Aldrich (1995) Why Parties?

class notes 11.05.07

People who studny proganizations studiy three different reasons peple hve for joining:

incentives systems (3):

(1) material/instrumental: join for material benefits. people will support politicians who will make them better off (i.e. Reagan: "are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?") superficial and self-interested. (patronage benefit seeks; people who want contracts, jobs, subidies and other things that appeal to our self-interest). Blackwater USA has made a lot of money because of federal contracts; also, Bill Allen and oil in Alaska--government contracts that bring in revenue.


(2) solidary: human linkages, social solidarity. join for social interaction.

(3) purposive: people join organizations for a larger purpose--the benefit of the broader good; i.e. people who contribute to the boys and girls club, or animal cruelty otganizations. encompasses the policy activists.

Parties are driven from the top-down. they are driven by political actors (activists and politicians) seeking reelection (politicians want to be POLITICIAN, for whatever reason, they want to stay in office--career driven). but in order to do this, they may have to heed their constituents, and not just special interests.



reading notes:

Aldrich (1995) reading notes

Rational Choice Institutionalist Theory

Why Parties?
Aldrich’s basic argument is that political parties are the creation of politicians, ambitious office seekers, and officeholders, designed for the electoral ends they bring about (winning elections).

Parties are seen as ENDOGENOUS (That is, they are a creation of the actors themselves, which are INTERNAL. As opposed to exogenous institutions, which are created by an external source). The ACTORS are officeholders, and benefit seekers (their goal realization depends upon the party’s success in capturing office); not voters.

Three other views of the party
(1) parties are diverse coalitions (V.O. Key)
America political parties are broad and encompass a number of diverse interests
(2) parties are responsible; responsible parties thesis (Schattscheider)
normative
ideal type
a. make political commitments to electorate
b. carry out the commitments
c. develop alternatives to government policies when out of office
d. differ, giving electorate a range of options (diverse party platforms)
(3) parties are competitive (Downs)
parties are a team, that organizes to pursue goals (elections). They seem public support, to do so.

Important to consider, while reading:
Are parties strong? Weak? Do they matter/are they important? Obviously, Aldrich (1995) holds that they do matter, and indeed are strong, depending on location (i.e. party electorate, party in government, party organization) and historical context.

WHY PARTIES? They solve three (3) problems:
(1) The problem of Collective Action
The collective action problem contends that individually rational choices = inferior collective outcome (i.e. tragedy of the commons). Also, the c.a. problem is when “there are shared interests—ends that all value with some collectivity—but when it is not in people’s individual interests to contribute to that end” (100).
Consider game theory: for example, in certain game theory contexts, i.e. the prisoner’s dilemma, both prisoners, acting in their own self-interest end up failing. Parties help to overcome this problem, by organizing and mobilizing similar interests; parties aggregate interests.
Consider the calculus of voting (the trouble of mobilization in the face of little incentive):
R = PB + D –C
R=reward (if R is positive, one will vote)
P= probability that one’s vote will affect the outcome (near nil)
B= benefit (one will receive from the election of the more preferred candidate)
D= duty
C= costs
Parties can lower voting costs in order to ensure a positive “R” and thus, that people will vote.

(2) The Social Choice problem (the problem of true preference)
Arrow’s Possibility Theorem
When people are asked to rank their preferences, their individual prefs may not mirror that of the collective. Thus, it is a problem, because if considering government policies, govs have trouble aggregating different individual prefs to appease everyone. The way to overcome this problem is to instate a decision rule.
For example:
Individual preference > decision rule > societies preference.
An example of a decision rule is majority rule. But largely, no one’s no. 1 preference ends up being the rule.

(3) The Problem of Ambition (Ambition theory)
ambitious people are attracted to political; they are potentially corrupt; political parties serve as a gatekeeper—they regulate access to political offices.

Part 2 merely outlines the three problems (Social Choice, Collective Action and Ambition) with examples. Each example provides a principle, interests and institutional explanations to the paradox of why parties?

Social Choice and the foundation of the first parties (party in government):
The great principle
The PROBLEM facing Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison was over the power of federal government. How active should/would the federal government be? The SOLUTION was to turn to political parties. Hamilton and Jefferson/Madision set about organizing their support (big gov, v. small gov. which Aldrich called the “great principle”). “These efforts were driven by the consequences of majority instability, that is, by the social choice problem” (69). “The argument then is that what eventually became political parties in the modern sense were the solutions to one of the remaining great constitutional questions…Parties, therefore, eventually formed as institutional solutions to the instability of majority rule so that policies chosen or denied would reflect, in the main, just how strong and active the new national government was to be” (72).
The efforts by Hamilton and Jefferson to gradually strengthen political parties was to rally support for their position on the “great principle,” due to disequilibrium. “That is, institutional arrangements could induce equilibrium where preferences alone would not” (77). “PARTIES WERE CREATED TO HELP CONTRAIN VOTING TO BE BASED MORE HEAVILY ON THE GREAT PRINCIPLE, IN LARGE MEASURE, BY RELATING ALL OTHER ISSUES TO THE PARTISAN-GREAT PRINCIPLE DIMENSION” (91). “The first party system can be understood only as based in part on seeking to ensure that the actors’ beliefs about the appropriate size and power of the new federal government would be realized” (67).

Collective Action and Jacksonian democracy (mass parties):
Party principle
The PROBLEM facing Martin Van Buren was “to gather the resources sufficient to mobilize an increasingly far-flung electorate, so that Democrats could capture and use office for partisan purposes over a series of elections. To do so [he] invented the modern mass political party and, along with the Whigs, created what was unequivocally the first two-party system” (65). “The Jacksonian Democratic party can be understood only as an attempt to enact the “party principle.” The second party system can be understood only by its creators’ seeking in party to avoid the slavery issue and the threat it posed to the Union” (67). Van Buren avoided the slavery issue by creating the party, and monitoring/controlling the agenda.

Ambition theory and the Whigs and Republicans
The PROBLEM facing the Republicans was attracting supporters. In order to do so they expanded their platform to envelop an antislavery position. “The republican party ad most of its leaders were antislavery in outlook, but not abolitionists. It was northern party and it was a policy focused in appeal, but it was not an ideological party. This is, it was not solely antislavery or extremist. It was led by AMBITIOUS politicians who desired to see it become a viable, major party and who acted to see that that was accomplished. From a core of antislavery sentiment, it expanded broadly enough to achieve major party status” (156). “The third party system, and especially the actions of those who would become Republicans, can be understood only as in part the attempt to move in an increasingly antislavery direction” (67).



Part 3 looks at the party, in contemporary America:

Chapter 6 Party Activists and Party Cleavages
Why ideologically distinctive parties, even though conventional wisdom contends that there isn’t a dimes worth of difference between the two parties? “The answer I propose is a theory of parties-in-elections that leads to the existence of party cleavages in equilibrium nd to incentives for candidates to converge along those livs of cleavage in spite of countervailing incentives to converge to the policy center for attractiveness of popular support” (178).
The party-in-elections is Aldrich’s conception of the traditional party-in-electorate. He adopts the “elections” part because he sees them as external to the party, not internal, like the actors they aim to sway.
Aldrich (1995) distinguishes between activists (policy and patronage) and candidates.
PATRONAGE ACTIVISTS: more characteristic of Van Buren era; these activists depend on the party for jobs/contracts
POLICY ACTIVISTS: characteristic of today’s party; motivated by policy goals; “policy-motivated activists are typically under less pressure to support any party or candidate…they volunteer…” and the candidate is an instrument for achieving goals (182). “Activists have become a separate force to constrain the candidates…” they are less compatible, unlike patronage seekers which were more compatible with the candidate (183).

How do policy-motivated activists lead to the perception of ideologically partisan candidates? (3) ways:
(1) candidate recruitment
(2) candidate nomination
(3) activists = needed resource

Chapter 7 Political Parties and Governance
Parties serve to eliminate the collective action problem (207).
There are also partisan cleavages in government