The American Direct Primary
Subtitle: Party Institutionalization and Transformation in the North
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: October 14, 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 286
ISBN-13: 9780521814928
Subjects: Elections & referenda; Politics/International Relations; Political parties; Political Science; Politics / Current Events; USA; Primaries; Political Process - Political Parties; Political Science / General; History; Politics and government; United States
First sentence: This book aims to shed light on two crucial questions about political parties: Why are America's parties different from those in Europe?
Description: "This book rejects conventional accounts of how, and why, American political parties differ form those in other democracies. It focuses on the introduction of that most distinctive of American party devices, the direct primary, and argues that primaries resulted from a process of party institutionalization initiated by party elites. Thus, it overturns the widely accepted view that, between 1902 and 1915, direct primaries were imposed on the parties by antiparty reformers intent on weakening them. An examination of particular northern states shows that often the direct primary was not controversial, and only occasionally did it involve confrontation between party "regulars" and their opponents.

Rather, the impetus for direct nominations initially came from attempts within the parties to subject previously informal procedures to formal rules. However, it proved impossible to reform the older caucus-convention system effectively, and party elites then turned to the direct primary - a device that already had become more common in rural counties in the late nineteenth century."--Jacket.