Hans Noel

A Theory of Political Parties: Groups, Policy Demands and Nominations in American Politics

We propose a theory of political parties in which interest groups and activists are the key actors, and coalitions of groups develop common agendas and screen candidates for party nominations based on loyalty to their agendas. This theoretical stance contrasts with currently dominant theories, which view parties as controlled by election-minded politicians. The difference is normatively important because parties dominated by interest groups and activists are less responsive to voter preferences, even to the point of taking advantage of lapses in voter attention to politics. Our view is consistent with evidence from the formation of national parties in the 1790s, party position change on civil rights and abortion, patterns of polarization in Congress, policy design and nominations for state legislatures, Congress, and the presidency.

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.

The "Unfriending" Problem: The Consequences of Homophily in Friendship Retention for Causal Estimates of Social Influence

Abstract An increasing number of scholars are using longitudinal social network data to try to obtain estimates of peer or social influence effects. These data may provide additional statistical leverage, but they can introduce new inferential problems. In particular, while the confounding effects of homophily in friendship formation are widely appreciated, homophily in friendship retention may also confound causal estimates of social influence in longitudinal network data. We provide evidence for this claim in a Monte Carlo analysis of the statistical model used by Christakis, Fowler, and their colleagues in numerous articles estimating “contagion” effects in social networks. Our results indicate that homophily in friendship retention induces significant upward bias and decreased coverage levels in the Christakis and Fowler model if there is non-negligible friendship attrition over time.

Serving Two Masters: Using Referenda to Assess Partisan versus Dyadic Legislative Representation

Studies comparing the ideological leanings of voters and elected officials are often hampered by the lack of a common measure. The authors use legislative referenda—on which state legislators and voters both vote on the same issue—as bridging observations to develop a common measure for both. They use this measure to help assess two theories of legislative representation, the well-known dyadic model and a partisan model that assumes legislators are also accountable to a collective party agenda. Examining referenda votes during several sessions of the California Assembly, the authors report several findings that are consistent with the partisan model. They find that legislators are significantly more ideologically extreme than the median voter in their districts. They also find that members of the majority party are considerably more extreme relative to their districts than members of the minority party are and that the majority party becomes even more extreme the longer it maintains control of the chamber.

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.

The Coalition Merchants: The Ideological Roots of the Civil Rights Realignment

Over the course of the twentieth century, the Democratic and Republican parties have reversed positions on racial issues. This reversal is credited to a variety of factors, chief among them strategic decisions on the part of party leaders competing for votes. An original dataset of the opinions expressed by political thinkers in leading magazines and newspapers is used to develop a measure of ideological positions parallel to nominate scores for members of Congress. Results show that the current ideological pattern, in which racial and economic liberalism are aligned together, emerged among political intellectuals at least 20 years before it appeared in congressional voting. The finding is consistent with the view that ideology shapes party coalitions.

Tea Party Influence: A Story of Activists and Elites

Understanding how the Tea Party has affected congressional elections and roll call voting helps us understand not only an important political movement, but how movements affect politics more generally. We investigate four channels for the movement to influence political outcomes: activists, constituent opinion, group endorsement activity and elite-level self-identification. We find consistent evidence that activists mattered both electorally and for roll call voting on issues of importance to the movement. Constituent opinion had virtually no impact on either political outcome. Group endorsement activity had possible effects on elections, but mostly no effect on congressional voting. Self-identification among elites did not enhance—or harm—Republican electoral fortunes, but did affect congressional votes important to the movement. These divergent results illustrate how movement politics can influence outcomes through multiple channels and call into question the usefulness of the “Tea Party’’ moniker without important qualifiers.

Ten Things Political Scientists Know that You Don't

Many political scientists would like journalists and political practitioners to take political science more seriously, and many are beginning to pay attention. This paper outlines ten things that political science scholarship has learned that are at odds with much of the conventional wisdom of American politics.

Party Versus Faction in the Reformed Presidential Nominating System

Political scientists have devoted vastly more attention to general presidential elections than to party nominations for president. This emphasis might be reasonable if parties could be counted on to nominate generic representatives of their traditions. But it is clear that they cannot. Since the party reforms of the 1970s, regulars like Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, and Al Gore have sometimes won fairly easy nominations, but outsider candidates like Jimmy Carter and Howard Dean have made strong runs or even won. 2016 has produced extremes of both types: ultimate regular Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side and far outsider Donald Trump on the Republican side. It seems, moreover, that party regulars are having more difficulty in recent cycles than they did in the 1980s and 1990s. There is therefore some urgency to the question: when and why do party regulars tend to win nominations? We examine this question from the point of view of two well-known studies, Nelson Polsby’s Consequences of Party Reform and our own, The Party Decides . The former explains why incentives built into the reformed system of presidential nominations make outsider and factional candidates like Trump likely. The latter argues that, following the factional nominations of the 1970s, party leaders learned to steer nominations to insider favorites. This article uses the logic of these studies to argue that major trends over the past two decades – the rise of new political media, the flood of early money into presidential nominations, and the conflict among party factions – have made it easier for factional candidates and outsiders to challenge elite control of nominations.

Which long coalition? The creation of the anti-slavery coalition

How are party coalitions shaped and reshaped? Elected officials choose coalitions to win elections, but they must work to maintain those coalitions. Non-elected political actors, advancing an ideology at odds with the party coalition, can undermine the party. This article explores this possibility in the case of partisan change on slavery in the Antebellum United States. Intellectuals in 1850 divided into two camps over slavery and the other major issues of the day at a time when slavery cross-cut the two parties in Congress. The ideological division matches one that develops in Congress a decade later, suggesting that the parties responded not just to electoral incentives, but also to this elite division.