UCLA Theory of Parties Meets New Evidence: A Study of U.S. House Nominations

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

American political scientists have long viewed political parties as teams of politicians whose goal is to control government offices through elections. The team promises what it will do if elected and stands for re-election based on its record. More recent work has argued that parties exist to serve ambitious politicians whose goal is, once again, to gain office by winning elections.

These views imply that parties and their politicians offer programs of maximum appeal to voters. Bawn et al (2012) challenged this prevailing wisdom, arguing that party nominations are controlled by organized groups seeking representation for non-centrist agendas, conceding to voters only the minimum needed to win. The difference between what parties offer and voters prefer is masked by rhetoric.

Despite modest supporting evidence, the paper attracted scholarly attention. Google Scholar currently reports 880 citations, including some in comparative as well as in American politics. In an Annual Review article, Nolan McCarty and Eric Schickler said that this paper and associated work “made a major contribution to our understanding of party politics, breathing new life into important debates about the limitations of democratic responsiveness.” They also leveled strong criticisms, including its limited empirical support.

Seeking evidence related to the claim that groups control parties by controlling nominations, we conducted a study of winnable open seat nominations for the House of Representatives in the 2013-14 electoral cycle. That study is now nearing completion in the form of a book called Parties on the Ground by Bawn, Knox Brown, Angela Ocampo, John Ray, Shawn Patterson, and Zaller. The main evidence is from field interviews in 40 of the 55 races. The book also reports exit surveys of voters in four contests and a study of newspaper coverage.

Reasons that parties scholars may be interested in critical dissection of this book in an “authors meet critics” session include: it presents new evidence on a basic question about the nature of political parties; it employs an under-utilized form of evidence, field interviews over a large number of political units, revealing patterns of behavior not otherwise observable; it sheds light on open seat primaries, the most competitive election in a typical Representative’s career.

The Parties on the Ground study’s main finding is that most winning campaigns were “anchored” in a single group or party organization, in the sense that the group or party provided support sufficient to make the candidate a viable contender. Support included money, field clearing, and campaign volunteers.

Anchoring groups were the usual suspects of American interest group politics – business, manufacturing, finance, energy producers, and churches for Republican candidates; labor and rights groups for Democrats. National Political Action Committees, such as Club for Growth and EMILY’s List, were also sometimes important. Anchoring parties took several forms – modern patronage machines, group dominated party committees, informal associations of activists and leaders, and national campaign committees (DCCC or RNCC).

About 45 percent of primary winners anchored their campaigns in an interest or values group and another 40 percent in some form of party. Note, however, that the categories can overlap, since parties regularly act as managers of group interests.

Groups and parties might have simply backed candidates likely to win anyway, hoping to ingratiate themselves with future lawmakers. But this is not what we observed. Groups and parties wanted candidates capable of winning, but they also wanted politicians with records of commitment to group issues and competence in dealing with them. To ensure that candidates met these requirements, groups utilized “vetting and vouching networks,” centered around leaders who knew or investigated candidates and made recommendations to network members. Vetting and vouching networks are a way for groups and parties to mobilize their ranks in support of preferred candidates and hence a major element in candidate success.

Candidates seldom emphasized the agendas of their group and party sponsors in campaigns. But support for sponsors’ goals was nonetheless often the reason that winning candidates had the support they did. In this basic sense, group and party agendas organized competition in a majority of our 55 cases.

Group and party agendas varied. Some wanted narrow, material benefits; others had broader, values-based goals. Among Republicans, this difference crystalized as conflict between “establishment” and “insurgent” wings. There was less conflict among Democrats in 2014, but this comparative agreement is as significant as disharmony (as has lately emerged) would have been.

The emergent picture is one in which groups and parties managing group interests seek the nomination of agents who will work for group agendas in Washington.

Sub Unit

• Division 35: Political Organizations and Parties

Chair

• Hans Noel Georgetown University

Presenters

• Nolan McCarty Princeton University

• Eric Schickler University of California, Berkeley

• Angela Ximena Ocampo University of Texas at Austin

• John R. Zaller University of California, Los Angeles

• Kathleen Bawn University of California, Los Angeles

• Sarah F. Anzia University of California-Berkeley