Political Parties Part 2:

Political parties can have different functions on different levels

• Parties In the organization

• Parties In the electorate

• Parties In government

Parties in Organization:

The parties’ responsibility to recruit candidates, raise money, mobilize voters and run campaign ads.

• How is the party organized?

National committee (Fund raising; major issues; strategy; polling; research; advertising)

State committees

Congressional district committees

County committees City,

state legislative district committees

Ward committees

Precinct workers and other personnel

• Local party members and activists can run in party primaries, and then if they win, they run in the national elections against the opposing party

Party Platforms:

• Each party writes a platform (manifesto) in order to appeal to the voters and provide them with information

• The platforms include the principles, goals, and policy ideas of the candidate or the party

• Party platforms are usually released before the elections to introduce the parties and the candidates

• They are written by the national committees of the parties:

  The Republican National Committee & the Democratic National Committee

Dems: group inequality, environment, education, healthcare, social welfare, civil rights

Reps: taxation and spending priorities, economic policy, national security, law and order

• Issues in contention: immigration, foreign policy (doves vs. hawks), criminal justice, abortion, role of the judiciary…

Parties in Electorate:

• The parties’ responsibility to provide voters a shortcut to understand what policy outcomes to expect if their candidate win

• Party Identification: Many people identify themselves as affiliated with a political party without formalizing it in any way

Contributions to candidates or party Following party endorsements

Seeing issues as party frames them

Volunteering time and energy

Going to events

Yard signs, buttons, bumper stickers

Partisanship Vs. Ideology:

Partisanship:

• Identification as a member or supporter of a political party

• Strong Republican

• Weak Republican

• Independent, Lean Republican

• Independent • Independent, Lean Democrat

• Weak Democrat

• Strong Democrat

Ideology:

• Preferences that develop when our values interact with the world, often guided by a few core principles

Conservative

• Liberal or Progressive

• MAGA (far right)

• Libertarian (far right)

• Communist (far left)

• Anarchist

• Socialist / Social Democratic (between liberal and far left)

Party In government:

• The parties’ responsibility to structure legislative chambers and form long-term alliances among elected officials

Unified government:

• when one party controls the Presidency and both houses of Congress

Divided government:

• when one party controls the Presidency, while the other party controls one or two of the houses of Congress

• Unified government allows the controlling party to advance policy more easily as there is usually coordination between the executive and the legislative

• Divided government forces compromise between the parties to advance policy, and might cause gridlock and government shutdowns

Polarization:

• the distance between political parties (on policy, ideology, voting…

• Parties that disagree more strongly on policy are more polarized.

• In the 1940s-1960s, polarization in American politics was at its lowest, it started picking up in the late 1970s

3 types of polarization:

Elite Politization:

• polarization between the political parties in Congress or on the decision-making level

Mass Polarization:

• disagreements on ideology and positions between normal people who consider themselves supporters of either political party.

• We don’t have great ways to measure mass polarization

Affective polarization:

• Social distrust of people in the opposite party

Why did American politics polarize?

We know:

• Polarization in Congress begins to take off in 1977, then increases much more in 1995-1996 and 2007-2008.

• Republicans first .

• Party platforms begin to polarize in 1980 (Wood and Jordan 2017)

• The public does not begin to polarize until the late 2000s.