Contentious Institutions and Party Orders: Placing US Political Parties in Space and Time

Jessica Hejny, Middle Tennessee State University
Adam Hilton, Mount Holyoke College

The last decade has witnessed a resurgence of scholarly interest in American political parties as researchers have raised fundamental questions concerning what parties are and under what conditions they change. In this paper we offer a new theoretical framework for understanding parties and party change over time. Drawing on and engaging with this rich literature produced by political scientists, historians, and sociologists, we argue that parties can best be understood as contentious institutions in which dynamic intraparty conflict and competition unfolds across five interrelated dimensions: Institutions, Interests, Ideologies, Issues, and Identities (what we call “the Five Is”). Empirically, the content and configuration of these dimensions at any given historical moment constitutes what we call a party order. A party orders perspective strikes us as a valuable theoretical step, not only in gathering together and synthesizing many of the complementary aspects of recent party research, but also in gaining greater analytical traction on some of the most persistent puzzles and substantive questions regarding American party politics.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 262. Theorizing the political