Friends of Freedom

From the Sons of Liberty to British reformers, Irish patriots, French Jacobins, Haitian revolutionaries and American Democrats, the greatest social movements of the Age of Atlantic Revolutions grew as part of a common, interrelated pattern. In this new transnational history, Micah Alpaugh demonstrates the connections between the most prominent causes of the era, as they drew upon each other's models to seek unprecedented changes in government. As Friends of Freedom, activists shared ideas and strategies internationally, creating a chain of broad-based campaigns that mobilized the American Revolution, British Parliamentary Reform, Irish nationalism, movements for religious freedom, abolitionism, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and American party politics. Rather than a series of distinct national histories, Alpaugh shows how these movements jointly responded to the Atlantic trends of their era to create a new way to alter or overthrow governments: mobilizing massive social movements.

Contentious Institutions and Party Orders in American Politics

What are political parties, and how and why do they change? These questions are foundational to party research, yet scholars of American parties disagree about the answers. In this paper we present a new theoretical framework capable of bridging these scholarly divides and coming to terms with American party politics today. We argue that political parties should be seen as fundamentally contentious institutions. Due to their mediating position between state and society, parties are subject to rival claims of authority from a range of political actors, including elected officeholders, party officials, interest groups, and social movements. To manage intraparty contention, win elections, and govern, entrepreneurs construct and maintain party orders -- institutional and ideational arrangements that foster an operational degree of cohesion and constraint through time. Together, the dynamics of intraparty contention and the rise and fall of distinct party orders over time illuminate the patterns of American party development.

American Party Women Redux: Stability in Partisan Gender Gaps

ABSTRACT Recent research in American politics demonstrates that despite gender-based partisan sorting, gender gaps in policy preferences persist within political parties—particularly among Republicans. Republican women report significantly more moderate views than their male counterparts across a range of policy areas. These gaps are largely attributable to gender differences in beliefs about the appropriate scope of government and attitudes toward gender-based inequality. Arguably, gender has become a more salient feature of American elections in recent years, and this heightened salience raises questions about whether these within-party gender gaps are stable over time or vary across campaign contexts. We use survey data from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Study to evaluate whether gender gaps in policy preferences are stable across elections or if the 2016 election context affected the magnitude of gender differences in policy preferences. We find that gender gaps in policy preferences within political parties are fairly stable across the two electoral periods.

1. Unregulated immigration and its opponents, from colonial America to the mid-nineteenth century

Colonial British North America was a melting pot for northern and western Europeans, with a majority white population from Great Britain. Colonial authorities encouraged immigration because of a need for labor. Immigration, both bonded and voluntary, supplemented the slave trade as a labor source. The same economic logic was present after the United States was founded in 1789, but, amid unregulated massive immigrations from northern and western Europe, suspicions based on race, nationality, and religion grew about the suitability of the immigrants for American citizenship, as did fears about their negative impact on American life. Thus, from the start, Americans looked in different directions when considering immigration. Immigrants were economically beneficial, yet too many of them were thought dangerous in variety of ways. In fear of immigrant political power, the American Party emerged in the 1850s, arguing unsuccessfully for extension of the period necessary for residence to become a citizen and vote.

The Democratic and Republican Governors Associations and the Nationalization of American Party Politics, 1961–1968

This article examines the origins and early activities of the Democratic and Republican Governors Associations (DGA and RGA, respectively) from the RGA's initial founding in 1961 through the 1968 national nominating conventions. I argue that the formations of these organizations were key moments in the transition from a decentralized to a more integrated and nationally programmatic party system. The DGA and RGA represent gubernatorial concern for and engagement in the development of national party programs and the national party organizations. Governors formed these groups because of the increasing importance of national government programs on the affairs of state governments and the recognition on the part of governors that national partisan politics was having critical effects on electoral outcomes at the state level, through the reputations of the national parties. To varying extents, the governors used these organizations to promote the national parties and contributed to national party-building efforts and the development of national party brands.