" The South continues to be the most distinctive region in American politics. Over the last half century, Democratic dominance in the South has given way to the emergence of a truly competitive two-party system that leans Republican in presidential elections. In some ways, the region is increasingly like the rest of the country, yet even the degree of change and the speed with which it occurred give the South a distinctive air. The contributors to Southern Political Party Activists examine both the development of American political party organizations and the changing political character of the South, focusing on grassroots party activists-those who are involved in party organizations at the county level. John A. Clark is associate professor of political science at Western Michigan University. Charles L. Prysby is professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

The implications of these and other significant realignments - especially as reflected among grassroots activists in the two major parties - are the focus of this valuable new book.

Maps the ways political parties remain vital components in the American political system, especially in the eleven states in the South As Tocqueville noted more than 100 years ago, “No countries need associations more . . . than those with a democratic social state.” Although some contemporary observers see a decline in associations, especially in the political sphere, the contributors in this volume argue not only that political parties remain an essential component of the American political system but also that grassroots political groups have revitalized the political process, especially in the South. Using data gathered from local party officials in the eleven southern states, the authors examine such key issues as: Who becomes involved in local party organizations and why? How do parties recruit and retain workers? What are the ideological and issue orientations of these activists? How does intraparty factionalism affect local party organizations? What is the connection between the party organization and its external environment? The large regional database provides these contributors with the opportunity to extend the study of local party organization and activists, thus addressing some of the significant gaps in previous research. The additional data enable them to clarify the nature of local party organizations and, in a larger sense, the role of the parties in the contemporary American political system.

Scholars, journalists, writers, and pundits have long regarded the South as the nation's most politically distinctive region. Its culture, history, and social and economic institutions have fostered unique political ideas that intrigue observers and have had profound political consequences for the nation's citizens, politicians, and policymakers. Writing Southern Politics is the most comprehensive review of the large body of post–World War II literature on southern politics. Since the publication of V.O. Key Jr.'s landmark work, Southern Politics in State and Nation (1949), scholars have produced an astounding number of books, monographs, professional journal articles, and research papers addressing elements of continuity and change in southern politics. The contributors to this book sort through the literature, identifying major themes, examining areas of scholarly disagreement, and making the key dimensions and contours of the region's politics understandable. Individually, the essays in this volume identify and clarify the key writing and research in selected subfields of southern politics, including religion, race, women, and political parties. Collectively, the essays identify and discuss the major components of and trends in southern politics over the past half century. The contributors, some of the foremost scholars in the field, have been heavily involved in researching and writing about southern politics during the past three decades and have observed the development of many of the research projects that form the foundation of southern political literature. In many instances, their own writings are included in the body of literature they discuss, bringing unique skills, research, and perspectives to their original essays. In addition to reviewing existing literature, Writing Southern Politics also includes suggestions for a future research agenda. Not all aspects of the region's dramatic fifty-year transformation have been fully explored, and the continuation of this development ensures new avenues to examine. The discussion of past research and writing is an invaluable tool for understanding the trends in southern politics over the past half century. By examining these trends and developing an agenda for future research, the authors provide a roadmap for identifying the changes that will likely shape the region over the next half century.

The twenty-three essays included in The Oxford Handbook of Southern Politics present a definitive view of the factors that contribute to the South's distinctive politics, examining these factors in the context of the region's political development since World War II.

The 2016 presidential election has shown that the Republican Party is at a crossroads. While a Trump candidacy took even the most seasoned political analysts by surprise, the rise of racially charged anti-elitism within the Grand Old Party has been an ongoing project for the last half a century, initiated and deliberately driven by its leaders and strategists who identified the former Confederacy as the foundation for conservative majorities. This book charts the path of the party's ever increasing Southernization and simultaneous Evangelicalization while providing a detailed assessment of the GOP's future chances of fashioning majorities in a country that is undergoing momentous demographic changes.

The National Political Science Review is the official publication of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. The Review's purpose, as described by Matthew Holden in his introduction, is to "lead to new information, insights, and findings" into the social and political status of African Americans. The volume is not exclusionist or narrow. It integrates essays that could stand alone, as they initially were written, according to the method and theory of the author in question. As presented here, however, they also lend themselves to a broader treatment of race and the political order. The present volume combines essays expressly focused on African Americans, Africa, and the African diaspora. At the same time, it contains essays about broad generic subjects such as budgeting and interest groups, written with no explicit racial relevance. Holden integrates these essays under the theme of the changing racial regime. The integrating concept is the old word "regime," which political scientists have used in many situations before to define such more or less persistent, though not necessarily permanent, orders of precedence. If no significant benefits and no significant burdens could be forecast by knowledge of the social identity called race, then the regime could be seen as non-racial. In American experience, the regime was, at one time, purposeful and sustained white advantage. The "white race" and its preferential standing, was central to virtually all institutional practice - public and private. The significant contemporary question is the degree of change in the racial regime. Some proceed with the assumption that a large degree of change has occurred in the American political system. The view of other contributors is that the system still sustains racial stratification. In its very internal dialogue, this volume presents a panorama of current work by political scientists, African American and other, on the character of the American political system. The Changing Racial Regime is an essential resource for political scientists, black studies specialists, and scholars and policy analysts of race relations in the United States.

During the past fifty years American democracy has been transformed by the collapse of non-ideological and decentralized traditional party organizations and also by the emergence of more ideologically distinct and integrated service vendor parties and their allied groups. In this book, Joel Paddock uses several original data sets to provide new insights into the ways parties adapt to politics in the telecommunications age, growing interparty ideological differences, the changing relationship between parties and interest groups, and party nationalization. Well-suited for either graduate or undergraduate courses on political parties or linkage institutions, this book provides a fresh perspective on party transformation and the American democratic process.

This is a study of Kentucky political parties: how they are organized and how they nominate and elect candidates. Because state politics in Kentucky is dominated by the Democratic Party, a major portion of the study is devoted to the Democratic primary candidates, campaign techniques, funding, of elections, and voting patterns. As in other slates, campaign techniques in Kentucky are changing. During the 1950s and 1960s the Democratic Party had two dominant factions, and candidates for statewide office sought factional allies among local party organizations. Now factional alignments have disappeared, and candidates for statewide office build campaign organizations from thousands of active party workers. The characteristics, motivations, and allegiances of these party activists form one major focus of this book. Another focus is television, which has assumed ever greater importance in statewide primary campaigns. Because it is expensive, candidates who are wealthy or can raise large sums for television advertising enter the primaries with a substantial advantage, and those who use that medium most effectively are most likely to win. Two wealthy candidates who proved to be talented campaigners in person and on television were nominated by the Democrats in 1987: Wallace Wilkinson in the gubernatorial race and Brereton Jones in the race for lieutenant governor. The book features case studies of these two campaigns, which in many ways typify modern primary elections in Kentucky. Finally, since the 1950s, the Republican Party has been highly successful in campaigns for national office in Kentucky but has been unable to elect a governor since 1967. This study provides some answers to two questions: What is wrong with the Republican Party in Kentucky? And why are so many Kentuckians voting Republican in national races and Democratic in state races?

This groundbreaking volume describes and analyzes grassroots political party organizations in the South. Based upon surveys of county political party committee activists, conducted for the Southern Grassroots Party Activists Project and funded by the National Science Foundation, the work examines each of the 11 Southern states. Each chapter in the book, written by a scholar from the particular state, describes the general political history of that state over the 1954-1992 period, and then details state party organizations and activists—activists' backgrounds, politics, motivations for party activism, and party organization maintenance. The data and analysis presented depict political changes in the South, at both the state and national level, and provide for fascinating comparisons from state to state in the solid South.