Know Your Enemy
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What Happened to America's Political Parties? (w/ Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld)
🕑 Added 2024-08-16 16:00:36 +0000 UTCWhy are American political parties so ineffectual? Why do they seem, simultaneously, so frantically active and so incapable of achieving specific objectives? Why have the Democrats tended to seem listless, uncertain of their own ideological identity; while the Republicans are increasingly dominated by a radical, lunatic fringe more interested in becoming famous on television, radio, and social media than in governing? Why, in other words, are the political parties seemingly "everywhere and nowhere, overbearing and enfeebled, all at once?"
In their new book, The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics, political scientists Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld set out to untangle this paradox. They argue that much of the discord, dysfunction, and democratic deficit which characterize contemporary politics can be attributed to the "hollowing out" of American political parties — a process which began, in earnest, in the 1970s, with the neoliberal dismantling of New Deal civil society, the rise of the New Right, and reforms to the party system in the wake of the 1968 conventions. In the wake of these changes, our parties have become unrooted from the communities where their constituents live; they are nationalized instead of locally oriented; they are swarmed by para-party groups and networks (the "party blob") which are both unaccountable and parasitic on the Party's aims; and they are lacking in legitimacy — mistrusted and often treated with contempt, even by their own members.
What has this hollowness wrought in our politics? And can anything be done about it? Sam and Danny are here to explain.
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Sources:
Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld, The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics (2024)
Sam Rosenfeld, The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era (2017)
Daniel Schlozman, When Movements Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American History (2015)
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Comments
Ann K
Great episode! Listened on a flight back home to DC. I appreciate how wonderfully human the conversation was, and I also appreciated the (needed) slap in the face. The “Davos- TED talk speak” can be dangerously easy to fall into when you work in certain areas. I work in housing policy, housing supply focused specifically, but I’m from the Midwest. I really appreciated the reminder to keep my fucking head on my shoulders, so to speak.
Paul Meyer
I did not appreciate the take away because I think the un-hollowed out parties represent as much of challenge to democracy as the hollowed out ones. The political science maxim about parties as mediator in mass politics (Anthony Downs make a nice statement of it) assumes actual political parties not loose electoral coalitions. Such coalitions are highly unaccountable, prone to corruption and given their ideological diffuseness/promiscuity alienation from their base communities is certain to escalate over time. I do get these problems are structural and largely routed in the Constitution so a fix is not straight forward, but I just think ignoring the problem is... well, a problem.
Sam
THE #1 RULE WHEN YOU ARE ON THE POD IS RELAX. THE #2 RULE WHEN YOU ARE ON THE POD IS RELAX.
Nicholas Haggerty
I’m curious what their theory of the 2016 Democratic Primary is. Would a stronger party have been more hospitable to Bernie? What remains of the party machine has been accommodating to the neoliberal turn in the national party.
Josue Hurtado
This episode reminded me of something I think I read in Slate: “The GOP is a failed state and Trump is its warlord.”
james marcucci
This was a weird (but good) one for me, since Daniel Schlozman was one of my favorite professors from undergrad and in 2019 I took his 'PARTY POLITICS FROM THE FOUNDING TO THE PROGRESSIVES' class. It was really great hearing from him again and I appreciated both guests' insight into how our parties have degenerated into what they are today.
Son of El Topo
Lmao at “twitchers” and “twitching away”
Carpenters Gothic
Dang, that one dude (Daniel?) has the most grating speaking style: “im going to tell you what everyone who knows anything knows to be true”. Maybe spends too much time lecturing rather than conversing? Guys maybe screen your guests first? And tell them to chill? Xanax?
Know Your Enemy
Thanks Matt, very interesting comment. Believe it or not, an episode on McWilliams, and that book in particular, is one we've discussed. No guarantees, but I have a lot to say. Also, yes to him being a staunch Democrat—he covered the presidential elections for Commonweal, where I used to be an editor, for many years (Matt)
Matt Eriole
This episode gels perfectly with my place in Wilson Carey McWilliams’ The Idea of Fraternity in America. I was a little surprised to learn that he was a staunch Democratic Party loyalist, despite significant disagreements with the forms the party would take. In the chapter I’m reading now, he indulges some nostalgia about the localist, patronage-based parties that proliferated around the turn of the 20th century, and sees their decline as part of the broader abandonment of fraternity as a political ideal that forms the thesis of the book. I would be thrilled about an episode on McWilliams, especially one that touches on the ways his student and devotee Patrick Deneen has perverted his thought for his own nefarious purposes
mark o'hare
I know I would really enjoy hanging out with Matt and Sam. That's all I'd like to say today. Have a good weekend everyone.
Rick Perlstein
All the activists were, like, people who retired from running factories to serve of museun boards and build food banks in their small cities.
Rick Perlstein
That vestigal civic-minded Ray Bliss Republicanism is EXACTLY what I saw at the grassroots of John Kasich's 2016 campaign. https://www.salon.com/2016/03/06/why_not_kasich_ted_cruz_marco_rubio_and_my_week_on_the_trail_with_the_gop/
Rick Perlstein
Great stuff, didn't find anything that didn't mesh with my own more emperical and less theoretical accounts.
TR D
Same brother, same. I did recently pickup my first Dissent print editor and Matt is right, it’s a very nice magazine. I enjoyed it so much that I used the link and subscribed tonight
Dylan D Moser
Starting as an outsider and taking over the Republican party via primarily is not unique to Trump. The Non Partisan League of North Dakota, essentially a left-wing agrarian organization, went from nothing in 1914 to full state control by 1918. To this day, ND still has a state-owned bank.
Axel Herrera
I can relate to the piled up LRBs, NYRBs, and New Yorkers. I don’t know if I have the bandwidth for this many subscriptions… 😅
Sebastian Lecourt
Between the main episode icon and the passing reference to George Meany, this episode is crammed with Simpsons content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eTiIK2cqUo
OlufsenSpark
Thanks for posting. I look forward to listening while working at my accounting job.
Daniel Schlozman
Thank you! If you get Sam R. drunk, perhaps he will tell you about a racy discovery he made in the archives that this comment brings to mind
Psych-O-Sonic 99
Great episode btw
Psych-O-Sonic 99
Tell your guests to relax. We get they’re Jewish
Henry Bachofer
Their book is fantastic... in the same class as Burns' Deadlock of Democracy.
