Reviews of Books:The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics Geoffrey Layman

2002 ◽  
Vol 107 (3) ◽  
pp. 908-909
Author(s):  
Gregory L. Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Party Politics ◽  
Cultural Conflict ◽  
Great Divide ◽  
American Party

The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics By Geoffrey Layman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. 435p. $49.50 cloth, $22.50 paper.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 644-645
Author(s):  
Ted G. Jelen
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Party System ◽  
System Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Systematic Fashion ◽  
Party Realignment ◽  
Great Divide ◽  
American Party

Analysts of religion and American politics have been awaiting this book for some time. In The Great Divide, Geoffrey Layman brings together two strands of research in American political behavior in an elegant, systematic fashion: the study of party system change (often described as the literature on “party realignment”) and the analysis of religion in politics in the United States (long something of an esoteric speciality within political science). While Layman is not first to address the connection between the pew and the precinct, his impressive effort is at this point the authoritative source on religion and contemporary party politics.

The End of Party Politics? Activist-Officeseeker Relationships in the Colorado Democratic Party

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Ware
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Organizational Politics ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Party Organizations ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
State Organizations ◽  
Governmental Politics ◽  
American Party

This Note is concerned with a neglected aspect of American party politics in the last decade: the sources of development or decay in local and state organizations. In the wake of much research into the transformation of the American electorate during this period, it might seem surprising that changes in organizational politics should have attracted such scant attention. Nevertheless, this is easily explained once it is recalled how virtually all American politics textbooks analyse parties. In the first place, they compartmentalize problems about parties into ones affecting either ‘the party-in-the-electorate’ or ‘the party organization’ or ‘the partyin-government’. One consequence of conceiving parties in this way has been to obscure an obvious fact: party organizations both affect and reflect electoral decomposition, and they partly define the potential for cohesion between a party's public office-holders. When the concept of party is taken to be a ‘confederate’ trinity of concepts, it is only to be expected that rigid boundaries will be established separating what are seen as being the major problem areas of electoral politics from those of organizational and governmental politics. Secondly, party organizations in America are usually dismissed as ‘disorganizations’. They are bodies that perform the minimum necessary electoral functions, but are incapable of becoming anything more and could scarcely be anything less without ceasing to exist. From this perspective both the alleged decline of party machines and the rise of amateur politics are merely interesting phenomena, ones that are unconnected in any important ways with the party-in-the-electorate or the party-in-government.

Contentious Institutions and Party Orders in American Politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Hejny ◽  
Adam Hilton
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Party Development ◽  
State And Society ◽  
American Party ◽  
Over Time

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.

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