Healing the Rift? Social Networks and Reconciliation between Obama and Clinton Delegates in 2008

Which factors allowed the Democratic Party to heal the rift created by the 2008 presidential nominating campaign? Using original data from surveys of 449 pledged delegates at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, this research examines the conditions under which the delegates for one candidate embrace the opposing candidate. Specifically, when do delegates for Barack Obama embrace Hillary Clinton, and vice versa? The results demonstrate that Clinton delegates’ network centrality in the convention caucus network exacerbates, rather than heals, the rift in the party. Clinton delegates’ friendship networks perpetuate the rift when they are homophilous, but contribute to healing when they are heterophilous. Network effects influence the attitudes of Clinton delegates toward Obama, but not the perspective of Obama delegates toward Clinton. Experience with party institutions and views on intra-party democracy contribute to healing the rift for both sets of delegates. Clinton’s endorsement of Obama moved Obama’s delegates in her direction, but failed to sway her own supporters. Hypotheses for overembeddedness and cross-cutting networks are supported in the data, but a strict social-capital view of networks is not supported

Networking the Parties: A Comparative Study of Democratic and Republican Convention Delegates in 2008

Parties‐as‐networks is an emerging approach to understanding American political parties as decentralized, nonhierarchical, fluid systems with porous boundaries of a wide array of actors. Parties‐asnetworks include interest groups, social movements, political consultants, and advocacy organizations, in additional to the usual suspects of elected officials, party officials, and citizen‐activists. This approach ameliorates several deficits of the traditional, tripartite view of parties in government, in elections, and as organizations. The authors apply the parties‐as‐networks approach using data from surveys of delegates at the 2008 Democratic and Republican national conventions. Analysis of delegates’ memberships in a wide variety of organizations demonstrates that Democrats have larger networks than do Republicans; Republican networks tend more toward hierarchy than do Democratic networks; and the content of Democratic networks is tilted toward labor and identity organizations, while Republican networks are more populated by civic, religious, ideological, and professional organizations. The parties‐as‐networks view is a potentially revealing source of insight on the dynamic evolution of party coalitions. Theoretically, approaching parties as networks deepens the understanding of how intermediary institutions matter to the functioning of democratic politics