Richard Herrera

Activists and Conflict Extension in American Party Politics

Party activists have played a leading role in “conflict extension”—the polarization of the parties along multiple issue dimensions—in contemporary American politics. We argue that open nomination systems and the ambitious politicians competing within those systems encourage activists with extreme views on a variety of issue dimensions to become involved in party politics, thus motivating candidates to take noncentrist positions on a range of issues. Once that happens, continuing activists with strong partisan commitments bring their views into line with the new candidate agendas, thus extending the domain of interparty conflict. Using cross-sectional and panel surveys of national convention delegates, we find clear evidence for conflict extension among party activists, evidence tentatively suggesting a leading role for activists in partisan conflict extension more generally, and strong support for our argument about change among continuing activists. Issue conversion among activists has contributed substantially to conflict extension and party commitment has played a key role in motivating that conversion.

The Measurement Characteristics of Congressional Roll-Call Indexes

In this paper, we present an analysis of the measurement characteristics of five congressional roll-call indexes. Our analysis is based on a 1987 survey of members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the scores those representatives received on the following indexes: the Americans for Democratic Action index, the Conservative Coalition score and the three National Journal ratings. With these data, we examine the reliability and the validity of the roll-call indexes. We find the ADA and Conservative Coalition indexes to be valid measures of ideology. There are questions about the validity of the National Journal ratings. All the indexes were highly reliable.

The Structure of Opinion in American Political Parties

Scholars have long recognized the implications of the patterns of beliefs held by elite and mass partisans for a functioning democracy.’ The study of mass-elite linkages originally took the form of a bifurcation of party activists into leaders and followers.* More recent attempts to study mass-blite linkages are more inclusive and recognize the importance of ‘middle-level’ activists.’ One device used to describe and explain mass-elite relationships is the ‘opinion structure’ of political parties, the foremost vehicle for representation in democracie~.~ An opinion structure is a portrait of a political party’s substantive opinions on political issues once the party’s members are stratified by their level of activism. The description of a party’s opinion structure, therefore, requires a measurement of the ‘center of gravity’ for different strata of partisans.’ Once

Cohesion at the Party Conventions: 1980-1988

Studies of party cohesion commonly focus on support for party nominees and emphasize implications for electoral success. This article shifts that focus to the party organizations and explores the ramifications for opinion leadership and governing. It reports consistently low levels of issue coherence within both major parties, even among delegates who support the same candidate. These findings, the author concludes, pose an obstacle to programmatically coherent parties and hinder the successful transmission of clear alternatives to voters.