Parties in Transition

✍ Scribed by Warren Miller, M. Kent Jennings

• Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
• Year: 1986
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 305
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Every four years, the drama of presidential selection inspires a reassessment of our political parties. Central to this assessment are the delegates who gather at Democratic and Republican national conventions. Parties in Transition presents a richly modulated body of data of the changing attitudes and behaviors of these delegates―their ideologies and loyalties, their recruitment into presidential politics, their persistence in or disengagement from it. Covering three recent sets of conventions and involving over five thousand delegates, this comprehensive study makes an essential contribution to our understanding of American party politics. "Richer and more authoritative than most of the best works in the field." ―Election Politics "A most important study of change in the American political scene....Richly deserves to be read." ―John H. Kessel, Ohio State University "[A] shrewd and sophisticated analysis....Both scholars and practitioners should read this book and ponder it." ―Austin Ranney, University of California, Berkeley

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Title page, Copyright, Dedication
Contents
List of Tables
List of Figures
Preface
1. Introduction: Background, Context and Objectives
2. The Circulation of Campaign Activists
3. Candidate Preferences
4. Party Reform: Social Compositon and Party Attachment
5. The Motivational Bases of Political Involvement
6. The Place of Parties, Issues, and Candidates in Presidential Campaigning
7. Partisan Cultures: Policy Preferences, Group Evalutions, and Ideological Attributes
8. The Dynamics of Interparty Conflict
9. Linkages Between Party Elites and Party Followers
10. Candidate Preferences, Circulation, and Mass-Elite Linkages
11. A Summing Up
Appendices
Appendix A - Delegate Attributes
Appendix B - The 1981 Survey
Appendix C - Comparison of Panel and Nonpanel Respondents
Appendix D - Patterns of Candidate Preference
Appendix E - Reasons for Political Involvement
Appendix F - Index Construction
Index