Gregory Koger

PARTISAN WEBS: INFORMATION EXCHANGE AND PARTY NETWORKS

What is a party? This article presents the argument that rmal party apparatus is only one part of an extended network of interest groups, media, other advocacy organizations and candidates. The authors have measured a portion of this network in the United States systematically by tracking lists of names transferred between political organizations. Two distinct and polarized networks are revealed, which correspond to a more liberal Democratic group and a more conservative Republican group. Formal party organizations, like the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee, tend to receive information within their respective networks, which suggests that other groups serve to funnel information towards the formal party.

Cooperative party factions in American politics

What are the primary factions within the Democratic and Republican parties, and to what extent do rival factions cooperate? We address these questions using a unique data set of information sharing between party organizations, media outlets, 527s, and interest groups. Using social network methods, we identify two major information-sharing clusters, or expanded party networks; these networks correspond to a liberal/Democratic grouping and a conservative/Republican grouping. We further identify factions within each party network, but we find a high degree of cooperation between party factions. That is, our data suggest that beneath the intraparty disagreements we observe in primary elections and policy debates there is a subterranean pattern of organizational cooperation.

Polarized Agents: Campaign Contributions by Lobbyists

Are professional lobbyists loyal partisans? There are thousands of professional lobbyists in Washington, D.C., who work with members of Congress and their staffs, many of whom also make contributions to congressional candidates and political parties. Although many lobbyists have backgrounds in partisan politics, they may have incentives to give money to candidates from both parties. This article finds that professional lobbyists tend to make personal contributions to their preferred party exclusively.

Strategic Party Government and the 2010 Elections

This article applies the strategic parties framework to the 111th Congress and 2010 election results that followed. In 2009-2010, the Democrats pursued an ambitious agenda over the nearly unanimous opposition of Congressional Republicans, leading to a high level of partisanship on both sides. This partisanship was costly in the 2010 elections. Like other papers on this election, we find some evidence that key roll calls were linked to decreased electoral vote share. However, the clearer pattern is that overall patterns of partisanship had a consistent detrimental effect on incumbents running for reelection.

The Oratory of Newt Gingrich

This chapter argues that Newt Gingrich has been a transformative figure in American politics. From 1979 to 1995, Gingrich’s rise to Speaker of the House brought a new rhetorical style to American politics. He helped define a new form of Republican rhetoric to emphasise the ideological distinctions between his own party and the Democrats. To do this, Gingrich encouraged his fellow Republicans to highlight policy differences between the parties and to characterise Congressional Democrats as fundamentally corrupt after decades in the majority power. Such was his ambition that he sought to portray the Republicans as the sole arbiters of honest politics in the United States.