New Approaches to American Party Development

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Over the last half century, the American party system has been completely transformed. From their programmatic similarity in the 1950s to their stark, if asymmetric, polarization today, the Democratic and Republican parties have undergone massive ideological and programmatic realignments during the last 50 years due to myriad social, political, and institutional forces. This panel presents new scholarly approaches that attempt to come to terms with this sea-change in American party politics. Using innovative quantitative measures, timely case studies of party development, and new theoretical syntheses of the burgeoning party literature, this panel will collect new approaches to understanding American party development and offer novel explanations for contemporary polarization.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 7: Politics and History

Individual Presentations

• Measuring Democratic and Republican National Committee Activity Quantitatively - Boris Heersink, Fordham University

• Rethinking the Party: Theory and History in Recent American Party Scholarship - Jessica Hejny, Middle Tennessee State University; Adam Hilton, Mount Holyoke College

• The Organizational Roots of Contemporary Polarization - Katherine Krimmel, Barnard College, Columbia University

• Post-New Deal: The Democrats’ Dilemmas since 1980 - Daniel Schlozman; Sam Rosenfeld, Colgate University

Chair

• Julia Rezazadeh Azari Marquette University

Discussant

• Christina Wolbrecht University of Notre Dame