The Path to Polarization: McGovern-Fraser, Counter-Reformers, and the Rise of the Advocacy Party

Abstract

American politics has been transformed by the emergence of the advocacy party—a form of organization in which extraparty interest groups, advocacy organizations, and social movements substitute for the diminished institutional capacity and popular legitimacy of the formal party apparatus. Many scholars have rightly pointed to the presidential nomination reforms made by the Democratic Party's post-1968 Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection (known as the McGovern-Fraser Commission) as a key contributor to polarization by increasing the influence of ideological activists. However, I argue that polarization is not the direct result of the actions of McGovern-Fraser reformers, but rather the outcome of their pitched battle with intraparty opponents of reform, who, while failing to prevent changes to presidential nominations, were ultimately successful in defeating the party-building dimension of the reformers’ project of party reconstruction. The product of their intraparty struggle was a hybrid institutional amalgam that layered new participatory arrangements over a hollow party structure, thus setting the Democratic Party on a path toward the advocacy party and its polarizing politics.

Contentious Institutions and Party Orders in American Politics

“…Democrats have managed intraparty contention by constructing and maintaining a party order centered around interest group and social movement advocates, on which the party depends for its legitimacy and electoral success (Hilton 2019(Hilton , 2021. Democrats' dense linkages to outside advocacy groups has partially compensated for its "hollow" structure and its persistent failure to make organizational investments in in-house capacities to recruit and train candidates and officials, expand voter databases, innovate new communications technologies, or build state and local party organizations (Galvin 2010;Klinkner 1996;Schlozman and Rosenfeld 2019).…”

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

“…This was particularly important for the Democratic Party during the major reforms in response to the 1968 election. See Crotty 1978; Shafer 1983; Plotke 1996; Hilton 2019.…”

“…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).…”

“…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). The DNC and RNC are particularly valuable due to their publicity role, which party leaders try to use for party branding purposes-that is, shaping the A list of permanent links to Supplemental Materials provided by the authors precedes the References section.…”