Patronage regimes and American party development from 'the age of Jackson' to the progressive Era

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 36, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 39-60

  James, Scott C ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 29144518401     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123406000032     Document Type: Article

References (102)

1. Arthur Schlesinger Jr, The Age of Jackson (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1945);
2. William E. Nelson, 'Officeholding and Powerwielding: An Analysis of the Relationship between Structure and Style in American Administrative History', Law & Society Review, 10(1976), 187-233;
3. Michael E. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986);
4. Joel Silbey, The American Political Nation, 1838-1893 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991);
5. Robert Wiebe, Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
6. Theodore Lowi, 'Party, Policy, and Constitution in America', in William Nisbet Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham, eds, The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development, 2nd edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975);
7. Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982);
8. Mark W. Summers, The Plundering Generation: Corruption and the Crisis of the Union, 1849-1861 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987);
9. Richard Oestreicher, 'Urban Working-Class Political Behavior and Theories of American Electoral Polities', Journal of American History, 74 (1988), 1257-86;
10. Mark W. Summers, The Era of Good Stealings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993);
11. Daniel P. Carpenter, The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputations, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862-1928 (Princeton, Conn.: Princeton University Press, 2001).
12. A provocative analysis that locates patronage parties at the centre of Progressive Era party reform initiatives (at least as regards the direct primary) is in Alan Ware, The American Direct Primary: Party Institutionalization and Transformation in the North (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
13. See, for example, Carl Russell Fish, 'Lincoln and the Patronage', American Historical Review, 8 (1902), 54-5;
14. Erik McKinley Eriksson, 'The Federal Civil Service under President Jackson', Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 13 (1927), 517-40;
15. Dorothy Ganfield Fowler, The Cabinet Politician: The Postmasters General, 1829-1909 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943);
16. Joseph L. Bristow, Fraud and Politics at the Turn of the Century (New York: Exposition Press, 1952);
17. Leonard D. White, The Jacksonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1829-1861 (New York: Macmillan; 1954);
18. Leonard D. White, The Republican Era: A Study in Administrative History, 1869-1901 (New York: Macmillan, 1958);
19. Harlan Hahn, 'President Taft and the Discipline of Patronage', Journal of Politics, 28 (1966), 368-90;
20. Carl E. Prince, New Jersey's Jeffersonian Republicans: Genesis of an Early Party Machine, 1789-1817 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1967).
21. On polity feedback and political development, see Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992);
22. Paul Pierson, Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994);
23. Robert Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998);
24. Jacob S. Hacker, The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
25. Ronald P. Formisano, 'Deferential-Participant Politics: The Early Republic's Political Culture, 1789-1840', American Political Science Review, 68 (1974), 473-87;
26. Ronald P. Formisano, 'Federalists and Republicans: Parties, Yes - System, No', in Paul Kleppner, ed., The Evolution of American Party Systems (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981), pp. 33-76;
27. William Crotty, American Parties in Decline, 2nd edn (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1984);
28. Joseph A. Schlesinger, Political Parties and the Winning of Office (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991);
29. John Aldrich, Why Parties ? The Origins and Transformation of American Political Parties (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995);
30. Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).
31. Skowronek, Building a New American State;
32. Richard L. McCormick, The Party Period and Public Policy: American Politics from the Age of Jackson to the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986);
33. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928;
34. Silbey, The American Political Nation, 1838-1893.
35. However, see Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000).
36. 'After the Fall' is the title of the concluding chapter in Silbey, The American Political Nation.
37. Burnham, Critical Elections;
38. William Nisbet Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham, The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development, 2nd edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975);
39. Kleppner, ed., The Evolution of American Electoral Systems;
40. James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States, 2nd edn rev. (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1983);
41. David Brady, Critical Elections and Congressional Policy Making (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988):
42. Jerome M. Clubb et al., Partisan Realignment: Voters, Parties, and Government in American History (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990);
43. Shefter, Political Parties and the State.
44. Skowronek, Building a New American State;
45. Theodore Lowi, The Personal President (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985);
46. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers;
47. Shefter, Parties and the State;
48. Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line.
49. White, The Jacksonians;
50. White, The Republican Era;
51. Rogers Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997);
52. Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1839-1877 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991);
53. Richard Franklin Bensel, The Political Economy of American Industrialization, 1877-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000);
54. Polsky, 'Partisan Regimes'.
55. Burnham, Critical Elections;
56. Chambers and Burnham, The American Party Systems;
57. Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System, 1853-1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Culture (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1979);
58. Kleppner, The Evolution of American Electoral Systems.
59. While my choice of 1897 to begin the Progressive Era might seem unconventional, it is not unreasonable. First, the origins of Western Progressivism are directly rooted in the Populist agitation of the 1880s and 1890s, a political movement that climaxed in the dramatic presidential election of 1896. Second, recent scholarship on William McKinley has recast him in many ways as 'the first modern president', exercising effective leadership over Congress, anticipating Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson in their use of the press and public opinion, and showing himself to be more reform minded that previously scholarship had allowed. (It was, after all, the great Progressive reformer Robert M. La Follette, himself a 'devoted admirer' of McKinley, who remarked that the president 'represented "the newer view," and "on the great questions arising was generally on the side of the public against the private interests."') On William McKinley's presidency, see Margaret Leech, In the Days of McKinley (New York: Harper, 1959);
60. H. Wayne Morgan, McKinley and His America (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1963);
61. and, especially, Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of William McKinley (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995).
62. Robert La Follette is quoted in William E. Binkley, President and Congress, 3rd edn rev. (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), pp. 228-9.
63. The Appendix provides a fuller discussion of the construction of my dependent variable.
64. Principal data sources used in the construction of my independent variables are Guide to U.S. Elections (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press Inc., 1975);
65. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, Candidate and Constituency Statistics of Elections in the United States, 1788-1990 [Computer file]. Fifth ICPSR ed. (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor], 1994);
66. United States. Bureau of the Census. 1976. The Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1970).
67. Nathaniel Beck et al., 'Taking Time Seriously: Time-Series-Cross-Section Analysis with a Binary Dependent Variable', American Journal of Political Science, 42 (1998), 1260-88.
68. Scott C. James, Presidents, Parties, and the State: A Party System Perspective on Democratic Regulatory Choice, 1884-1936 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), chap. 2.
69. An Hoogenboom, Outlawing the Spoils: A History of the Civil Service Reform Movement, 1865-1883 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961), p. 251.
70. Bristow, Fraud and Politics;
71. William Lyne Wilson, The Cabinet Diary of William L. Wilson, 1896-1897 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1957).
72. Thomas Collier Platt, The Autobiography of Thomas Collier Platt (New York: B. W. Dodge, 1910), pp. 501-3.
73. Walter Dean Burnham, 'The Appearance and Disappearance of the American Voter', in Burnham, ed., The Current Crisis in American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 121-65.
74. Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s (New York: Wiley, 1978);
75. Michael F. Holt, The American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999);
76. William Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
77. Samuel Kernell, 'Toward Understanding 19th Century Congressional Careers: Ambition, Competition, and Rotation', American Journal of Political Science, 21 (1977), 669-93;
78. Robert Strumble Jr, 'House Turnover and the Principle of Rotation', Political Science Quarterly, 94 (1979-80), 649-67;
79. H. Douglas Price, Explorations in the Evolution of Congress (Berkeley: The Institute of Governmental Studies Press, University of California, Berkeley, 1998).
80. White, The Jacksonians.
81. Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780-1840 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1969);
82. James Sterling Young, The Washington Community, 1800-1828 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966);
83. Ronald P. Formisano, 'Political Character, Antipartyism and the Second Party System', American Quarterly, 21 (1969), 683-709.
84. Jean Baker, Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983);
85. Altschuler and Blumin, Rude Republic.
86. Edward L. Mayo, 'Republicanism, Antipartyism, and Jacksonian Party Politics: A View from the Nation's Capitol', American Quarterly, 31 (1979), 3-20;
87. Baker, Affairs of Party
88. Wilson, Cabinet Diary.
89. Jean Baker, 'From Belief to Culture: Republicanism in the Antebellum North', American Quarterly, 37 (1985), 544-6.
90. James Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1899), vol. 2, p. 1012.
91. Fowler, The Cabinet Politician, pp. 33, 90 (emphasis added);
92. Summers, The Plundering Generation.
93. Fish, 'Lincoln and the Patronage', pp. 54-5 (emphasis added).
94. Nathaniel Beck, 'Time-Varying Parameter Regression Models', American Journal of Political Science, 27 (1983), 557-600, p. 568;
95. Put simply, estimates for each coefficient are based on sub-periods, for example periods 1 through 8, 2 through 9, 3 through 10, etc. For other applications of moving regression, see Larry W. Isaacs and Larry J. Griffin, 'Ahistoricism in Time-Series Analyses of Historical Process: Critique, Redirection, and Illustrations from U.S. Labor History', American Sociological Review, 54 (1989), 873-900;
96. and John T. Woolley, 'Partisan Manipulation of the Economy: Another Look at Monetary Policy with Moving Regression', Journal of Politics, 50 (1988), 335-60.
97. The seminal article is R. L. Brown, J. Durbin and J. M. Evans, 'Techniques for Testing the Constancy of Regression Relationships over Time', Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Series B), 37 (1975), 149-63.
98. Beck, 'Time-Varying Parameter Regression Models', p. 568.
99. I have also run the analysis using subsets of three and five administrations with no substantive change in my conclusions.
100. John Bell ran as the presidential candidate of the Constitutional Union party.
101. David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).
102. Those three states were Mississippi, Texas and Virginia.