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Placing Parties in American Politics: Organization, Electoral Settings, and Government Activity in the Twentieth Century
Placing Parties in American Politics Organization Electoral Settings and Government Activity in the Twentieth Century Author:David R. Mayhew -"This book will be the leading contemporary study of party organization. and one of the leading studies of that subject, period."-Stanley Kelley, Jr., Princeton University This work on the structure of American parties combines the breadth that has been characteristic of voter analyses and the richness found in case studies of local party org... more »anizations. In a series of fifty sketches of the American states, David Mayhew maps local parties as of the late 1960s. from city and county machines and lesser patronage-based organizations to amateur club movements, municipal good government groups, and Minnesota's unusual Democratic-Farmer-Labor apparatus. Following this state-by-state analysis is a stimulating essay that traces the historical antecedents of the local structures of the 1960s back a century and more, and uses cross-sectional analysis to make connections such as the link during recent decades between patronage-based organizations and the size of the public sector. The essay closes by discussing the Progressive movement's hostility toward traditional party organization and the surprising turnaround of the 1930s, when traditional local organizations quickly made themselves a part of the New Deal. Professor Mayhew draws on hundreds of unusual sources, including over fifty unpublished dissertations, to describe the form, distribution, and effect of party structure in the twentieth century. He investigates one question in particular: how has the patronage-based organization handed down from the 1800s mattered to the conduct of politics? David R. Mayhew is Alfred Cowles Professor of Government at Yale University. He is the author of Party Loyalty among Congressmen: The Difference between Democrats and Republicans, 1947-1962 (Harvard) and Congress: The Electoral Connection (Yale).« less