Full Product Details
Author: Boris Heersink (Assistant Professor of Political Science, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Fordham University)
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:
Width: 23.50cm
, Height: 2.30cm
, Length: 15.60cm
Weight: 0.635kg
ISBN: 9780197695104
ISBN 10: 0197695108
Pages: 360
Publication Date: 21 November 2023
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Out of Stock Indefinitely
Availability: To order
Reviews
Heersink offers a fresh and important new perspective on American political parties, challenging claims that formal party organizations are merely in service to candidates. Drawing on wide-ranging historical evidence, Heersink demonstrates national party committees have played a pivotal role in shaping their party's 'brand,' defining the party's positions and identity for voters. This impressive account will be of wide interest to students of political parties and representation. * Eric Schickler, University of California, Berkeley * The parties' national committees have long been disregarded as irrelevant. Drawing from new data on committee activities and careful case studies, Boris Heersink convincingly challenges that conventional wisdom, demonstrating that the DNC and RNC have been at the center of their respective party's battles since the early 20th century. In particular, Heersink details the ways in which the party committees seek to shape their party's all-important brands—key to the parties' democracy-enhancing roles as information shortcuts—in collaboration and competition with other party actors. An important read for scholars of American parties and elections. * Christina Wolbrecht, University of Notre Dame * American political parties are studied as organizations and as conveyors of information, but not until Boris Heersink's masterpiece have these two perspectives finally, and properly, met. In his diligent, methodologically rich, and empirically sophisticated study of national party committees, Heersink recasts the organizational development of the twentieth-century Democrats and Republicans. * Daniel Carpenter, Harvard University *
Heersink offers a fresh and important new perspective on American political parties, challenging claims that formal party organizations are merely in service to candidates. Drawing on wide-ranging historical evidence, Heersink demonstrates national party committees have played a pivotal role in shaping their party's 'brand,' defining the party's positions and identity for voters. This impressive account will be of wide interest to students of political parties and representation. * Eric Schickler, University of California, Berkeley * The parties' national committees have long been disregarded as irrelevant. Drawing from new data on committee activities and careful case studies, Boris Heersink convincingly challenges that conventional wisdom, demonstrating that the DNC and RNC have been at the center of their respective party's battles since the early 20th century. In particular, Heersink details the ways in which the party committees seek to shape their party's all-important brands-key to the parties' democracy-enhancing roles as information shortcuts-in collaboration and competition with other party actors. An important read for scholars of American parties and elections. * Christina Wolbrecht, University of Notre Dame * American political parties are studied as organizations and as conveyors of information, but not until Boris Heersink's masterpiece have these two perspectives finally, and properly, met. In his diligent, methodologically rich, and empirically sophisticated study of national party committees, Heersink recasts the organizational development of the twentieth-century Democrats and Republicans. * Daniel Carpenter, Harvard University *
Author Information
Boris Heersink is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Fordham University. His research focuses on American political parties as organizations at the national and state level and on campaigns and elections. He is the co-author of Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865-1968 (with Jeffery A. Jenkins), which was a co-winner of APSA's 2021 J. David Greenstone Prize for best book in politics and history and a winner of the SPSA's V.O. Key Award for best book in Southern politics. His articles have appeared in many journals, including The Journal of Politics, Political Analysis, Party Politics, Studies in American Political Development, and Political Behavior.
