The hollow parties : the many pasts and disordered present of American party politics / Daniel Schlozman, Sam Rosenfeld ; with a new preface by the authors.

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Schlozman, Daniel, author.
• Rosenfeld, Sam (Political scientist), author.

Series:

• Princeton studies in American politics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• Democratic Party (U.S.).
• Republican Party (U.S. : 1854- ).
• Political culture--United States.
• Political parties--United States--History.
• Right and left (Political science)--United States.
• Political culture.
• Right and left (Political science).
• United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2025]

Summary:

"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"-- De Gruyter Brill.

Contents:

• The problem of hollow parties
• The affirmation of party in antebellum America
• Free labor republicanism as a party project
• The politics of industrialism and the progressive transformation of party
• Visions of party from the New Deal to McGovern‑Fraser
• The long New Right and the world it made
• The politics of listlessness: The Democrats since 1981
• Politics without guardrails: The Republicans since 1994
• Toward party renewal.

Notes:

• Originally published: 2024.
• Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Online resource; title from PDF title page (De Gruyter Brill, viewed December 18, 2025).

Other Format:

Print version: Schlozman, Daniel. Hollow parties

ISBN:

• 9780691278001
• 0691278008

OCLC:

1552152665

Publisher Number:

CIPO000304439

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license