Published by De Gruyter

Volume 18 Issue 2

July 2020

Issue of The Forum

Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available September 30, 2020

Frontmatter

Page range: i-iii

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Publicly Available September 29, 2020

Party Domination and Base Mobilization: Donald Trump and Republican Party Building in a Polarized Era

Daniel J. Galvin

Page range: 135-168

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Abstract

Since the 2016 election, President Trump has achieved unparalleled dominance over the Republican Party. He has also given his party a central role in his reelection campaign and invested heavily in its organizational capacities. This dual approach to party leadership – domination paired with organizational investment – bears a strong resemblance to the way every Republican president since Eisenhower interacted with his party, different only in degree. Where Trump’s party leadership diverges qualitatively from past patterns is in its apparent purposes. Previous Republican presidents dominated and invested in their party for the explicit purpose of building a new majority in American politics. Reaching out to new demographic groups and trying to persuade them to join the party was integral to this project. Trump, in contrast, has (thus far) predominantly pursued a base-mobilization strategy. Rather than fan out horizontally in search of new groups to join the party coalition, Trump’s strategy drills down vertically to penetrate and deepen his base. Instead of trying to diversify the GOP and extend its reach, his strategy aims to swell the number of like-minded supporters who are active in electoral and party politics (while suppressing, demobilizing, and delegitimizing the opposition party). By setting into motion a mutually reinforcing cycle of party domination and base mobilization, and amplifying its effects through organizational investment, Trump has turned his party into a formidable vehicle for advancing his personal purposes and augmenting his power – while raising troubling questions about the stability of American democracy. This article examines Trump’s party leadership to date, compares it to previous presidential party leadership projects, and considers the implications.

September 29, 2020

The Changing Politics of American Men, Updated

Karen Kaufmann, John R. Petrocik

Page range: 169-175

Abstract

This analysis updates through 2016 the gender gap analysis in voting and party identification published by Kaufmann and Petrocik 20 years ago. Some, e.g., Box-Steffensmeier, J. M., S. DeBoef, and T. M. Lin. 2004. “The Dynamics of the Partisan Gender Gap.” American Political Science Review 98 (3): 515–28 suggested that the original findings would diminish in magnitude, but the updated data show that the gender gap continues to reflect male-only changes in party identification. Public officials, political operatives, and the media misstate, sometimes specifically but often only by implication, the nature of the gap. Commentary highlights the lower level of support among women for the Republican Party in both the vote and party identification. Their support for the GOP is considerably lower than it is among men as this paper reaffirms. However, as Kaufmann, K. M., and J. R. Petrocik. 1999. “The Changing Politics of American Men: Understanding the Sources of the Gender Gap.” American Journal of Political Science 43 (3): 864–87 noted, the gap emerged and has continued to grow because of changed attitudes and behavior among men.

September 29, 2020

Surrogate-in-Chief: Did Bill Clinton’s Campaign Visits Help (or Hurt) Hillary Clinton in 2016?

Christopher J. Devine, Aaron C. Weinschenk

Page range: 177-195

Abstract

In this article, we examine the role that campaign visits by spouses and surrogates play in modern presidential campaigns. Specifically, we analyze the strategy and effectiveness of Bill Clinton’s campaign visits in 2016. Given the former president’s widespread name recognition and reputation as a legendary campaigner, we argue that he represents an ideal test case for determining whether the spouse of a presidential or vice presidential candidate can influence vote choice, via campaign visits. Our analysis indicates that Bill Clinton was, in fact, very active on the campaign trail in 2016 – making nearly as many visits as Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. However, Bill Clinton mostly followed in Hillary Clinton’s footsteps on the campaign trail, giving him little opportunity to win over voters that she could not reach. His campaign visits also had no discernible effect on county-level voting, generally, in the 10 states to which he traveled. Yet, when we examine the effect of Clinton’s visits within states, we find that he had a positive and statistically significant effect on Democratic vote share in the battleground state of Florida. He had no such effect in the two states to which he traveled most often, however (North Carolina and Ohio). Overall, we find very limited evidence that campaign surrogates – and candidate spouses, specifically – can influence vote choice via their campaign visits. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research on the role of campaign surrogates, and their relevance to the 2020 presidential campaign.

September 29, 2020

“Gender Imbalance in Expert Testimony at U.S. Senate Hearings”: The Forum

Jeremy Pressman

Page range: 197-205

Abstract

How much gender diversity is there among experts in the United States? This study focuses on witnesses who testified before four US Senate committees: Agriculture; Commerce, Science & Transportation; Foreign Relations; and Health, Education, Labor & Pensions. Across the 9072 witnesses (2003–15), women comprised 23.7% of witnesses. In terms of panels, 49.8% were male-only, 5.8% were female-only, and 44.4% were mixed gender. Although the overall numbers remain significantly low proportionate to the female share of the US population, there was an incremental increase in the proportion of women testifying and of mixed gender panels. Non-governmental organizations had the highest share of female witnesses. The percentage of female witnesses does vary with which party controls the Senate, with the average female share higher under Democratic control. These findings raise questions for further study about what factors influence the selection of witnesses for US Senate hearings and whether a similar lack of diversity exists in other identity categories such as race and ethnicity. The effort could also be extended to other committees in the Senate, as well as to the US House.

September 29, 2020

The Dark Side of Policy Responsiveness: State Action on Climate Change

Stephen J. Chapman

Page range: 207-222

Abstract

Climate change is an ever-growing problem that requires a network of policy solutions. There exists variation in state-level responses to climate change, firmly placing it within the context of state-level representation. There are various explanations for policy outcomes at the state level, including public opinion, institutional control, interest group activity, among others. With respect to climate change, another potential explanation provided by scholars for the variation in policy responses is the degree of risk posed by climate change to a particular state. However, climate change serves as a somewhat unique policy position as it is highly visible and has been a polarizing issue in American political discourse. This paper analyzes how risk, political control, and opinion affect policy responses to climate change. Employing multiple measures for state-level action on climate change as well as state-level opinion on the existence and perceived threat of climate change, this analysis theorizes that given the polarized nature of the climate change debate in the United States, public opinion on the realities of climate change and partisan control of state government influences policy outcomes more so than any level of quantified threat from climate change. The causal reasoning for this dual effect is the impact of citizen demands and overarching party ideologies. Even when controlling for wealth, energy industry activity, and political lobbying within states, findings indicate a strong relationship between citizen opinion and partisan control on state-level action on climate change, posing a challenge for combatting long-term impacts of climate change.

September 29, 2020

The Rise of Block-Granting as a Tool of Conservative Statecraft

Ryan LaRochelle

Page range: 223-247

Abstract

This article sheds new light on how conservatism has affected American state development by tracing the history of how block-granting transformed from a bipartisan tool to solve problems of public administration in the 1940s into a mechanism to roll back and decentralize the welfare state that had reached its zenith in the 1960s. By the early 1980s, conservative policymakers had coopted the previously bipartisan tool in their efforts to chip away at the increasingly centralized social welfare system that emerged out of the Great Society. In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan successfully converted numerous categorical grants into a series of block grants, slashing funding for several social safety net programs. Block-granting allows conservative opponents of the postwar welfare state to gradually erode funding and grant more authority to state governments, thus using federalism as a more palatable political weapon to reduce social welfare spending than the full dismantlement of social programs. However, despite a flurry of successes in the early 1980s, block-granting has not proven as successful as conservatives might have hoped, and recent efforts to convert programs such as Medicaid and parts of the Affordable Care Act into block grants have failed. The failure of recent failed block grant efforts highlights the resilience of liberal reforms, even in the face of sustained conservative opposition. However, conservatives still draw upon the tool today in their efforts to erode and retrench social welfare programs. Block-granting has thus transformed from a bipartisan tool to improve bureaucratic effectiveness into a perennial weapon in conservatives’ war on the welfare state.

September 29, 2020

“Do Gun Policy Specifics Matter? Hyper-Polarization And The Decline Of Vote Splitting In Congress”

Genevieve Quinn

Page range: 249-282

Abstract

By tracing the changing electoral incentives and political circumstances of partisans in Congress over time, this paper unpacks how and why substantive policy content has lost its relevance for influencing Congressional voting on gun control. It argues that as gun control positions have crystallized to become part of partisan identity, policy specifics have come to matter less for partisans in Congress than the general pro gun control or pro gun rights position that a piece of legislation symbolizes. Today, regardless of the specific policy contents of a bill, a gun vote serves as a signaling device from members of Congress to their partisan supporters that they are either passionate defenders of the Second Amendment (Republicans) or fierce protectors of America’s children from gun violence (Democrats). That policy content has lost its relevance for Congressional voting on gun control is evident through the marked decline in vote splitting, the extinction of gun control moderates, and the all or nothing voting behavior of partisan shifters – those formerly pro-control Republicans, anti-control Democrats, and gun control moderates who shifted positions over time to vote the party line.

Book Reviews

September 29, 2020

Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

Peter H. Schuck

Page range: 283-286

September 29, 2020

White Identity Politics

Jennifer L. Merolla

Page range: 287-290

September 29, 2020

American While Black: African Americans, Immigration, and the Limits of Citizenship

Khalilah L. Brown-Dean

Page range: 291-294

About this journal

Objective
This journal provides a forum for professionally informed commentary on issues affecting contemporary American politics. This includes but is not limited to issues engaging parties, elections, and political participation; the news media, interest groups, Congress, the Presidency, and the Courts; trends in public finance, presidential popularity, congressional productivity; in contemporary, historical, or comparative perspective.

The journal is motivated by the view that social scientists, historians, and legal scholars frequently have important insights into the concerns that arise in contemporary politics and government, drawing upon the disciplinary knowledge at their command. Yet they frequently lack a publishing outlet willing to print the analytic reasoning that gives weight to the resulting commentary. The Forum is designed to fill this gap.

We contemplate a journal free of fixed position and requiring no particular verdict with respect to policies, institutions, or processes. Well-reasoned discussion, disciplined by reference to established bodies of knowledge or aimed at stimulating the creation of such knowledge, is the goal of this journal.

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Topics

American politics
Political parties
Elections and political participation
The news media
Interest groups
Congress and the Presidency
Courts
Trends in public finance
American foreign policy

Article formats
Texts longer than newspaper columns but shorter than orthodox journal articles

Information on submission process