GOVT 312: Parties and Campaigns

1
GOVT 312 Parties and Campaigns

• Lecture 4 National Parties

2
Three Aspects of Parties

• Organization how parties organize as an entity
  unto themselves
• Electorate parties and voters
• Government how parties organize in government,
  especially the legislature

3
National Party Organizations

• The National Committees
• Democrats in 1972 adopted representation by
  population
• Republicans have equal representation for each
  state.
• Chairman presidential candidate names chairman,
  committees select other members.
• Rep Robert Mike Duncan (http//www.gop.org/)
• Dem Howard Dean (http//www.democrats.org/)

4
Internal Committees

• Young (Democrats/Republicans)
• Womens committees
• Minority Committees
• Congressional Campaign Committees
• House Dems DCCC
• House Reps NRCC
• Senate Dem DSCC
• Senate Rep NRSC

5
Two Party Strategies

• Republicans In the 1960s began to use
  computerized donor lists to raise money, which in
  turn was used to offer services to candidates
• Democrats
• First opened party nominations in the 1960s to
  break the hold of the Southern Democrats.
• Gave the national party control in the
  presidential nomination process.
• Openness led to internal divisions, and it wasnt
  until the 1980s that the Democrats started to
  mimic the successful strategy of the Republicans.

6
Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002
(BCRA)

• Prohibited soft money donations
• Increased hard money donations
• Was believed that BCRA would be the death of
  national political parties

7
Why voluntarily participate in any activity?

• Consider the Collective Action Problem
• Personal costs are high for an individual to
  volunteer
• The contribution of an individual to the outcome
  is small it makes no difference if the person
  volunteers or not
• The individual will receive the outcome of public
  policy (Public good) regardless of the outcome

8
Selective Incentives

• The Solution is to provide Selective
  Incentives to provide benefits (or costs) to
  the individual that are not directly related to
  the public good
• Unions baseball bats
• AAA insurance
• Government IRS
• Sierra club singles outings