BiblioVault - Books about Party Government

Monopoly Rule

Party Government in the American States

Janine A. Parry and Zoe Nemerever

University of Michigan Press, 2027

As the high drama of national elections keeps watchers on the edge of their seats, a different phenomenon altogether characterizes the politics of the American states: long-term one-party monopolies. Widely (and wrongly) assumed to be specific to the South, one-party domination is as ubiquitous as it is consequential. Monopoly Rule documents the startling pervasiveness of state party monopolies since the 1930s.

Even in the “battleground states” of recent presidential elections, Janine A. Parry and Zoe Nemerever make the case that one party or the other usually holds a large and enduring advantage outside the presidential contest. Using a novel State Party Control Index, the authors demonstrate the troubling effects of these partisan juggernauts, including upticks in elite malfeasance, voter complacency, and democratic backsliding. Despite the renewed willingness of contemporary party elites to advance their electoral success by rigging the rules, Monopoly Rule argues that contemporary state and local experiments in ranked choice voting, independent redistricting, and campaign finance reform offer options for reinvigorating the health of American democracy.

[more]

Statesmanship and Party Government

A Study of Burke and Bolingbroke

Harvey C. Mansfield

University of Chicago Press, 1965

In this incisive look at early modern views of party politics, Harvey C. Mansfield examines the pamphlet war between Edmund Burke and the followers of Henry St. John, First Viscount Bolingbroke during the mid-eighteenth century. In response to works by Bolingbroke published posthumously, Burke created his most eloquent advocacy of the party system. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the material, Mansfield shows that present-day parties must be understood in the light of the history of party government. The complicated organization and the public actions of modern parties are the result, he contends, and not the cause of a great change in opinion about parties.

Mansfield points out that while parties have always existed, the party government that we know today is possible only because parties are now considered respectable. In Burke’s day, however, they were thought by detractors to be a cancer in a free polity. Even many supporters of the parties viewed them as a dangerous instrument, only to be used cautiously by statesmen in dire times. Burke, however, was an early champion of the party system in Britain and made his arguments with a clear-eyed realism. In Statesmanship and Party Government, Mansfield provides a skillful evaluation of Burke’s writings and sheds light present-day party politics through a profound understanding of the historical background of the their inception.

[more]

Whatever Happened to Party Government?

Controversies in American Political Science

Mark Wickham-Jones

University of Michigan Press, 2018

In 1950, the Committee on Political Parties of the American Political Science Association (APSA) published its much-anticipated report, Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System. Highly critical of the existing state of affairs, the report became extremely controversial: before publication, scholars attacked the committee’s draft and suggested it should be suppressed. When released it received a barrage of criticisms. Most academics concluded it was an ill-conceived and mistaken initiative.

Mark Wickham-Jones provides the first full, archival-based assessment of the arguments within APSA about political parties and the 1950 report. He details the report’s failure to generate wider discussion between media, politicians, and the White House. He examines whether it was dominated by a dogmatic attachment to “party government,” and charts the relationship between behavioralists and institutionalists. He also discusses the political dimension to research during the McCarthyite years, and reflects on the nature of American political science in the years after 1945, the period in which behavioralism (which privileges the influence of individuals over institutions) became dominant.

Detailing APSA’s most direct and significant intervention in the political process, Wickham-Jones makes an important contribution to debates that remain in the forefront of discussions about American politics.

[more]