The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics

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A major history from the Founding to our embittered present that "explains the void" (Politico) at the center of America's political parties
Featured on The Ezra Klein Show and The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart

America's political parties are hollow shells of what they could be, locked in a polarized struggle for power and unrooted as civic organizations. The Hollow Parties takes readers from the rise of mass party politics in the Jacksonian era through the years of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Today's parties, at once overbearing and ineffectual, have emerged from the interplay of multiple party traditions that reach back to the Founding.

Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld paint unforgettable portraits of figures such as Martin Van Buren, whose pioneering Democrats invented the machinery of the mass political party, and Abraham Lincoln and other heroic Republicans of that party's first generation who stood up to the Slave Power. And they show how today's fractious party politics arose from the ashes of the New Deal order in the 1970s. Activists in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National Convention transformed presidential nominations but failed to lay the foundations for robust, movement-driven parties. Instead, modern American conservatism hollowed out the party system, deeming it a mere instrument for power.

Party hollowness lies at the heart of our democratic discontents. With historical sweep and political acuity, The Hollow Parties offers powerful answers to pressing questions about how the nation's parties became so dysfunctional-and how they might yet realize their promise.

Reviews

"The problem is not Donald Trump. The problem is the Republican Party. It always has been. But how did the Republican Party get so weak that he could take it over Thats not a story that begins in 2016 or 2015. Its a story that begins decades ago. Its a story that the political scientist Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld tell in their new book, The Hollow Parties."---Ezra Klein, New York Times
"[An] insightful book. . . . Schlozman and Rosenfeld are unquestionably right that political parties in the United States deserve more thought and more appreciation. Even if solving the problems of todays parties is not straightforward, their book is an important step in making the parties, and maybe our politics, better."---John Sides, Democracy
"[The Hollow Parties] explains the void at the center of the Democratic and Republican Parties."---Ian Ward, Politico
"The book serves as both a history of American political parties and an argument that their deterioration has done untold damage to the U.S., particularly that of the Republican Party. . . . [Schlozman and Rosenfeld] offer an interesting and nuanced perspective on how the GOP has become the party of Donald Trump in recent years."---Ben Jacobs, Washington Examiner
"In this engaging...book, Schlozman and Rosenfeld [take] readers on a journey of party degeneration from Martin Van Buren (the Little Magician who built the first American mass political party) to Ray Bliss, the Ohio operative, who rebuilt the Republican Party after Barry Goldwaters landslide loss in 1964, Al From who founded the centrist Democratic Leadership Council in the 1980s, the Tea Party, and Donald Trump"---Kenneth S. Baer, Washington Monthly
"Who loves political parties Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld do. In The Hollow Parties, [they] defend the tradition of official party-building in America, tracing the rise and fall of different factions and crediting partisan organizing with social cohesion."---Dave Weigel, Semafor
"What sets this book apart from others about American political parties is its sense of urgency. [Schlozman and Rosenfeld] offer a historic perspective of the present-day political dysfunction. . . . A work of impressive scholarship." * Library Journal *
"[The Hollow Parties] should be widely read and debated. . . . Highly-recommended." * Choice *

Author Bio

Daniel Schlozman is associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of When Movements Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American History (Princeton). Sam Rosenfeld is associate professor of political science at Colgate University. He is the author of The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era.