Perspectives on the Decline of Partisanship in the United States

1.  Introduction 4  Introduction...............................................................................................................4

2.  The concept of partisanship 5  

3.  Explaining the decline of partisanship 10  

3.1  Empirical Data 10  

3.2  Socio-economic factors and party identification 14  

3.3  The rise of issue voting and candidate voting 16  

4.  Consequences of the decline of party identification 19  

5.  Conclusion 21  

List of figures:

  Figure 2 1: The Seven-Point Party Identification Scale  

  Figure 3 1: The decline of party identification 1952-1992 general  

  Figure 3 2: The decline of party identification 1952-1980 Seven-Point Scale  

  Figure 3 3: Proportion of party identifiers voting for candidates  

  of other parties in presidential elections  

  Figure 3 4: Proportion of party identifiers voting for candidates  

  of other parties in local state elections  

  3  

1. Introduction

The question which role parties have in political life in the United States has concerned scholars for more than a century.

Beginning with the introduction of the first statewide primaries in South Caro- lina in 1896, when the power of candidate nomination was taken away from party bosses and transferred to all party members or affiliates, there is a te n-

dency that parties lose influence not only in elections and other political proc- esses, but also in everyday life in the United States.

In this paper I will try to draw a rough outline of the discussion that has taken place in the last decades in order to give an overview on different theoretical approaches to the decline of party identification as well as on some of the con-

sequences of this development. Naturally, this paper cannot deal with many other aspects of party identification, e.g. drawn from modernization theory or

psychology. 1 But, despite these limitations, the results presented in the conclud- ing chapter provide some evidence for the thesis that U.S. Parties are in a state of decline and that this decline can have severe impacts on U.S. political and

social life.

This paper is structured as follows: In chapter 2, I will draw an outline of the

different theoretical approaches to the concept of partisanship, ranging from socio-psychological attachment to Rational Choice theory and Multidimensional approaches. Chapter 3 is the longest part of this paper and deals with the rea-

sons for the decline of party identification. After discussing some empirical data,

I will turn to socio-economic factors leading to partisan dealignment before ana-

lysing the rise of issue and candidate voting. In chapter 4 I will present a brief outlook on some of the consequences of the decline of party identification on different levels of political and social life in the United States. The last chapter

consists of a short summary of the findings of this paper and some concluding remarks.

1 See, for example, Geoffrey Evans (ed.), The End of Class Politics? Class Voting in Comparative Con-

text, New York 1999, or John H. Aldrich, Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Party Poli-

tics an America, Chicago 1995.

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2. The concept of partisanship

The concept of partisanship, or party identification, 2 in the United States needs some closer investigation. This is the case, because unlike German par- ties, the Republican or Democratic parties are not mass parties and do not have

any kind of formal membership, or as Larry J. Sabato puts it: “Most American

vote rs identify with a party but do not belong to it.” 3 Thus, political scientists cannot use the data gathered from surveying membership numbers to measure the level of political participation in the United States. Another problem that arises is that “activists may attach themselves to individual candidates rather

than to parties and it is often difficult to decide when such activist should be

considered as supporters of that candidate’s party.” 4 Thus, in this chapter I will give a brief overview of the different aspects of party identification in the U.S. before examining some approaches for measuring identification and gathering comparable data.

Different views on party identification - The Michigan School

The scholarly literature in the field of party identification research offers a

wide array of reasons for which persons identify with a certain party. One of the most prominent approaches, concerned with socio-psychological attachment, is

laid out in The American Voter, a book first published in 1960 after an exte nsive survey on political attitudes and behaviour at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. In this book the authors, Angus Campbell et al, took a strong position for

the socio-psychological attachment thesis:

“Only in the exceptional case does the sense of individual attachment to party reflect a

formal membership or an active connection with a party apparatus. Nor does it simply

denote a voting record, although the influence of party allegiance on electoral behavior is

strong. Generally this tie is a psychological identification, which can persist without legal

recognition or evidence of formal membership and even without consistent record of

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party support.”

2 Both terms, partisanship and party identification, are used in the literature to describe the same issue.

3 Larry J. Sabato, The Party’s Just Begun. Shaping Political Parties for America’s Future, Boston 1988,

111.

4 Alan Ware, Political Parties and Party Systems, New York 1996, 90.

5 Angus Campbell et al, The American Voter, New York 1960, 121.

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Based on data gathered from two surveys, Campbell and his colleagues

came to the conclusion that the socio-psychological attachment displayed by the persons , who identified with a party could be regarded as a means for pre-

dicting their voting behaviour. This view “... catapulted them into the forefront of

the behavioural revolution in political science”, 6 and was subjected to criticism especially for its operationalization. 7 Apart from methodological criticism, Campbell’s conceptualization of party identification has been questioned by a number of political scientists especially because of the strong relationship be-

tween partisanship and electoral beha viour. 8

Different views on party identification – Rational Choice Models

There are several aspects that have led political scientists to question the

model proposed by Campbell and his colleagues. One approach that accepts the notion of the salience of psychological attachment for party identification but

identifies other sources of motivation for identification is the application of the economics of information to politics, labelled Rational Choice in recent scientific

discourse. 9 In this approach, individuals are seen as utility maximizing agents whose attachment to a certain party is not only based on affections to ideas or candidates but also on the party’s function as “information shortcut”. According

to this theory, parties are regarded as a means of gathering info rmation without having to undergo the process of direct information acquisition. In other words:

“Voters will rely on information shortcuts because they do not have much incen- tive to gather information about politics solely in order to improve their voting

choices”. 10

6 Sheldon Kamieniecki, Party Identification, Political Behavior, and the American Electorate, Westport 1985, 15.

7 Campbell and his associates developed a seven-point party identification scale measuring from Strong Democrats via Pure Independents to Strong Republicans. The complete theoretical conceptionalization and operationalization cannot be displayed in this paper. For a detailed description of their methodol-

ogy, see Ibid. 16f.

8 See, for example, Morris P. Fiorina, Retrospective Voting in American National Elections, New Haven 1981, 9-12, or Jack Dennis, “Theories of Turnout: An Empirical Comparison of Alienationist and Ra-

tionalist Perspectives”, in: William Crotty (ed.), Political Participation and American Democracy, New

York 1991, 23-67.

9 For an introduction to the use of rational choice theory in studies on participation and identification, see Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, New York 1957.

10 Samuel L. Popkin, The Reasoning Voter. Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns, Chicago 1991, 13.

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This theory has also provoked some criticism, mainly concerning the appli-

cation of the concept of information in a Rational Choice model of party identifi- cation. Downs’ often-quoted statement that “[i]t may be rational for a man to

delegate part or all of his political decision-making to others, no matter how im-

portant it is that he make correct decisions”, 11 makes clear that information is regarded merely as a utility that can be maximized by a channelling institution,

namely a party. This rather functionalist view, however, does not account for variables like normative predispositions, beliefs or the attachment to parties as

institutions in a democratic system. 12

Different views on party identification – The Multidimensional Model

Having examined the Michigan School’s model of psychological identifica-

tion and the Rational Choice model of utility maximization and information shortcuts, I will now turn to a multidimensional model, mainly shaped by Her-

bert F. Weisberg. 13 In his approach to party identification, Weisberg and some scholars who work with his model criticize three fundamental assumptions of

the Michigan School’s psychological model: (1) the assumption that people can identify with only one party rather than investigating their attitudes towards both parties; (2) the assumption that political independence is the exact opposite of

party identification; (3) the assumption that parties are more important than the

Americans’ identification with the party system. 14 Weisberg’s main argument against these assumptions is that persons –and thus voters- can have multiple and varied identifications. He tries to show this at the example of sports. His argument is that it is possible to identify with teams

from rivalling cities at the same time, e.g. identifying with the New York Ya n- kees (baseball) and the New Jersey Devils (hockey). Transferred to party iden-

tification this model proposes that

“[s]ome people might actually consider themselves both Republicans and Democrats.

Some might be Independents because they like both parties equally, and still others

might be Independents because they positively value political independence. Indeed,

11 Downs, Economic Theory of Democracy, 233.

12 Martin P. Wattenberg, The Decline Of American Political Parties 1952-1992. Cambridge, Mass. 1994, 15f.

13 Herbert F. Weisberg, ”A Multidimensional Conceptualization of Party Identification”, in: Political Behavior, Vol. 2 No. 1 (1980), 33-60.

14 Kamieniecki, Party Identification, 27f.

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