The Life of the Parties

The Life of the Parties PDF

Author: James Reichley

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 9780742508880

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Election year 2000 is an appropriate season to reprise the first major history of American political parties in nearly forty years. In this classic work, James Reichley traces the decline of political parties resulting in divided government and an ineffectual political process but he also shows us what it will take to restore the party system and how it could work to revitalize our democracy. For the first time in paperback, The Life of the Parties includes updates on third party movements, political cycles and realignments, campaign finance reform, and other recent electoral trends. Citizens disillusioned by years of political disarray will find much to reflect upon in Reichley's monumental analysis of the lessons of party history and our contemporary political predicament."

How America’s Political Parties Change (and How They Don’t)

How America’s Political Parties Change (and How They Don’t) PDF

Author: Michael Barone

Publisher: Encounter Books

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 1641770791

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The election of 2016 prompted journalists and political scientists to write obituaries for the Republican Party—or prophecies of a new dominance. But it was all rather familiar. Whenever one of our two great parties has a setback, we’ve heard: “This is the end of the Democratic Party,” or, “The Republican Party is going out of existence.” Yet both survive, and thrive. We have the oldest and third oldest political parties in the world—the Democratic Party founded in 1832 to reelect Andrew Jackson, the Republican Party founded in 1854 to oppose slavery in the territories. They are older than almost every American business, most American colleges, and many American churches. Both have seemed to face extinction in the past, and have rebounded to be competitive again. How have they managed it? Michael Barone, longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, brings a deep understanding of our electoral history to the question and finds a compelling answer. He illuminates how both parties have adapted, swiftly or haltingly, to shifting opinion and emerging issues, to economic change and cultural currents, to demographic flux. At the same time, each has maintained a constant character. The Republican Party appeals to “typical Americans” as understood at a given time, and the Democratic Party represents a coalition of “out-groups.” They are the yin and yang of American political life, together providing vehicles for expressing most citizens’ views in a nation that has always been culturally, religiously, economically, and ethnically diverse. The election that put Donald Trump in the White House may have appeared to signal a dramatic realignment, but in fact it involved less change in political allegiances than many before, and it does not portend doom for either party. How America’s Political Parties Change (and How They Don’t) astutely explains why these two oft-scorned institutions have been so resilient.

Great Parties

Great Parties PDF

Author: Martha Stewart

Publisher: Clarkson Potter

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 060980099X

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Offers advice on planning menus and table setting for different types of parties, including Texas barbecues, skating parties, and country picnics.

Why Parties?

Why Parties? PDF

Author: John H. Aldrich

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2012-07-24

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0226012751

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Since its first appearance fifteen years ago, Why Parties? has become essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the nature of American political parties. In the interim, the party system has undergone some radical changes. In this landmark book, now rewritten for the new millennium, John H. Aldrich goes beyond the clamor of arguments over whether American political parties are in resurgence or decline and undertakes a wholesale reexamination of the foundations of the American party system. Surveying critical episodes in the development of American political parties—from their formation in the 1790s to the Civil War—Aldrich shows how they serve to combat three fundamental problems of democracy: how to regulate the number of people seeking public office, how to mobilize voters, and how to achieve and maintain the majorities needed to accomplish goals once in office. Aldrich brings this innovative account up to the present by looking at the profound changes in the character of political parties since World War II, especially in light of ongoing contemporary transformations, including the rise of the Republican Party in the South, and what those changes accomplish, such as the Obama Health Care plan. Finally, Why Parties? A Second Look offers a fuller consideration of party systems in general, especially the two-party system in the United States, and explains why this system is necessary for effective democracy.

The Life of the Parties

The Life of the Parties PDF

Author: James Reichley

Publisher:

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13:

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Contending that a restored party system remains the best hope for revitalizing our democracy, Reichley uncovers the historic sources of this system, the pitfalls the parties encountered during earlier efforts at reform, and how they arrived at their current weakened state. Reichley recalls that the Founders took a dim view of parties and tried to prevent their emergence. But by the end of George Washington's first term as President, two parties, one led by Alexander Hamilton and the other by Thomas Jefferson, were competing for direction of national policy. The two-party system, complete with national conventions, party platforms, and armies of campaign workers, developed more fully during the era of Andrew Jackson. The Civil War Republicans, led by Abraham Lincoln, were the first to achieve true party government, and Franklin Roosevelt produced a second golden age of party government in the 1930s.

All Tomorrow's Parties

All Tomorrow's Parties PDF

Author: Rob Spillman

Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published: 2016-04-05

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 0802190405

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“In this carefully wrought coming-of-age memoir, a young American writer searches for home in an unlikely place: East Berlin immediately after the fall of the wall.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review Rob Spillman—the award-winning, charismatic cofounding editor of the legendary Tin House magazine—has devoted his life to the rebellious pursuit of artistic authenticity. Born in Germany to two driven musicians, his childhood was spent among the West Berlin cognoscenti, in a city two hundred miles behind the Iron Curtain. There, the Berlin Wall stood as a stark reminder of the split between East and West, between suppressed dreams and freedom of expression. After an unsettled youth moving between divorced parents in disparate cities, Spillman would eventually find his way into the literary world of New York City, only to abandon it to return to Berlin just months after the Wall came down. Twenty-five and newly married, Spillman and his wife, the writer Elissa Schappell, moved to the anarchic streets of East Berlin in search of the bohemian lifestyle of their idols. But Spillman soon discovered he was chasing the one thing that had always eluded him: a place, or person, to call home. In his intimate, entertaining, and heartfelt memoir, Spillman narrates a colorful, music-filled coming-of-age portrait of an artist’s life that is also a cultural exploration of a shifting Berlin. “With wry humor and wonder, Spillman beautifully captures the deadpan hedonism of the East Berliners and the city’s sense of infinite possibility.” —The New York Times Book Review “A thrilling portrait of the artist as intrepid young adventure seeker.” —Vanity Fair “Convivial, page-turning . . . Spillman’s life is a good one to read.” —The Washington Post

The Parties Versus the People

The Parties Versus the People PDF

Author: Mickey Edwards

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2012-08-22

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 0300186029

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“An urgent and engaging look at how American politics have become the founding fathers’ worst nightmare” (The Daily Beast). America’s political system is dysfunctional. We know it, yet the problem seems intractable—after every election, voters discover yet again that political “leaders” are simply quarreling in a never-ending battle between the two warring tribes. As a former congressman, Mickey Edwards witnessed firsthand how important legislative battles can devolve into struggles not over principle but over party advantage. He offers graphic examples of how this problem has intensified and reveals how political battles have become nothing more than conflicts between party machines. In this critically important book, he identifies exactly how our political and governing systems reward intransigence, discourage compromise, and undermine our democracy—and describes exactly what must be done to banish the negative effects of partisan warfare from our political system and renew American democracy. “Overcoming tribalism and knee-jerk partisanship is the central challenge of our time. Mickey Edwards shows why and how in this fascinating book filled with sensible suggestions.” —Walter Isaacson, New York Times–bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci “Many Americans, whether Democrats, Republicans, independent or otherwise, would welcome a few more like [Edwards] in office.” —The Boston Globe

Parties and Politics in America

Parties and Politics in America PDF

Author: Clinton Rossiter

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-08-06

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1501718665

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A distinguished historian and political scientist provides a forthright and objective account of American party politics in this concise and invaluable guide. In vigorous and lively language he examines the two major parties—"the peacemakers of the American community"—describing their historic functions and the way they have helped to achieve national unity. He discusses their make-up, their achievements and failures, the images each has established of itself and of the opposition party. The demographic forces influencing the American voter and the complex question of how the parties actually differ receive thought-provoking treatment. This invigorating analysis of the hard facts of American political life will live far beyond the election year of 1960.

Tomorrow's Parties

Tomorrow's Parties PDF

Author: Jonathan Strahan

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-08-23

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780262544436

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Twelve visions of living in a climate-changed world. We are living in the Anthropocene—an era of dramatic and violent climate change featuring warming oceans, melting icecaps, extreme weather events, habitat loss, species extinction, and more. What will life be like in a climate-changed world? In Tomorrow’s Parties, science fiction authors speculate how we might be able to live and even thrive through the advancing Anthropocene. In ten original stories by writers from around the world, an interview with celebrated writer Kim Stanley Robinson, and a series of intricate and elegant artworks by Sean Bodley, Tomorrow’s Parties takes rational optimism as a moral imperative, or at least a pragmatic alternative to despair. In these stories—by writers from the United Kingdom, the United States, Nigeria, China, Bangladesh, and Australia—a young man steals from delivery drones; a political community lives on an island made of ocean-borne plastic waste; and a climate change denier tries to unmask “crisis actors.” Climate-changed life also has its pleasures and epiphanies, as when a father in Africa works to make his son’s dreams of “Viking adventure” a reality, and an IT professional dispatched to a distant village encounters a marvelous predigital fungal network. Contributors include Pascall Prize for Criticism winner James Bradley, Hugo Award winners Greg Egan and Sarah Gailey, Philip K Dick Award winner Meg Elison, and New York Times bestselling author Daryl Gregory.

The Life of the Parties

The Life of the Parties PDF

Author: Ronald Rapoport

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2014-10-17

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0813156408

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Commentators, especially since the Democratic party reforms following 1968, have expressed serious concerns about the role of party activists in the American political system. Have they become so concerned with ideological purity that they are unable to nominate strong candidates? Are activists loyal only to particular interest groups, with little concern for the parties as institutions? Are the reformed nominating procedures open to takeover by new activists, who exit the party immediately after the presidential nominations fight? With such an unrepresentative set of activists, can parties adjust to changing environments? Based on a survey of more than 17,000 delegates to state presidential nominating conventions in eleven states in 1980, this pathbreaking book addresses these questions in a comprehensive way for the first time. Heretofore most of the generalizations about party activists in the presidential nomination process have been based on studies of national convention delegates, in particular those attending the 1972 conventions. But those delegates were atypical activists, as this book shows. The state of the activist stratum of the parties differs from what many of the critics have suggested.