Group Commitment Among U.S. Party Factions: A Perspective From Democratic and Republican National Convention Delegates

• Author: Kerem Ozan Kalkan,John C. Green,Rosalyn Cooperman,Geoffrey C. Layman,Richard Herrera,Gregory Shufeldt,Kimberly H. Conger
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X19850081
• Published date: 01 November 2019
• Date: 01 November 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X19850081

American Politics Research

2019, Vol. 47(6) 1376 –1408

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X19850081

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Article

Group Commitment

Among U.S. Party

Factions: A Perspective

From Democratic and

Republican National

Convention Delegates

Kimberly H. Conger1, Rosalyn Cooperman2,

Gregory Shufeldt3, Geoffrey C. Layman4,

Kerem Ozan Kalkan5, John C. Green6,

and Richard Herrera7

Abstract

Parties need to win elections, but they also heed the policy preferences of

activists to provide the incentive to mobilize. Moving beyond the debate

as to whether parties as a whole are policy or office driven, we examine

groups within parties and identify different factions that place differential

emphasis on office-seeking versus policy-demanding. Using data from the

2012 Convention Delegate Study of Democratic and Republican Party

national delegates, we identify distinct factional groups within each party.

We map these factions within each party, finding policy-driven and office-

1University of Cincinnati, OH, USA

2University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA, USA

3Butler University, Indianapolis, IN, USA

4University of Notre Dame, IN, USA

5Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, USA

6The University of Akron, OH, USA

7Arizona State University, Tempe, USA

Corresponding Author:

Kimberly H. Conger, University of Cincinnati, 1028 Crosley Tower, ML 0375, Cincinnati, OH

45221, USA.

Email: kimberly.conger@uc.edu

850081APRXXX10.1177/1532673X19850081American Politics ResearchConger et al.

research-article2019

Conger et al. 1377

driven factions of delegates in both Republican and Democratic parties. We

evaluate each group’s response to political and party involvement, support

for the larger party organization, and response to both intra- and interparty

conflict. Finally, we make clear the picture of factional relationships within

each party by accounting for how factional goals are integrated into the

party organization over time.

Keywords

political parties, convention delegates, 2012 election

Internal factions are an important way that scholars, journalists, and pundits

explain the behavior of political parties (DiSalvo, 2012). Much of the atten-

tion on presidential election cycles—from the first report of an exploratory

committee to both party conventions—focuses on the relative strength and

ideological differences among the current mix of each party’s factions. What

account of the presidential elections in 1988, 2008, or 2016 can ignore the

deep splits among activists and voters in each party, representing identifiable

factions in all incarnations of the parties? American parties differ, however,

in how they negotiate intraparty conflict. Factionalism and its impacts in the

Democratic Party are not mirror images of that in the Republican Party.

Factions are not just about differing issue positions; they represent different

approaches to politics, both within and beyond the specific party they inhabit.

Party factions are at their most visible in the national conventions where each

party’s platform is written and its presidential candidate is formally nomi-

nated. We concentrate our analysis of party factions on the activists who

make up these quadrennial demonstrations of party (dis)unity: national party

convention delegates.

Parties are big, diverse, and highly penetrable by different groups with

varying goals. Parties need to win elections, but they also heed the policy

preferences of activists to provide the incentive to mobilize. Instead of an

“either-or” approach to explaining party goals, strategies, and behavior, we

take a “both-and” perspective. Specifically, we move beyond the debate as to

whether parties as a whole are policy or office driven and examine groups

within parties to identify different factions that place differential emphasis on

office-seeking versus policy-demanding. These intraparty factions do not

exist within a vacuum; they must navigate the terrain of norms—pluralism

for Democrats and hierarchy for Republicans (Freeman, 1986)—and cultures

that linger within the parties. In this article, using results from a new study of

the 2012 political party convention delegates—the 2012 Convention Delegate

1378 American Politics Research 47(6)

Study (CDS)—we identify distinct factional groups within each party as

determined by their group membership, issue attitudes, and affinity toward

key party constituencies. We map these factions within each party and find

policy-driven and office-driven factions of delegates in both Republican and

Democratic parties. We evaluate each group’s response to political and party

involvement, support for the larger party organization, and response to both

intra- and interparty conflict, finding that some factions emphasize policy-

seeking, whereas others concentrate on office-seeking. Finally, we offer new

insight on the picture of factional relationship within each party by account-

ing for how factional goals and decision-making strategies are actually inte-

grated into the party organization over time and within the contexts of party

culture and expectations.

Party Convention Delegates and Theories That

Explain Their Behavior

We focus on convention delegates because they are optimally placed to affect

the parties’ ideological and issue commitments. These are activists who form

the core of the party. Delegates are not professional staff, are sometimes

elected or appointed members of the party organization, and are always

deeply interested in the behavior and prospects of the party. They facilitate

communication between parties and voters (Herrera, 1996; Herrera & Taylor,

1994) and see themselves as representatives of partisan and ideological

groups within the party (DiSalvo, 2012; Heaney, Masket, Miller, &

Strolovitch, 2012; Layman, Carsey, Green, & Herrera, 2010). Thus, delegates

are an important piece of the puzzle in understanding the modern political

party and how it operates. Delegates are a collective, but not singular, voice

of their party. They operate as part of the extended party network (EPN)

theory, which posits that parties are made up of networks of people and orga-

nizations that are both within the official party organization and beyond it

(Heaney et al., 2012; Koger, Masket, & Noel, 2010). Because they choose to

pursue their policy goals within the party, delegates serve an integral role in

both articulating and ordering competing policy and strategies of the party as

a whole.

Although delegates pursue policy goals (Usher, 2000) and are a key part

of ideological polarization when parties are divided along multiple issues

(Layman et al., 2010), they also want to win elections (Aldrich, 2012). To

that end, Stone and Abramowitz (1983) and Carsey, Green, Herrera, and

Layman (2003) contend that delegates overwhelmingly resolve disagree-

ments on policy in favor of electability, not ideological purity, in choosing