. Although it is true that his record provides significant examples of presidential neglect of the party, it also contains equally significant examples of presidential concern about the party's future. Few American Presidents of the modern era paid much attention to their responsibility for party leadership, so the nature of Nixon's support for the Republicans distinguishes him as a party leader of notable strength rather than notable weakness.

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