The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952-1996

by Martin P. Wattenberg

"The major theme of Chapter 12, new to this edition, is the missed opportunities for the parties in the 1996 elections. The year started with a highly visible confrontation over the budget that could have revitalized the party coalitions if the issues had been carried over to the election. However, the candidate-centered campaign of 1996 ultimately did little to resolve these issues or to reinvigorate partisanship in the electorate. In spite of the opportunities for getting new voters to the polls created by the Motor Voter Act, voter turnout in 1996 was the lowest since 1924. Turning out the vote is one of the most crucial functions of political parties, and their inability to mobalize more than half of the eligible electorate strongly indicates their future decline in importance to voters. Until citizens support the parties more by showing up to cast votes for their candidates, the decline of American political parties must be considered to be an ongoing phenomenon."

--From the preface

288 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1990

About the author

A political scientist at the University of California, Irvine. He is an expert on American elections and party politics and is co-author of a popular undergraduate college text on American government, Government in America: People, Policy, and Politics, published by Pearson Longman. He is also the author of Where Have All the Voters Gone: The Decline of American Political Parties, Is Voting For Young People? and The Rise of Candidate-Centered Politics.

Reviews

[Steven Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

When this version was published, I used the book as a text in a course in Political Parties that I taught. At the time, it was a fine work, outlining the decline of party over three plus decades. Events, though, appear to have overcome the work's contributions. Party appears more lively now than it did at the time this work appeared. However, the book remains relevant for explaining trends in party from 1952 to 1988.