Party Position Change in American Politics

David Karol is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science, UC Berkeley. He was formerly a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University. He is co-author of The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform and co-editor of Evolution and Revolution in the Presidential Nominations Process: 2008 and Beyond. His work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, Studies in American Political Development, International Organization, Brookings Review, and The Forum. He has lectured in Europe and Asia and is frequently interviewed in electronic and print media.

• Introduction; 1. Explaining party position change: theory and method; 2. Coalition maintenance: the politics of trade policy; 3. Coalition group incorporation: the politics of abortion and gun control; 4. The politics of race: coalition maintenance in the North, coalition group incorporation in the South; 5. Coalition expansion: the politics of national defense and fiscal policy; 6. Conclusions; Appendix.

'We often think of the long-term stability in the positions that the parties take on major issues. Changes, when they come, are supposed to be associated with major events, perhaps realignments. And yet, as Karol shows, there is more change than that. Not only that, but, as he shows, there are three different paths, with different dynamics and speeds of adjustment, the latter largely due to the role of 'interest coalitions'. Karol demonstrates his claims through careful study of a number of particular issues, showing, inter alia, that what we think of as left and as right, as Democrat and Republican is a function of parties, leaders, and interests, all of which change over time. And, in this, we learn not only much about American politics but about the limits of our scholarly understandings and the theories that lie behind them.' John Aldrich, Duke University