http://www.fairvote.org/congressional-and-presidential-primariesopen-closed-semi-closed-and-top-two#.

UmyI43AgfTo
The First Party System

Federalists vs. Republicans, 1790s-1810s

Federalists, led by Hamilton and Adams, wanted a powerful national government to
push for aggressive economic development
Republicans, led by Jefferson and Madison, wanted a small national government to
leave the citizens mostly free of taxation or government interference
Federalists controlled government through 1790s, Republicans dominated after 1800;
Federalists disintegrated as a national party after War of 1812

The Second Party System

Democrats (small national govt) vs. Whigs (government action to improve American
society), 1820s-1850s
Competing factions within the old Republican Party split into two new opposing parties
during Andrew Jackson's presidency

The Third Party System

Democrats vs. Republicans, 1850s-1890s

Sectional dispute over slavery led to collapse of Second Party System by 1850s
Whig Party collapsed, largely replaced in the North by the antislavery Republican Party
after 1854
Democrats became mainly a proslavery regional party based in the South

The Fourth Party System

Republicans vs. Democrats, 1890s-1930s

Democrats remained strong in South, also gained support from western farmers and
northern urban immigrant communities
Pro-business Republicans dominated presidential politics
After 1896, Democrats co-opted some of the farmer radicalism of the Populist
Movement

The Fifth Party System

Democrats vs. Republicans, 1930s-?

President Franklin Roosevelt built new Democratic voter coalition of union workers,
southerners, immigrants, Catholics, Jews, urbanites, and intellectuals
Republicans became more strongly identified as the party of business and the wealthy

The Fifth Party System

Democrats vs. Republicans, 1930s-?

President Franklin Roosevelt built new Democratic voter coalition of union workers,
southerners, immigrants, Catholics, Jews, urbanites, and intellectuals
Republicans became more strongly identified as the party of business and the wealthy

Andrew Jacksons Spoils System?

The Great Depression

Notice that prior to this, in the 4 party system, those on the progressive left
wanted:
th

1.Industry and labor regulation

2.Adjustments in currency policy
Franklin Roosevelt brought more to the Democratic Party than a coalition of
voters; he also charted its philosophical and policy course for the next several
decades. His response to the Great Depression was the New Deal; he redefined
the role of the federal government in American life.

****************************
****************************
**
Elections in the House of Representatives
How many representatives are elected?
How do we decide who wins?

Elections in the Senate

How many representatives are elected?
How do we decide who wins?

Election of the President

How many representatives are elected?

How do we decide who wins?

Plurality rule ones in which the candidate with the most votes wins:
I.E. First past the post elections
Does NOT need a majority
Majority formula candidates MUST achieve a majority (50.1%) to win
May result in runoff elections
Alternative vote votes are transferred if no candidate is declared the winner
There are three types here as well:
The List PR system
The Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system
The Single Transferable Vote (STV) system

Duvegers Law:
a plurality electoral system will always yield a two-party political system
The other piece that can be inferred from this is that a PR system will yield a
multi-party system

*******************
Political Scientists liked party government partially because it made sense:
when in competition, two parties would converge to the median voter as predicted by Downs
They viewed this convergence as democratic, because which voter is the median is
determined by everyones preferences.
MORE ON PG
Voters do not vote on the basis of liking a candidate. Because the individual candidate is
irrelevant in terms of policy.
Parties brand name is important for a number of reasons
Parties will act to protect it and tarnish that of the other party
Individual members have an incentive to change the label for their own benefit

The party empowers its leadership in the House to hold all of the important positions to force
members to vote with the party, even if they dont want to!

Because of this, a party is responsible for the policies it does or does not implement. All
the members of the Party share the blame and praise resulting from the policies. It is
clear to the public who should get credit or blame also: the members of the majority
party.
o members of a party dont vote against their partys policies like in the current
Congress.

central focus of both Procedural Cartel Theory and Strategic Party

Government is that Parties work tirelessly to protect their own
reputation while tarnishing their opponents from quiz. And I know
that PCT is kinda of a subgroup of SPG.

SPG:
What does SPG add to PCT?
Helps us to understand WHEN the party leadership will exert influence on members
It also helps us understand the consequences, especially in terms of party unity and electoral
response
----------------------------------------------

Teamsmenship (according to Lee): parties have begun to work against each other for
the sake of working against each other, not for legislative goals in and of themselves
when minority members who were on record in support of legislation,will then vote against it,
when their votes are needed to pass it. Changing vote last minute by minority party members
when majority party needs those votes.
This isnt much of a problem in the House where the majority party can usually pass
legislation.
In the Senate, however, this is a big problem because of the sixty (60) vote threshold
(3/5th majority ends fillibuters.) The minority party can easily stop the majority party
from passing legislation.

If the president is popular the president is much more persuasive in terms of getting members
of Congress to support his agenda.
The President is most popular in his honeymoon period.
This is the time period in which the President is most likely to get significant legislation passed
through Congress.

The president usually has major problems in passing his agenda after the midterm
election of Congress halfway through his term:

Usually his core voters become complacent whereas voters that are opposed to his agenda
become motivated
This leads to his party nearly always losing seats in every midterm election

This means it is even harder for the president to persuade individual members of Congress to
support his agenda in the final two years of his terms.

The Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee are the national
branches of their respective parties.
They are made up of all the state party chairs, high ranking leaders, and leaders of
national Republican and Democratic organizations.
Party building involves setting up programs that try to enlarge the party and foster its activities
at all levels:
Long term Fundraising abilities
Candidate recruitment
Services for candidates
Building human capital in the Party
Outreach to new constituents
Party Predation involves ending or minimizing these programs and redeploying resources and
staff towards lobbying Congress for the presidents agenda and working to reelect the President
rather then long term considerations.

*Galvin finds that Democrats have tended to engage in party predation rather than party
building. In contrast Republican Presidents have tried to invest in the RNC and its capacities.
-because the Democrats were the majority party during much of the 5th party
system. They did not need to build the party to have a natural majority. In contrast, the
Republicans needed to engage in long term activities to move themselves toward parity
with the Democrats.
-Clinton switched from party predation to party building in his relation to the DNC.
+Obama appears to have moved back to a predation role with the party
Closed Primary. You must register with a party in advance on your voter registration form.
Open Primaries or pick-a-primary ballots.Voters show up and pick which partys ballot they
wish to vote in on that day. Cross-over voting is allowed. However, you can only vote in one
partys primary.
Blanket Primaries Open and Closed primaries are the most common. Blanket primaries are
unconstitutional. These involve listing all the candidates on a single ballot.

Non-partisan primaries are similar, except that party labels are not listed on the ballots. NO
LABELS Judicial and school board elections are often non-partisan. There is usually a run off.
Runoff Primaries Multiple candidates run, and the top two engage in a runoff election for the
nomination a few weeks later
**Parties would prefer to pick the candidates that they view as being the most likely to win
office. This involves compromising the ideological purity of the preferred candidates.**
**Primaries can force Parties to sometimes accept candidates they dont like bc educated voters
vote for extreme (Bad according to Dow, bc need to appeal to median voters )**
**Primaries also prevent parties in Congress from implementing Party Government**
Because candidates can win primaries without the support of their party leadership, they
have little incentive to adhere to the party position as opposed to what their constituents
or donors might want
**Parties should also dislike primaries because they are costly in terms of campaigns and they often
end up damaging candidates prior to the general election
**Party primaries allow voters to have input into who will be running on the partys ticket, yet not all
voters turn out.

The Presidential Nomination System

Presidents are nominated by 50 very different states by state contests that typically occur from
January before a presidential election until right before a party convention.
The party convention is where the presidential candidate is actually nominated by his or her
party, based largely on the results of these contests. ([most candidates that are nominated
have gotten 50%+1 delegates.. slim margin]
Primary Elections:
Voters vote for a candidate (ballots. one vote per person)
Candidates get delegates based on either one of two principles depending on the state and
party:
Principles of Delegate Assignment
Winner-Take-All (R)
Who ever gets the most votes wins all of the states delegates
Only in Republican Presidential Primaries
Proportional Representation (D/R)
Candidates get a certain number of delegates based on the proportion of votes they get in a
state or Congressional district
Every Democratic and some Republican State Primaries use this

Caucuses: (groups of people/voters/citizens gather at each section of the room for respective
candidate, and candidates that do not meet certain threshold/certain number of people, they
get eliminated. Then whole process starts over, people regroup until idk..
Caucuses are more complicated and vary a lot by states.
Eventually groups of people get together in a precinct or county and elect delegates to a state
convention pledged to a presidential candidate
This state convention then elects delegates to the national convention in the same proportion
as the state convention
However, there are many variations on the caucus
**Citizens hold caucuses
Caucuses decide delegates
Delegates decide nominees
nominees become presidents
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XebP6GSy_6I

and http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/video?id=8485162
**party primaries become a balancing contest between:
1. Democracy, transparency, and free speech on one hand
2. Strategic selection, effective representation, and effective government on the other**
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A series of reforms democratized the process, which moved power from the party
bosses/State delegations/the party leaders to party voters and caucus goers after the 1968
Democratic nomination (also bc of watergate:
These reforms were recommended and implemented by the McGovern-Fraser commission
(happened because LBJs VP, Hubert Humphrey won the nomination without entering a single
primary)
There are four fairly established problems with the primary process:
1) Front Loading:
Because early contests have a disproportionate impact on future primaries, states try
to move their own primaries earlier and earlier in order to increase their influence
This has resulted in an earlier and earlier primary schedule
2) Media focus on expectations not actual results:

Candidates often focus on managing the expectations of media pundits views of their
chances of winning or losing different state contests rather than on presenting
appealing policies to the public

-The media tend to focus on close elections, but dont report on the large numbers of
uncompetitive elections.
3)Bandwagon Effects:
Winning an early primary leads to a surge of activist support, financial support, and
media attention
This causes Big Mo or momentum as candidates find their chances of winning in
future state contests increase substantively
This makes early states not representative of the country very important
Iowa and New Hampshire
4) Super-delegate Controversies
Super-delegates were created by the McGovern-Fraser commission so that the party
leadership would have some limited influence in picking a candidate in the partys long
term interests
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Two types of financing:
Regulated amounts for campaign constitutes Hard Money (from individuals)
Parties could raise unlimited amounts of Soft Money nominally for party building
activities(from PACs)
Parties in the 1990s used these to support candidates through loopholes.
BCFRA banned soft money. It also created a stand by your ad rule meaning you can to say
who funded the ad and that you supported the message verbally.

Citizens United vs. FEC.

BCFRA banned corporations and unions from engaging in electioneering messages

(indirectly supporting candidates like 527s do) 60 days before an election.
o it is unconstitutional for Congress to limit the free speech of corporations and
unions in this way.
o But unlike 527 organization (which had disclosure requirements), we dont know
where the corporate money is coming from So corporations based outside the
U.S.A., meaning foreign citizens could funnel money to U.S. elections in ways
that were banned before
It did not say that they can give unlimited funds to candidates, but that they can act in
the same ways that 527s could prior to the ruling.

This means that as long as they do not coordinate their activities with a
candidate, they can spend as much as they like.

The Nature of Electoral Competition

currently both sides of a political campaign usually engage in higher and higher levels of
fundraising and political activity.
The more incumbents spent on their reelection, the worse they would do.
if two campaigns are fairly evenly matched in terms of funding and spending,
The effects tend to be a wash. They cancel each other out.
most of time incumbent members of Congress run against individuals who have no
institutional or financial support because the candidates who have these going for them
are smart enough to know when it is a bad time to challenge an incumbent
When they do run, however, the incumbent must raise their level of campaign
fundraising and spending significantly.
Even when incumbents get serious challengers, they tend to win reelection.

Election Prediction: Most Powerful Indicators in predicting election results- unemployment or

inflation, the Presidents party affiliation, incumbency, and approval, and the current
breakdown of seats in Congress.
**************************************************************************

1The Local Parties

PRECINCT: The smallest unit of political geography (fundamental bloc of Party

Organization)
o Precinct Leader is voted in primaries
Competition varies between primaries in cities (very competitive) and
rural (least competitive)
o The collection of precinct committee people make up the local partys central
committee (County or City or Ward).
o This committee usually votes on candidate endorsements in primaries and elects
a local executive committee and the local party chair.

2The State Parties

Usually either local parties elect members to a state committee or members are elected
by legislative districts in the party primary to serve on a state party committee
o The state party committee then elects a state party chair and executive
committee and they engage in the same activities as the local party chair.
Like local parties, state parties vary in terms of their activity levels:
o Often in the Mountain West, Democratic Parties have lack basic staff and
(physical) office space
o Relationships with local and city parties vary also

Republican parties in the South prior to 1965 were in similar situations

State parties are also responsible for setting rules to determine how delegates to the
national conventions are selected based on the primary and caucus results in each state.
The State parties elect members of the Democratic and Republican National
Committees (The DNC and RNC).

3 National Committee

These national committees then (nominally) elect the national party chair and party
executive committee.

The DNC and RNC establish the rules that govern their conventions, presidential
primaries and caucuses, and engage in activities to support their candidates at a variety
of levels
o The Executive Committees and National Chairs hire staffers to run these
activities, usually at their DC headquarters
The staff of the organization engages in:
Fundraising (and donating to candidates)
Recruitment of candidates
(Limited) Political research and Polling
Develops programs for building the local and state parties
Campaign training schools
Voter registration Drives and Activist Recruitment
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Contemporary Period of politics (post-1968)
Reforms killed party machines
Old fashioned Party Machines1.A Party Boss who picks candidates.
2.Patronage Workers (government employees) then campaign for those candidates at the
precinct level or face the lose of their jobs
3.The Party Boss has indirect control over their jobs through the candidates he selected
*REFORMS*>>>

Presidents prior to the contemporary period would be able to control many more jobs
(like the entire Post Office workforce (USPS)
o Today workers are banned from undertaking political activity during their
working hours
Candidates were increasingly responsible for their own electionso Candidate centered elections involve:
1.Primary push for election is on the candidate, not the party
2.Candidates must raise most of their funds, not the party.
3.Candidates must learn themselves how to run a political campaign, not necessarily the
party. Or they can hire someone to do it
4.They rely less on the party label because the candidate is the focus. However, this
means they must spend much more money communicating their political identity and
issue positions to the public.

So Candidates turn to 1)Ideological Activists (money) & 2)Professional Campaign

Consultants (expertise) >>>>>>>>>

1) could target their appeals to these individuals in order to fund their campaigns (create donor
network)
These individuals from the 1960s onward would also provide free labor for candidates which
was provided by patronage workers in the past
In states were a party is in a strong minority, this might be the only source of donations for a
party
2)These are people with experience running political campaigns. Often they began as
ideological activists and turned their love of elections into a career.
Recommend, provide a as many campaign activities as possible.

As one increases their fundraising and spending on consultants and campaign activities,
the other feels they need to increase their activity level (arms race)

According to Francis Lee, what kinds of votes have had the highest increase in polarization
within Congress over the last few decades?
b)Votes on procedural issues and others with no ideological content
##############################################################################

1. The Sociological Model: In this model, partisanship comes from group or social
identities, like class, race, region, or religion.

By social group, we mean demographic groups:

Religion:
Catholics and Jews would often vote Democratic
Protestants would vote Republican
Class:
The Working Class would vote Democratic
The Middle Class and Upper Class would vote Republican

Individuals cross-pressured would vote in a mixed fashion, like working class Protestants or
middle class Catholics

2. The Economic Model (Rochester Model/Retrospective Model.. based on

rational choice theory. )

1. Voters access if they are better or worse off since the last elections
2. If they are better off, they vote for incumbents and the Party in Power
3. If they are worse off, they vote for challengers or the Party out of Power
3. The Psychological Model

Partisanship was stable, but peoples positions on issues change heavily over time when
surveyed.
80%+ of Democrats would vote for the Democrat
80%+ of Republicans would vote Republican
Group or Social Demographics couldnt even approach this level of
success in prediction votes
a persons partisanship was learned through the family and early childhood socialization
People learn that they are Democrats or Republicans much as they learn that
they are Catholic or Protestant or White or Black
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Political Sophistication and Behavior

party identity, the strength of party identity and sophistication

branching question on the survey: [10 % of ppl consider themselves as true

independent.. The leaners tend to act/vote the same as weak ppl]
0.Strong Democrat
1.Weak Democrat
2.Leans Democrat
3.True Independent
4.Leans Republican
5.Weak Republican
6.Strong Republican

We can also fold this scale in order to create a 4 point measure of strength of partisanship.
Strong Dems/Reps would be 3
Weak Dems/Reps would be 2
Leaners would be 1
True Independents would be 0

Instead of being the most sophisticated and knowledgeable voters, the survey research
actually showed -- independent voters were:
less likely to vote

knew less about politics

were less stable in their opinions towards issues
usually held attitudes that contradicted themselves
For instance: Being pro-social security but against government
handouts.
Although the situation has improved since Convers study, the public has only a vague
idea what is actually going on in Washington
One of these contradictory findings is that the public will often identify themselves as
conservative when asked, but support liberal programs (like healthcare) at the same
time.
The over selection of conservative is highly concentrated among those who know little
about politics
Among those who know much about politics, the % of liberals and conservatives
is near equal

LECTURE 21

The RAS model: a model of survey response that attempted to make sense of the low

use our partisan

identities to sort through information
levels of consistent issue responses given by the public.--

Receive-Accept-Sample or RAS
1)Information is received from the media, accepted by the individual, and sample from memory
to construct a survey response
2)A key point is that the information is never processed:
People almost universally hold contradictory information and never actually realize it
This is because they lack education and information to determine truth
Party enters into this model in a big way.
Eventually when information in memory gets one-sided enough, it congeals into a political
identification as either a Democrat or Republican.
When individuals receive information, they then evaluate it based on the identity of the
source (D or R).
If it coming from the opposite side, they Reject it, instead of Accept it. It doesnt enter into
memory.
Chuck Taber and Milt Lodge (2006) reexamined Zallers notions of partisan one-sided
information processing and political sophistication:
Their results turned his theory on its head a bit:

Political sophisticates are completely unyielding in their beliefs

They are resistant to, or actively avoid, new information that contradicts their existing views
In fact, they are skilled counter-arguers and are likely to also discredit the source of conflicting
information while accepting information that does not
This is built off what is known in social psychology as a confirmation bias
LECTURE 22
According to Francis Lee Votes on procedural issues and others with no ideological content
have had the highest increase in polarization within Congress over the last few decades?

What are two of the four problems that we discussed regarding primary
process?
Problems for parties:
Can force parties to select candidates they dont like
Can create difficulty implementing party government
Problems with the system:
Front Loading
Media focus on expectations not actual results
Bandwagon Effects
Super-delegate Controversies

*how political scientist measure attachment to a party is based highly on identification*

-Interpersonal Identity(their unique identity) vs.

collective or Social Identity--explains intergroup relations
Anonymization- Hiding individual identity (costume) and acting more true to self or group ?
The Minimum Group Paradigm- Experiment established the most minimal level of
groupiness-- split groups based on arbitrary bull. Members of group were still loyal to label:
They first wanted to determine what the minimum conditions were for group-based behavior
to occur. They constructed an series of experiments based on the minimum group paradigm.
Their thinking at the time was that the groups created in the minimum group paradigm
experiment were so minimal that they could serve as a control for other experiments.
Because both group members choose the maximum difference between the groups, the
researchers found strong evidence that it was very easy for group identities to be created and
used in behavioral decisions.

-The strategy employed was called a max diff (short for maximum difference) strategy.
This was not the socially optimal strategy.
-meaningless and irrational group identities structure our social behavior

when they use their interpersonal identity in term of social behavior and when
they use scripts associated with their social identities.
metacontrast principle (When the difference between individual in-group members
behavior on a dimension of behavior is low and the difference between out-group members is
high, the metacontrast is high. like in Congress PG) vs normative fit (how much the social
identity matches the situation involving the behavior Like a police officer to act like a police
officer during a riot)
-When the metacontrast is high, individuals are more likely to act as a (stereo)typical
member of the social group, rather than as an individual.

Lecture 23 - Voters IV
Authoritarianism refers to blind acceptance of authority

Authoritarian regimes tend to form on the extreme Right and the Left of the political
spectrum.
o Places were ideological purity is valued, and ideological inconsistency is severely
punished.
Theodore Adorno/Freud--Fscale-- Determining Authoritarian Personality
o Key Findings: The book found that people who disliked one minority group
tended to dislike all minority groups.
o High scores on the F-scale tended to correlate with prejudice.
o Key critics:
1)F-scale was one-directional
2)Theory was built on Freuds ascientific Psychoanalytics
3)Authoritarian Personality was too broad; complicated
4)Members of both parties equally authoritarian so doesnt matter for
contemporary politics.

Altemeyer showed that only three traits were key, not 9:

Aggression (to out-groups/minorities)

Submission (to legitimate authority)
Conventionalism (a tendency towards black and white or good or evil thinking and a dislike
of ambiguity.)

Authoritarianism is NOT, NOT, NOT Political Conservativism.

Current research is starting to show that everyone has the potential to act in an
authoritarian fashion given the right external stimulation. Some individuals just always
seem to have this predisposition activated.
o The key item that activates Authoritarianism is a perceived threat from other
social groups or individuals or the economy. Having your safety, way of life, or
livelihood threatened activates peoples Authoritarian predispositions.

The following groups are generally found to have higher authoritarianism levels:

Those living in rural areas away from big cities

Those who have little formal education
Those in the working class
Those with small incomes
Those who regularly attend religious services, especially those who describe themselves as
evangelical or born-again Christians.
o
o
o

It is not permanent.
Education tends to lower authoritarianism and intolerance, having children
tends to raise authoritarian predisposition.
Education helps people understand ambiguous world and raises the threshold
to fell threat from minorities and out-groups.

The Republican Party has employed issues that excite and activate peoples
authoritarian predisposition since the 1968 presidential election in which Nixon
defeated Humphrey

Since the 1960s, authoritarians, especially in the South have migrated to the Republicans

Lecture 24 - Voters V
Evolutionary Benefits from AP

Authoritarianism is a psychological mechanism for facilitating collective action in a

world where collective action is often individually irrational due to free-riding
o activating the Authoritarian Predisposition of those both low and high on Auth.
within the public strengthens in-group ties (nationalism/ patriotism) and leads to
the desire to empower a strong leader to deal with the threa.
o Also results in intolerant behavior toward the appropriate out-group responsible
(Al-Qaeda)
Individuals confuse all Muslims with Al Qaeda and this leads to intolerant
behavior towards the wrong out-group

It turns out, when we analyze voting behavior, economic issues are nearly always more
responsible for the way people vote then cultural issues:
o Cultural issues polarize party activists and those who pay attention to politics,
not voters
o The media never reports on this
o It doesnt fit into their Culture War narrative, although that narrative does hold
at the elite and activist levels of parties
ecological fallacy -- using aggregate data to infer individual behavior. \

For instance the early media interpretation of the tea party movement characterized them as
being working class
Data shows that the movement is composed less of working class individuals than the
upper middle class
PCT:
Parties brand name is important for a number of reasons
Parties will act to protect it and tarnish that of the other party
Individual members have an incentive to change the label for their own benefit
The party empowers its leadership in the House to hold all of the important positions to force
members to vote with the party, even if they dont want to!
SPG:
What does SPG add to PCT?
Helps us to understand WHEN the party leadership will extert influence on members
It also helps us understand the consequences, especially in terms of party unity and electoral
response
Linked to the idea of PCT is the rise of teamsmanship (Lee) in Congressional Parties:
What does this mean?
It means that parties have begun to work against each other for the sake of working against
each other, not for legislative goals in and of themselves
What are the observable outcomes?
Hint: Which votes have become more polarized?
We can see that even procedural votes are voted along party lines now, and that
teamsmanship creates gridlock along the lines that would be predicted by PCT/SPG
What is the presidents relationship with the DNC/RNC?
What are the two main strategies a president employs vis--vis the party?
Party building invest resources in expanding base
Party predation reinvest resources in passing agenda

What problems due primaries pose for the party?

1.Primaries can force Parties to sometimes except candidates they dont like
2.Primaries also prevent parties in Congress from implementing Party Government
3.Primaries are costly in terms of campaigns and they often end up damaging candidates prior
to the general election
There are four fairly established problems with the primary process:
1)Front Loading
2)Media focus on expectations not actual results
3)Bandwagon Effects
4)Super-delegate Controversies
Different levels of Party Organization
Ideological activists helped to rebuild party infrastructure
Created donor networks which were ideological in nature to fund the parties
Started to invest in building campaign expertise in-house
Led to the eventual reemergence of party influence
Watergate led to reforms in campaign finance
Further reform was created under the McCain Feingold Act (BCRA)
Much of this was rolled back by the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court Case
-----How do political identities shape political behavior?
What is the basic framework of social identity theory?
What is the minimal groups paradigm?
Terms to know:
Self-classification
Metacontrast and normative fit?
What is the difference between an interpersonal identity and a social identity?

EXAM III
Lecture 25 - Social Movements I

in the 1950s, Political Parties in the United States were weak

o The political party at the Congressional level, was just another group that
pressured individual members of Congress to vote in one direction on legislation
or another(not even powerful)
parties became stronger and stronger and less and less like other
pressure groups over the last sixty years
Political Parties an pressure groups both:
1. They advocate for and against candidates
2. They draft and act to support legislation
3. They attempt to sway the public
Pressure Groups do not try to get formal control of the government through elections.
o If they do, they become a political party.
A Social Movement usually has a must broader and diffuse membership than an interest
group, which is more formal and bureaucratic in nature

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
1. Their members often have a shared identity or identification with the movement
a. This is similar to party identification for political parties
2. Often they have formal organizations associated with them in addition to their
psychological basis
.
These are called Social Movement Organizations or SMOs
i.
For instance the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s was a social movement which had
SMOs, like the NAACP .
These organizations often outlive the social movements that create them.
Individuals across the country did psychologically think of themselves as members of the
civil rights movement, but might not have been members of the SNCC and the NAACP
Interest groups do not generally have this potential psychological identification in the
mass public.
3.
Engage in Campaigns: sustained, organized public efforts making collective claims to
authorities
4.
Have a SM Repertoire, which contains a number of political actions the movement can
engage in
5.
Engage in WUNC displays (Worthiness, Unity, Numbers, Commitments) which
demonstrate themselves and their goals to the public

Mass Society Theory:(older Pre-1960s theory)

Under this theory, marginalized individuals come together to form social

movements
get a sense of belonging and empowerment strengthening their
attachment to the group.
even if it doesnt have a chance of rationally accomplishing its
goals.
Movements are better characterized as self-help groups than political
organizations. so social movements are not viewed as being effective.

Resource Mobilization Theory:

Social movements do not emerge spontaneously, but require resources to form

Discontent is secondary
It is similar to resource mobilization, but treats political opportunities as
crucial resources.

Political Process Theory:

There are three vital components for a movements to form:

1. Collective identity consciousness
2. Organizational strength
3. Political opportunities
Some Political Opportunities:
Growth of political pluralism
Decline in effectiveness of repression
Elite disunity; the leading factions are internally fragmented
A broadening of access to institutional participation in political processes
Support of organized opposition by elites

It is difficult to mark when a social movement dies.

The Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA; Van Zomeran et al. 2008) is the
culmination of a number of different lines of research regarding social movements and
individuals:
Identity is central and key

Also incorporates emotion, efficacy

Lecture 26 - Social Movements II

Issue Evolution is a theory of the effects of social movements on other components of

the political system

Politicians pick issues and use them to serve their various goals
Issues that work the best stay on the political agenda
But eventually they burrow themselves into political system in either a rapid or gradual
manner
If this process is rapid, it looks much like a realignment

In issue evolution, an issue is triggered by a random event which result in party leaders
to promote polarization in a manner that will most benefit them
o Elite and activist polarization always appears prior to mass polarization.. Public
follows as Congressional parties present platforms then slowly polarize on issue
following RAS model
EI- Civil Rights: Election of 1958
o Many of the new Northern Democrats were elected based on the strength of the
African-American vote in North. African-Americans were swing voters from
1932-1964.
These liberal Senators had appealed to these voters on economic issues
They could easily lose these voters back to the Republican party if the
economy recovered though
They needed an issue to keep African-American voters in their column
o Other more confrontational groups became active (by NAACP standards, not by
todays standard). One of these was SNCC or the Student Non-violent
Coordinating Committee to put movement on democrats
o At this same time period Lyndon Johnson (D-TX) needed an issue to prove to the
country that he was not a white supremacist and also appeal to the same AA
voters that put Democratic Candidates over the top in Northern states in 1958
(for racial liberalism)
Nixon developed his Southern Strategy which involved moving the party
to the right on racial issues in order to win the South
o In the early 1970s, the effect of these events on party activists became clear
By the end of the 1970s, nearly all of the activists that formed the core of
the Democratic party were racially liberal
Within the South, the core component of the Republican party became
solidly racially conservative
By this point, the race issue had thoroughly burrowed into the party
system at the elite level

As polarization on race broke out on elite and activists levels, it was only a
matter of time before the mass public shifted their attitudes to be more in-line
with elite messages.

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Lecture 27 - Social Movements III

Despite the fact that it was originally designed as an experimental control, the Minimal
Groups Paradigm helped establish that people display many of the same group
behaviors for weak, arbitrary group identities that they do for stronger and more
important identities.
Policy change is most likely to occur when it is supported by High-income Voters
these are the individuals to whom Congress is most response, according to recent data.
From an evolutionary standpoint, authoritarianism has been thought to provide some
benefit in threatening situations because it can help facilitate Collective Action.
Three of the problems with presidential primaries that we discussed are related to each
other. Identify them and explain how.
The media tends to focus on the horse-race aspect of elections (media effects)
As a result, earlier primaries mean much more than later ones (bandwagon effects)
Thus, states want to have earlier primaries because they can be more influential in candidate
selection, as well as pick up a nice chunk of advertising money (frontloading)

We discussed a number of important consequences of

partisan identity at the individual level. Explain how
partisan identity factors into the RAS model and motivated
reasoning.

Receive, Accept, Sample

Unsophisticated nonpartisan individuals accept any information that comes their way
because they dont know how to process it
Recall that partisans will accept information in a much more biased way

Motivated Reasoning

Partisans will also accept information in a more biased way

However, this effect is largely contingent on sophistication
These individuals often seek out information sources that serve their existing opinions
(Confirmation bias)
They are also skilled counter-arguers

Where does the gridlock we observe in congress

today come from? How can PCT/SPG help us to
understand it? What would Lee say?

PCT:

Reputation is the center of Congressional action

SPG:

However, MCs must consider the consequences of pivotal votes

Lee:

Focus on teamsmanship, which jives nicely with the predictions made by

PCT/SPG