How do Democratic and Republican party leaders react after their party has lost a presidential election? Is there a pattern of response to defeat that reflects the distinctive cultures of the two parties? This book answers these questions by examining how the two national party organizations have responded to presidential election defeats between 1956 and 1993. Drawing on party documents, interviews with party officials, and contemporary accounts, Philip Klinkner provides detailed case studies of opposition party politics. He shows that Republican national committees have reacted to losses by making organizational changes to improve campaign technology and fundraising and that losing Democrats have sought to refine or make more democratic their internal procedures for selecting delegates to the national convention or for choosing presidential candidates. Klinkner suggests that the reasons for these reactions stem from the historical development of the parties. The organizational response of the Republican party is the result of its long-term relationship with business, its homogeneity and hierarchical structure, and its minority party experience. The Democrats' emphasis on participation and representation for its constituent elements is based on its characteristic composition of social and economic out-groups, its heterogeneity and decentralization, and its tradition as the majority party.
Philip Klinkner is James S. Sherman Professor of Government at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY. He graduated from Lake Forest College in 1985 and received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1992. In 1995, he received the Emerging Scholar Award from the Political Organizations and Parties section of the American Political Science Association. He was a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. in 1990-91 and a Guest Scholar in 1993 and 1995.
Professor Klinkner has authored numerous books and articles. He is the primary author (with Rogers Smith) of The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of America's Commitment to Racial Equality (University of Chicago Press, September 1999) which examines the dynamics of race in American politics and history. The book received the inaugural Horace Mann Bond Book Award from the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University and was a semifinalist for the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.
In addition to his publications, Professor Klinkner has also contributed to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, Salon.com, the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, and many other newspapers and magazines. He has also appeared on many television and radio broadcasts, including C-SPAN, NPR, and Black Entertainment Television.
Professor Klinkner lives with his wife and two children in Utica, NY.
