Samson, Steven Alan

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Liberty UniversityDigitalCommons@LibertyUniversityPedagogical Resources Helms School of GovernmentSpring 1996Political Parties SyllabusSteven Alan SamsonLiberty University, ssamson@liberty.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/gov_fac_pedThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Helms School of Government at DigitalCommons@Liberty University. It has beenaccepted for inclusion in Pedagogical Resources by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Liberty University. For more information, pleasecontact scholarlycommunication@liberty.edu.Recommended CitationSamson, Steven Alan, "Political Parties Syllabus" (1996). Pedagogical Resources. Paper 7.http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/gov_fac_ped/7 1    POLITICAL PARTIES  POLS 3329                          Spring 1996                         Dr. Samson  Hardy 10    Office: MWF 8-9, 10-11, MW 2-4; TR 8-9:30, 2:30-4    Phone: 939-4551              DESCRIPTION    A study of the development, nature, and problems of political parties, including their organizations, operations, and functions.   REQUIREMENTS  1. Each student is responsible for assigned readings and should keep a loose-leaf notebook of class materials. 2. Participation is an essential part of class.  Reading assignments should be completed before the class meets.  Be prepared to discuss textbook material, readings, and current events.  Each student will lead discussion of specific assigned readings. 3. Regular attendance is required.  Lengthy absences and erratic attendance tend to affect grades.  Exams must be taken at the scheduled date and time. 4. Students will be tested on the lecture, reading, and discussion material through two short answer and essay exams.  (40% apiece) 5. Each student will make an oral presentation (10-20 minutes) on a topic related to the political parties.  Presentation will be scheduled between March 27 and April 26, and is to be accompanied by a 6-8 page brief, typed and double-spaced.  (10%) 6. Each student will take a pass/fail political history quiz. 7. Each student will write a 5-7 page book abstract (10%) or two 2-3 page journal  article abstracts (5% apiece), typed and double-spaced.  Abstracts are due   April 26.   READING LIST  Textbooks   Bibby, John. Politics, Parties, and Elections in America. [B]  Minogue, Kenneth. Politics: A Very Short Introducton. [M]  Reserve Desk   Charles, Joseph. The Origins of the American Party System. [C]  Hamilton, Jay, Madison. The Federalist. [H]  Key, V.O., Jr. Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups. [K]  Lubell, Samuel. The Future of American Politics. [F]  2    ________. The Hidden Crisis in American Politics. [L]  Michels, Robert. Political Parties. [P]  Supplementary Readings [S] [Yellow Notebook]   SCHEDULE  PART ONE:  INTRODUCTION   Introduction:  January 19-24    Readings:  M. 1-4; S. "Introductory Remarks," Francis Lieber,    "The Teacher of Politics;" Rahe   Western Political Tradition:  January 26-31    Readings:  M. 5-10   Science and Ideology:  February 2-5    Readings:  M. 11-13  PART TWO:  HISTORY OF POLITICAL PARTIES   Origin of Political Parties:  February 7-12    Readings:  C. 1; B. 1; H. 10   History of American Political Parties:  February 14-19    Readings:  C. 2; B. 2; K. 7   Stability and Change:  February 21-26    Readings:  C. 3; L. 1, 9; P. excerpts  POLITICAL HISTORY QUIZ:  February 26 (last 25 minutes)  PART THREE:  ANATOMY OF THE AMERICAN PARTY SYSTEM   American Party System:  February 28-March 4    Readings:  B. 3; K. 8; F. Introductioin, 1  MIDTERM EXAM:  March 6   3    Party Organizations:  March 8-22    Readings:  B. 4; K. 12; F. 11-12   Primary System:  March 25-27    Readings:  B. 5   Presidential Nominating Politics:  March 29-April 3    Readings:  B. 6; K. 15   Suffrage and General Elections:  April 8-10    Readings:  B. 7   Political Parties and Voters:  April 12-17    Readings:  B. 8; K. 22; S. Ladd   Parties in the Government:  April 19-26    Readings:  B. 9; S. Milkis; K. 24-25   Analysis of 1996 Campaigns:  April 29-May 3    Readings:  B. 10  FINAL EXAM:  May 10, 1:00 PM                  4    SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY  Binkley. American Political Parties: Their Natural History. Burnham, J. The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom. Burnham, W. Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics. Chambers and Burnham. The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development. Charles. The Origins of the American Party System. Crotty. Party Reform. ________ and Jackson. Presidential Primaries and Nominations. Eldersveld. Political Parties in American Society. Epstein. Political Parties in the American Mold. ________. Political Parties in Western Democracies. Herrnson. Party Campaigning in the 1980s. Jackson. Honest Graft: Big Money and the American Political Process. Jaconson. The Electoral Origins of Divided Government. Jewell. Parties and Primaries: Nominating State Governors. Keefe. Parties, Politics, and Public Policy in America. Key. Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups. Kessel. Presidential Parties. Kleppner, et al. The Evolution of the American Electoral System. Ladd. American Political Parties: Social Change and Political Response. Mayhew. Placing Parties in American Politics. Michels. Political Parties. Milkis. The President and the Parties. Polsby. The Consequences of Party Reform. ________ and Wildavsky. Presidential Elections. Price. Bringing Back the Parties. Ranney and Kendall. Democracy and the American Party System. Rossiter. Parties and Politics in America. Sabato. PAC Power. Schattschneider. Party Government. Shafer. Bifurcated Politics: Evolution and Reform in the National Party Convention. Sorauf and Beck. Party Politics in America. Truman. The Congressional Party. Wattenberg. The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952-1988. Wayne. The Road to the White House: The Politics of Presidential Elections. POLS 3329: MIDTERM EXAM IDENTIFICATION James Madison's definition of faction By faction, I understand, a number of citizens, vvhether a majority or minority of the whole, who are united by some commmon impulse, or interest, adverse to the rights of the other people or to the permanent or aggregate interests of the community. Daniel Elazar's model of political subcultures Elazar provides a model of the major geographical and historical patterns of American culture that help account for the existenJS{Ce of subcultures (or factions) united by some common impulse or interest. He believes that the expectations of voters differ in distinct ways by region and family background. New England and Upper Midwestern politics stili tends to be moralistic, a legacy of Puritan times. Middle Atlantic and lower Midwestern politics tends to be individualistic. Much of Southern politics still reflects the traditional power of certain families and the deference shown to a natural aristocracy. Francis Lieber's definition of democratic absolutism Lieber indicates first that what he calls "democratic absolutism" is "the confounding of the innumerable theories of the 'Best State,' and of all Utopias from Plato's Republic to modern communism, with political science." Lieber first attempts to show that the problem is not with speCUlation, or theory, and that despots have been "the most avowed enemies of political science. VI But he also acknowledges that "absolutism has had its keen and most eloquent political philosophers," including its first, Plato. Lieber alludes to one aspect of the problem when he denounces the impulse to put certain groups, such as workers or women, on a pedestal because of the important historical advances they have made. Lieber maintains that the spread and development of Christianity is perhaps most responsible for the political progress of modern humanity, which has now reached a stage where "the only choice lies between institutional and firmly established liberty" and "intermittent revolution and despotism, or shifting anarchy and compression." Never before have liberty and absolutism stood so boldly and even so grandly opposite each other. "The advance of knowledge and intelligence give to despotism a briliiancYr and the necessity of peace for exchange and industry give it a facility to establish itself which it has never possessed before." In our age absolutism drapes itself in the mantle of liberty. This combination of utopianism and absolutism, this democratic absolutism, he calls "the after-pain of Rousseauism," which he maintains caused the French Revolution. The result is a "hankering after absolutism" (perfection) "and a widespread, almost fanatical idolatry of success, a worship of will" freed frolJ! the "shackles of conscience" or the restaints of purpose. In other words, he is clticizing the myth of inevitable Progress associated with the Marxists. '" Paul Rahe on the classical "politics of friendship" Friends are like kin; they are of like kind. Friends are those whom one loves. The relationship is not a contract but a status: moral and quasi-familial. Typical of the politics of friendship is the patron-client relationship. Patrdange was given public sanction in Rome. Betrayal of a client was an act worthy of death (sacer). The client was seen as a marginal member of one's own family. Polemarchus, in the Republic, says that justice is helping one's friends and harming one's enemies. ,-Paul Rahe on Machiavelli's "politics of distrust" The disappearnce of classical friendship in modern times has been accompanied by a greater emphasis on contract. Machiavelli does not recognize friendship between equals but only superiors and subordinates in a patron-client relation. People should cultivate the appearance of virtue and to make others dependent on them. Society is in a state of flux. Subjects and friends must be treated like enemies. Machiavelli embraces a politics of conflict between the people (popolo) and the great ones (grandi) that accounts for the rise of liberty. Self-interest must be recognized at the base of all relationships. the Greek concept of the constitution "The set of offices by which a polis was governed, and the laws specifying their relation, are the constitution." It provides a "specific kind of moral limitation that distinguishes politics" from despotism. "Constitutions function [in] two essential ways: they circumscribe the power of the office-holders, and (second) as a result they create a predictable (though not rigid and fixed) world in which the citizens may conduct their lives." the Roman concept of auctoritas (22) The concept of authority above mere power, either physical (potentia) or legal and official (potestas). This authority derives from the conjunction of politics and religion (similar to the concept of virtue), which involved the worship of families (the gens, from which we derive genius. "An auctor or author was the founder or initiator of something -- a city, a family, even a book or an idea. The reservoir oJ-auctoritas lay in the Senate as the body closest to the ancestors. It has been chaacterized as more than advice but less than command, and the Romans' respect for it was the real source of their political skill." In effect, they were united by piety, by a deep respect for tradition. Thomas Hobbes's theory of political conflict Hobbes argued that idealism caused immense bloodshed in Europe by making young scholars the dupes of ambitious men. He recognized that religious dissension or aristocratic ambition could plunge a mod~ern state into a civil war. Individuality could also lead to destructiv~e conflict. So he wished to overawe society through a sovereign power, a common superior, that could threaten to kill those who refused to comp!). (40) The~asons for. political conflict are three: scarcity, passion for ~rv, and diffi95!l~.TJfll~~tc-()1~Q:4Q.E e2!~)' (55) . . ( 1''''''' LL ,~\~ ~ V\..C '"L.:_i\ rv.:A{uL~_ ~ j ~ ) , Edmund Burke's diagnosis of liberalism (79) Burke founded conservatism by his diagnosis that liberalism as a political doctrine of reform found it hard to distinguish itself from doctrines of social transformation which, in their vain and destructive search for a perfect society, would destroy politics altogether (abandoning traditi0rilin favor of a destructive abstract blueprint). Instead of revoution and reaction, as in the French Assembly, politics is based on the concepts of preservation and reform, and it takes off not from abstract ideas of social perfection, but from the circ~ances of the present (i.e., non-programmatic) . the prisoner's dilemma In game theory, as well as public (or rational) choice theory, the prisoner's dilemma illustrates the reasonableness of choosing a strategy of cooperating with others rather than the most immediately obvious rational strategy, that of pursuing one's individual advantage, and being a 'free rider' on what other have paid for. The dilemma is as follows: Two prisoners are held incommunicado by a sheriff. Supposedly they are held because they are suspected of having committed some crime. Whether the sheriff has enough information may be doubted. "The conditions are that if A confesses and B does not, then A gets off with a light sentence and B a heavy one. If B confesses, it will be he who gets off lightly and A who will suffer (assuming the sheriff can grant some kind of immunity). If they both confess, they will both get quite a heavy sentence. If, however, they trust each other, and neither confesses, both will get the lightest sentence of all (actually, both should then be freed). Trust is thus, in the game of life, risky, but it can also have the greatest pay-off." This formula has been used by economists and political scientists to show the advantages of everything from "the foundation of states to international relations to the provision of public spaces." New Deal Democratic and traditional GOP coalitions Federal Election Campaign Act A law that encourages candidate oriented campaign organizations and, by implication, weakens the role of political parties. It secures the dominant position of the two major parties by bestowing benefits on those parties that receive 25% of the popular vote for president, including federal matching funds for presidential candidates seeking thei party's nomination, fwederal grants for holding national conventions, and public funding at the maximum level in general election campaigns for president." (50) "Candidates who agree to accept public funding of their campaigns are required under the Act to forego fund raising activities, and the Republican and Democratic National Committees are restricted to modest levels of expenditures on behalf of their presidential and vice presidential nominees. Presidential candidates accepting public funding are also required to set up a committee to receive and expend public funds." So the law~creates an incentive for presidential candidates to rely on campaign organizations devoted exclusively to their own candidacy. (63) programmatic vs. non programmatic parties Leon Epstein distinguishes between them. The first have policy positions that "are part of a setlled long-range program to which the party is dedicated in definite enough terms to mark it off from rival parties." e.g., labor and socialist parties in Europe and the British Conservative Party, though less so. The policy positions of American parties "tend to be ad hoc in character and adopted to meet immediate problems or electoral circumstances and not based upon long range programs to which the parties are committed. II Neither party has a clear image of the kind of society it wishes to foster. Both readily modify their positions. Leaders of divergent viewpoints can work together <;>n behalf of the same programs. Both parties are broad coalitions embracing a great deal of diversity. (69) amateur vs. professional role orientations (116) Amateurs are concerned primarily with ideas and issues and are seldom attracted by material rewards like patronage. They are motivated by ideological concerns and are reluctant to compromise with principle to secure an electoral majority (Clay: I would rather be right than be President). Professionals tend to give primacy to winning elections and maintaining the party organization. Essay 'I. Paul Rahe writes of James Madison's Federalist no. 10 that it advances the "counter-intuitive contention ... that the division of society into a multiplicity of rival religious sects and contending special interests may the cause of promoting a more perfect union characterized by domestic tranquillity. " serve Discuss Madison's argument on "breaking and controlling the mischiefs of faction." Compare it with Montaigne's, Bacon's, or Machiavelli's "politics of conflict?" Does it support Rahe's view that "the quintessentially American virtue is independence -- of mind, of means, of temperament --and that we can stand together only so far as we can stand apart?" 2. Identify at least four signs that modern man has made real political progress over antiquity, according to Francis Lieber. Why did he believe the conflict between institutional liberty and absolutism (or despotism) was intensifying? Discuss three signs that political life and civil productiveness in America were d1caying. V-u '-) .. ~~ ':- cv~_\ 3. (a~~ify~~aC-discus~1h:~ ihri;Et~ents of which, accord Kenneth Minogue (and/or Francis Lieber), the civilization of the high Middle Ages was constructed. How have they shaped and influenced the modern understanding and practice of politics? 4. Kenneth Minogue says that despots don't belong in politics and seems to say the same about revolutionaries, ideologues, and political moralists. Explain why he believes this, first, by showing how the classical conceptions of politics and despotism differed from each other. Then discuss how and why the modern erosion of "distinct and independent roles" (p. 6) characteristic of "the project of a perfect society" (p. 101) threaten the independence of citizens and the existence of constitutional limits (p. 112)? Illustrate. 5. Either: Compare any three of the five party systems in terms of their origins, development, and decline. Discuss the relative strength of two-party competition and the role of third parties in each. Or: Compare any three electoral realignments in terms of the coalitions that resulted and the issues and personalities that helped forge them. What factors led to the shift from one system to another? 6. Discuss the historical origins of two-party competition in England and America. What accounts for this dualism? How does Samuel Eldersveld explain the stability and persistence of Republican-Democratic conflict since 1860? 

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