Party Switching in the Jacksonian Era

• In Event: Inter-Party Legislative Politics

Abstract

For scholars of the U.S. Congress, the causes and consequences of party switching remain an important question (e.g., Nokken and Poole 2004; Yoshinaka 2014). One line of inquiry that remains unexplored, however, is whether variation in the institutionalization of the U.S. party system is linked to variation in Congressional party switching. The existing research in comparative politics finds that party switching is more common in countries with weakly-institutionalized party systems (Volpi 2019; Zhirnov and Mufti 2019). Using data from the Jacksonian Era, we test whether differences in the development of state party organizations explains patters of party switching in the U.S. House.

Authors

• Frank C. Thames, Texas Tech University

• Joel Sievert, Texas Tech University

• Timothy P. Nokken, Texas Tech University