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A close-up examination of the roots of congressional politics in nominations for the House of Representatives.

With most House seats all but guaranteed for one party in general elections, primary elections for party nominees often decide who goes to Congress. Yet primaries are notoriously difficult to study, due in part to both the variety of rules that govern them and the differences in the influence of local leaders. Based on wide-ranging evidence from field interviews to fundraising data to exit polls, Parties on the Ground overcomes these challenges to take readers under the hood for an in-depth look at the nomination process.

Although progressive reformers sought the adoption of primaries to empower voters’ control over nominations, Parties on the Ground finds that most voters pay too little attention to make use of the opportunity. Instead, the most important actors are intense policy demanders—such as interest groups and activist organizations—who supply campaign resources to some candidates and deny them to others. These groups care most about securing an agent for their own interests and values; to this end, they put serious effort into vetting candidates and often coordinate among themselves or with local parties in support of their choices. At the same time, competition between establishment and insurgent groups can be high, especially in the Republican Party. Developing a nuanced account of House nominations in today’s parties, Parties on the Ground offers a host of new insights into this understudied but significant piece of the puzzle of American politics.

A revealing, data-rich exploration of how American legislators transformed from active policymakers into party fundraisers.

Lawmakers in Congress and state legislatures across the United States spend enormous amounts of time and effort fundraising, not just for their own seats but for the party. Whether dialing for dollars or hosting high-priced fundraising events, the pursuit of campaign funds is now a massive part of the American legislator’s job description. What explains this transformation, and what are the consequences for public policy?

In Paying for the Party, Michael Kistner uses new theory and new data to answer these questions. He shows that state legislative party organizations—Democratic and Republican caucuses in capitols across the country—are responsible for turning their members into single-minded seekers of money. Parties reward legislators who contribute the most with powerful leadership and committee positions. Consequently, the members who now hold these agenda-setting positions are increasingly neither the most productive nor knowledgeable lawmakers, but rather those who can raise the most money. And when legislators are asked to raise more money, they skip committee hearings for fundraising events, enacting fewer substantive policies as a result. Paying for the Party shows that parties in contemporary American legislatures have hollowed out the policymaking capacity of their institutions and empowered a decidedly non-representative set of legislators.

Plebiscites, or referendums, are epitomes of direct democracy and the right of self-determination. While direct democracy has always been a key subject in the theory and practice of western liberal democracies, the issue of self-determination has been propelled to the fore by the hegemonistic moves of Russia. By providing a historical analysis of the post-World War One plebiscites, this book deals with enduring, painfully contemporary, and in in any case fundamental, concepts.

The contributors to this edited volume approach the referendums comparatively. After grounding the analysis theoretically, the authors look at detailed aspects of individual cases, with the two plebiscites held in the Danish-German border region of Schleswig in the winter of 1920 as points of departure. They then extend the exploration through the inter-war period and address the effects of border delimitations on everyday life or gender roles in the context of ethnic mobilization. Finally, the book places the post-World War One plebiscites in a long-term perspective. The concluding essays assess, among others, the applicability of plebiscitary solutions to contemporary conflicts, taking into consideration issues of borders, religion, language, identity, and minority rights.

Electoral assistance is the prototypical tool to promote democracy and the related goals of peace and development. Rather than assessing whether this tool achieves its intentions, Practicing Electoral Assistance explains how international support for election processes has become normal practice. For this practice-theoretical approach to world politics, Eva Johais combines theories and methods from anthropology, international relations, political science, and sociology. Based on multisited ethnographic fieldwork, she presents detailed empirical knowledge of the relevant institutions, organizations, actors, and actions. Practicing Electoral Assistance takes readers to hotel rooftops, embassies, government buildings, and offices in Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Conakry (Guinea), and to the United Nations headquarters in New York. Through this journey, readers come to understand that electoral assistance means different things: it is a mission for democracy promoters, an intervention tool for peacebuilders, a work for election experts, and a business line for managers of development organizations.  While the practice is anchored in the aid system, it has gained independence from the system’s structural constraints through the professionalization of election administration and the establishment of the transnational election profession.

Robert Kennedy's abbreviated run for the presidency in 1968 has assumed almost mythical proportions in American memory. His campaign has been romanticized because of its tragic end, but also because of the foreign and domestic crises that surrounded it. Yet while most media coverage initially focused on Kennedy's opposition to the Vietnam War as the catalyst of his candidacy, another issue commanded just as much of his attention. That issue was poverty. Stumping across the country, he repeated the same antipoverty themes before college students in Kansas and Indiana, loggers and women factory workers in Oregon, farmers in Nebraska, and business groups in New York. Although his calls to action sometimes met with apathy, he refused to modify his message. “If they don't care,” he told one aide, “the hell with them.”

As Edward R. Schmitt demonstrates, Kennedy's concern with the problem of poverty was not new. Although critics at the time accused him of opportunistically veering left in order to outflank an unpopular president, a closer look at the historical record reveals a steady evolution rather than a dramatic shift in his politics.