The age of austerity

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Martin Shefter

This book collects a number of Martin Shefter's most important articles on political parties. They address three questions: Under what conditions will strong party organizations emerge? What influences the character of parties - in particular, their reliance on patronage? In what circumstances will the parties that formerly dominated politics in a nation or city come under attack? Shefter's work exemplifies the "new institutionalism" in political science, arguing that the reliance of parties on patronage is a function not so much of mass political culture as of their relationship with public bureaucracies. The book's opening chapters analyze the circumstances conducive to the emergence of strong political parties and the changing balance between parties and bureaucracies in Europe and America. The middle chapters discuss the organization and exclusion of the American working classes by machine and reform regimes. The book concludes by examining party organizations as instruments of political control in the largest American city, New York.

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Robert P. Steed ... [et al

Much of the recent scholarship about American political parties has attempted to assess the condition of the party system. Are parties becoming increasingly obsolete? Have they forfeited the functions they traditionally performed? Or have they adopted a different role in the political system such that their achievements have gone unrecognized? In short, are American political parties in decline, resurgence, or what? Using information gathered from local party officials in the eleven southern states, the authors examine such key data as who becomes involved in local party organizations and why; how parties recruit and retain workers; what ideological and issue orientations motivate these activists; how intraparty factionalism affects local party organizations; and what connection exists between the party organization and its external environment.

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Deaglán De Bréadún

This is the first comprehensive analysis of how Sinn Féin has transformed itself from political wing of the Republican movement to a mainstream force in Irish politics. In this book by one of Ireland's leading political journalists, Deaglán de Bréadún provides an incisive account of how the party has arrived at a position, in the space of one generation, where it is in power north of the border and knocking on the door of government in the south.

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Douglas M. Strong

Perfectionist Politics is the story of an important but overlooked antebellum reform movement: ecclesiastical abolitionism. Douglas M. Strong examines radical evangelical Protestants who seceded from pro-slavery denominations and reorganized themselves into independent antislavery congregations. Mirroring political abolitionist activity - particularly in the "burned-over district" of New York State - the ecclesiastical abolitionists formed a network of abolition churches that became the primary focus of Liberty Party electioneering strategy. Ecclesiastical abolitionists justified this clear connection between church and state through their experience of evangelical perfectionism. A vote for the Liberty Party became a mark of one's holiness.