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Parties in government prioritize issues that voters trust them to handle more than other parties. However, scholars disagree about whether this relationship exists because parties strategically prioritize issues that voters trust them to handle or whether voters first observe core party priorities while in government and then trust them to handle those issues. This article disentangles these two explanations, arguing that issue ownership is caused by the core priorities of elites. I evaluate this argument by leveraging the privately financed structure of US party-aligned think tanks, which provide important policy information to US political parties. I introduce new data on the policy content of 15,897 white papers published by the leading party-aligned think tanks in the United States. I find that think tanks aligned with both parties tend to distribute more policy attention to their owned issues, although the process works differently for Republicans and Democrats, and that these patterns are durable. I conclude that these results are strong evidence to support elite prioritization explanations for issue ownership, although they do not rule out other explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The polarization of political parties in the United States is a well-documented phenomenon. This paper considers polarization of the judicial branch and relates it to the evolution of the parties. In this paper we define polarization specifically as movement from a modal distribution (of votes, attitudes, or decisions) to a bimodal distribution along a liberal-conservative spectrum over time. Using data compiled from 90,000 United States District Court decisions published in the Federal Supplement between 1934 and 2008, we find that the judiciary began to polarize in the 1960s and has remained polarized. We consider a number of competing explanations for the polarization of the district courts, including a top-down view that emphasizes presidential power and a bottom-up view that focuses on the sorting of elites that form the pool of potential judges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing importance of religious conservatives within the Republican Party is one of the most interesting aspects of evolving party coalitions in the USA. However, their identification has proved to be difficult because of different operational definitions of religious conservatives. In this paper, an alternative operational definition is posited, identifying conservative Republicans for whom religion is an important part of their lives. The paper proceeds by using this definition to estimate the number of religious conservatives in the mass electorate, and their political distinctiveness compared to other Republicans. While the definition used in this paper is a broad one, it is demonstrated that in terms of voting behavior and issue preferences, a 'religious' conservative Republican is qualitatively distinct from a 'secular' conservative Republican. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The struggle for the power to nominate candidates for office between party elites and rank-and-file partisans surfaced in the late 1700s. The battle endures today and superdelegates in the Democratic Party represent the contemporary political elites in the nomination process. Indeed, superdelegates played a decisive role in determining the outcome of the 2008 Democratic nomination campaign. In this paper, we examine the attitudes and decisions of superdelegates towards the candidates and their own role in the nomination process. We also examine the attitudes of rank-and-file Democrats towards the delegates and the nomination process. To study these two groups, we rely on survey data collected immediately following the 2008 primary season. Results from the surveys indicate that voters and superdelegates differ greatly in their perceptions of superdelegates, their roles and decisions, as well as the legitimacy of the nomination process in the Democratic Party. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper assesses the extent to which party systems are nationalized in four federations. In doing so, the research addresses two questions. First, is dual accountability operational across decentralized countries, or do sub-national voters turn to national cues as a means to economize in a complex information environment? By bringing a cross-national dataset to bear on this question, we are able to provide insight into where and why dual accountability might operate. Second, what explains variation in the extent to which party systems are nationalized across countries and time? We build on previous literature to suggest a number of factors likely to impact the extent of nationalization. We examine those factors in the context of provincial-level elections in Argentina, Canada, Germany and the United States. Using national and sub-national economic data, we find little evidence of dual accountability in any of our countries. We find that economic performance matters little for regional electoral outcomes, and where it does, sub-national outcomes reflect national rather than sub-national conditions. More important are the roles of partisan relations across levels of government and election timing. Sub-national co-partisans of the nationally governing party lose votes, particularly as the time from the most recent national election grows. The strength of these effects varies across our cases in predictable ways. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A long-standing assumption among congressional election scholars is that traditional forms of party financial assistance to candidates--that is, coordinated expenditures and direct contributions--have little or no influence on the electoral performance of those candidates. Yet that assumption has never been tested directly. This paper attempts to determine whether or not candidates benefit from the financial support of their parties. It establishes a baseline for future studies of party financial activity by examining data from the 1990 and 1992 congressional election cycles. The results provide qualified evidence that party support can increase a candidate's share of the vote. Specifically, those candidates who face systematic electoral hurdles are likely to benefit from traditional forms of party assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze the two conventional explanations of the Republican Party's adoption of supply-side economic philosophy in the 1977-81 period: first, that the position change was induced by the Sunbelt component of the party; and second, that the doctrinal shift was brought about by widespread concern with tax policy among the public and the Republican mass in particular. We reveal both arguments to be flawed and suggest that the party's advocation of large across-the-board tax cuts was the result of calculated and coordinated decisions by Washington elites within the party. We provide empirical and theoretical justification for a national elite-led explanation of this event. As a result, our study helps solidify contemporary scholarship that counteracts conventional wisdom in comparative politics and suggests that national American parties, at least when it comes to policy formation, can be relatively hierarchical institutions that shape as much as respond to mass and local behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that party stereotypes are a manifestation of partisanship that can inform the current debate about the stability of partisan identity in the United States. I provide a theory for understanding the stability of partisanship using the self-categorization theory developed by John Turner and his colleagues. This provides firmer theoretical ground for the prevalent view that partisanship instability should follow partisan dealignment and realignments. Its most important contribution, however, is its prediction that partisanship instability can be traced to the character of the categories that the electoral environment makes available for stereotyping the parties. When the electoral environment makes available a set of partisan categories that are more heterogeneous in content, as is the case in the USA since the 1970s, greater partisanship instability is a natural result. I explore this hypothesis using the party likes⁄dislikes questions in American National Election Study (ANES) panel surveys. I find that the self-categorization theory of partisanship offers a good explanation for an evident decline in the stability of party stereotypes starting in the 1970s and a curious rise in US partisanship stability between 1992 and 1994. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]