Author's Keywords: Political Parties State Politics Ambition New York State	Convention Convention is an application service for managing large or small academic conferences, annual meetings, and other types of events! Submission - Custom fields, multiple submission types, tracks, audio visual, multiple upload formats, automatic conversion to pdf. Review - Peer Review, Bulk reviewer assignment, bulk emails, ranking, z-score statistics, and multiple worksheets! Reports - Many standard and custom reports generated while you wait. Print programs with participant indexes, event grids, and more! Scheduling - Flexible and convenient grid scheduling within rooms and buildings. Conflict checking and advanced filtering. Communication - Bulk email tools to help your administrators send reminders and responses. Use form letters, a message center, and much more! Management - Search tools, duplicate people management, editing tools, submission transfers, many tools to manage a variety of conference management headaches! Click here for more information.
Association: Name: The Midwest Political Science Association URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~mpsa/
Citation: URL: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p83188_index.html Direct Link: HTML Code:

Skinner, RIchard. "The Life and Death of PoliticalParties: Institutions, Incentives and Ambition in New YorkState" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the The Midwest Political Science Association, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, Illinois, Apr 15, 2004 <Not Available>. 2009-05-26 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p83188_index.html>

Skinner, R. , 2004-04-15 "The Life and Death of PoliticalParties: Institutions, Incentives and Ambition in New YorkState" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the The Midwest Political Science Association, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, Illinois Online <.PDF>. 2009-05-26 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p83188_index.html

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript Review Method: Peer Reviewed Abstract: The apparent demise of two of New York State’s minor parties demonstrates the importance of institutions, incentives and ambition in determining the fate of political parties. Key to the survival of these minor parties has been New York State’s unusual system of cross-endorsement, which allows parties to endorse nominees of other parties for office, and allows those votes to count towards those candidates’ totals. This has allowed the minor parties to overcome two significant barriers to multiparty competition: the so-called “wasted vote” problem and the inability to recruit ambitious candidates. But cross-endorsement can also make the minor parties dependent on the Democrats and Republicans for a supply of well-known candidates, since few ambitious politicians pursue careers within the minor parties. Without a well-known candidate, a minor party stands in serious danger of collapse, since parties must win at least 50,000 votes in a gubernatorial election to stay on the ballot for the next four years. Relatively successful minor parties may attract elites that are motivated, at least in part, by material incentives. But this may, in turn, alienate potential supporters more interested in ideological purity. Less successful minor parties will see their following confined to those motivated by purposive incentives. They may become unappealing to ambitious politicians and less ideological voters. Founded in 1944, the Liberals mostly cross-endorsed nominees of other parties, usually Democrats, but occasionally Republicans. In 2002, the Liberals’ fate was sealed by the decision of their nominee not to actively campaign for governor after he quit the Democratic primary. He instead campaigned for the Democratic nominee, perhaps because of his own need to maintain his career within the Democratic Party, whose leadership increasingly disdained the Liberals. Without an active candidate, the Liberals received only 16,399 votes for governor, and so lost official status (parties must win at least 50,000 votes for governor in order to maintain their automatic position on the ballot). Throughout its history, the Liberal Party was centralized in structure and lacking in internal democracy. Alex Rose, leader of the hatters’ union, dominated the Liberal Party from its founding until his death in 1976; for most of the remaining years, it was controlled by Raymond Harding. From the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s, the Liberals were widely seen as holding the balance of power in city and state elections. Grateful for their support, a series of governors and mayors rewarded them with extensive patronage. But in the late 1970s, the Liberals fell into a crisis period that never really ended. Rose died in 1976, and the party was nearly destroyed in a decade of infighting between Harding and his rivals. The Liberal Party’s relationships with Governor Mario Cuomo and Mayor Edward Koch were uneven and toxic, respectively. The garment unions that were the Liberals’ organizational base faded away; the working-class Jews who were the party’s traditional supporters died off. In 1989, Harding saw a means to revive the Liberal Party’s fortunes by endorsing Rudolph Giuliani, a Republican, for mayor. While Giuliani narrowly lost, he came back to win in 1993 and 1997. But the Liberals’ support for Giuliani alienated many Democrats who had once accepted the party‘s support, leading them to seek its destruction. Without an ideological appeal or significant grassroots support and with the hostility of many onetime supporters, the Liberal Party withered away. By contrast, the Right to Life Party suffered from an excess of ideology and an absence of pragmatism. From its beginnings in the late 1970s, it had a reputation for extremism that alienated more pragmatic opponents of abortion. This image gave it few opportunities to cross-endorse, since many Republicans and virtually all Democrats refused to accept its support. This forced it to rely on a series of obscure candidates noted more for ideological zeal than for political skill. The RTL never became a significant political player, and so attracted a membership and leadership motivated solely by purposive incentives. After years of barely surviving, in 2002, the RTL also failed to cross the 50,000 mark, and so lost official status. This paper will include summaries of the histories of these two parties, comparisons between them and other minor parties in New York State and elsewhere, supplemented with data from interviews and from the New York State Board of Elections. It will show that these parties’ fates were shaped by New York’s distinctive institutions, by the need to attract ambitious candidates, and by the incentives that attracted activists.

Political Parties and Elections: A Comparative Examination of the Republican and Democrat Party in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana

The Party’s Not Over Yet: Elections, Political Parties, and Democratization in the Postcommunist States

Racial “Threat” and Voting for the Extreme Right: The Contextual Determinants of Support for the British National Party in the 2002 and 2003 English Local Elections