Parties and Movements in American Political Development: Towards a Framework

Enlarge image

Daniel Schlozman from Johns Hopkins University presents a paper that attempts a framework for when and why new social movements hoping to reshape American society become – or fail to become – policy demanders inside the American party system. Parties ally with movements if they see electoral majority with the movements in their tent – but that condition, in turn, requires movements whose leaders can influence supporters and build bridges out to partisans.

The predominant pattern for party-group interaction has shifted at key points in American history: from the third party in the nineteenth century, to the pressure group in the System of 1896, and then to party-group alliance since the New Deal and the rise of the modern administrative state. At the same time, alliances between movements and the diffuse, fractious Democrats have generally emerged from grassroots pressure to which elites have responded. For the relatively more homogeneous Republicans, state sponsorship and party elites’ search for a mass base have proven more important.

Event Sponsor
Political Science, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Kathy Ferguson, 956-8357, kferguso@hawaii.edu, http://politicalscience.hawaii.edu/

Tweet