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Jeffrey M. Stonecash, Mark D. Brewer, and Mack D. Mariani, Diverging Parties: Social Change, Realignment and Party Polarization (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2003), xv+190 pp., $65.00 (cloth), $22.00 (paper).
The conventional wisdom about political parties in the postwar United States was that the two main parties were decentralized, "non-ideological," candidate-centered organizations seeking political power through popular support in elections. It was held that their electoral success depended less on issues and more on the image, campaign funds, mobilization of workers and organizational efficacy in delivering the votes on election day. In fact, by the 1970s, most experts were asserting that the political parties had lost their significance and credibility. For example, Harvey Wheeler cited as evidence the growing trend of candidate orientation of the election campaigns, mounting importance of his personal set up vis-a-vis his party organization, and the increasing impact of the media ("The End of the Two Party System," Saturday Review, November 2,1968, pp. 19-22). In his 1972 book, The Party Is Over, David S. Border went so far as to say that the parties were doomed and would soon disappear. Jean Kirkpatrick's Distnnntling of Parties: Reflections on Parti/Reform and Parti/Decomposition (1978) offered scholarly substantiation for Broder's equally negative forebodings. Among the many factors and forces leading to the decline and "dismantling" of the political parties cited by American pundits, the following may be listed (not necessarily in the order of their...