The Losing Parties

Klinkner, Philip A.

doi:10.12987/9780300163360

Cited by 24 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…However, a different literature on national party organizations in American politics has raised questions about the extent to which the DNC and RNC are indeed mere bystanders. This scholarship has shown that a myriad of influential political actors within the parties-including presidents, Congressional leaders, governors, other elected officials, and party activists-pay considerable attention to their national committees, and often actively compete for control of these institutions (Klinkner 1994;Galvin 2010Galvin , 2020Conley 2013;Rosenfeld 2018;Heersink 2018aHeersink , 2018bHilton 2019).…”

Section: National Committees As Political Institutions: Service Provi...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…National committees also invested in subdivisions focused on setting policy positions for their party. After the 1956 presidential defeat, the DNC created the Democratic Advisory Council (DAC), which was given the right to set party policies for the Democratic Party as a national institution (Klinkner 1994). Under Butler, the DAC had a clear liberal slant and pushed the party to embrace pro-civil rights and union positions (Rosenfeld 2018).…”

Section: Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the recent move to an ideologically polarized party system has coincided with a marked increase in attention to political parties as institutions. Starting with a new wave of research on parties in Congress (Aldrich 1995;Cox and McCubbins 1993;Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991;Rohde 1991), partisanship and the presidency (Milkis 1993), and national party organizations (Goldman 1990;Klinkner 1994) in the 1990s, recent scholarship has dealt with a variety of topics related to parties that were previously ignored. 1 One of these topics has been the study of national party organizations, the Democratic and Republican National committees (DNC and RNC).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…A different strain of research has challenged this view. Starting with Klinkner's (1994) study on "out-party" committees-that is, parties out of the White House-a number of scholars have argued that national committees play a more important role than previously thought. They show that party leaders-including presidents, Congressional leaders, governors, and activists within the partiesfight for control over national party organizations and use this control to try shaping the party to their ideological liking (Galvin 2010(Galvin , 2012(Galvin , 2020Conley 2013;Rosenfeld 2018;Hilton 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…But how to alter a brand is often controversial, and the branding activities the national committees engage in regularly place them in the center of major intra-party debates about what policies their party should promote, or which voting groups it should target. Because they can be controversial, studies have also argued that the DNC and RNC regularly decrease some of their activities-including branding (Heersink 2018a)-and whether a party holds the White House is a particularly important predictor of committee activity decline (Klinkner 1994;Galvin 2010Galvin , 2012. Understanding how national committees operate and under what conditions they increase or decrease their branding role is important to our knowledge of the American political party system because it can explain how parties adjust their electoral coalitions, and when and how they change the policies they take on.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Examining Democratic and Republican National Committee Party Branding Activity, 1953–2012

Heersink¹

2021

Perspect. polit.

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Recent scholarship on the role of national party organizations in American politics—specifically, the Democratic and Republican National Committees—has argued that political science research has thus far undervalued the importance of these organizations. These studies have noted the importance that party leaders—including presidents, Congressional leaders, and governors—place on the national committees’ role in shaping a party brand. Notably, these studies are all qualitative historical accounts—perhaps because finding consistent quantitative data from within the DNC and RNC across time is complicated due to limitations in access to archival resources across both parties and time. I present a new quantitative data set measuring DNC and RNC activity on the basis of an external source: New York Times coverage of national committee activity in the period 1953–2012. I use this data to test the claim that, while “party branding” is a core national committee goal, the DNC and RNC do not consistently engage in it. I find that monthly New York Times references of party branding operations decline for parties that hold the White House. Meanwhile, coverage of other service operations does not decline, suggesting committees step back their branding role when their party has control of the executive branch of the federal government.

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