Political scientist V.O. Key (1955a, b, 1959) introduced the concept of American political parties as “tripod” entities, with legs composed of members of the electorate, the party organization , and elected officials who ran under their party’s aegis. While the theory itself has withstood a number of challenges and adaptations (see Schlesinger 1984, 1994; Pomper 1998; Shea 1995), the basic structure of parties still resembles the three-legged stool Key described.
In Key’s concept, the party organization was a byproduct of the elected officials, there to help overcome constitutional barriers to party founding and expansion. However, parties are also fluid entities, shifting and morphing in response to changes within the political environment. From the 1970s to the 1990s, party organizations emerged as a powerful electoral coordinating mechanism as a byproduct of two significant forces: professional fundraising operations and large “soft-money ” donations (Herrnson 1986, 1988; Kolodny 1998).
The soft-money era may have strengthened parties out of a century-long period of decay (Wattenberg 2009) but the effect was temporary. The 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) stopped the flow of soft money through the parties and redirected its flow into outside organizations (Holman and Claybrook 2004; Corrado 2006; Dwyre et al. 2006). The flow of money to 527 organizations and later SuperPACs have significantly undermined the ability of parties to serve as that electioneering coordinator highlighted under the soft-money era (Kolodny 1998; Malbin 2004; Skinner et al. 2012).
BRCA’s weakening of parties under a new campaign finance regime is significant. The 1970s–1990s revival of parties followed a century of decline in the aftermath of the Progressive Reforms (Ranney 1975; Shefter 1994). Parties were seen as almost unnecessary artifacts of a long-extinct politics before they re-emerged. During that period of revival, though, the electorate did not embrace parties with concomitant energy: self-identified nonpartisans continued to increase in numbers over that time period (Bartels 2000). The party in government strengthened briefly (Aldrich and Coleman Battista 2002; Aldrich and Rohde 2000; Bianco and Sened 2005) but the real growth was located within the national party headquarters. Even the state parties did not experience similar expansion and revival seen in the Hill committees (Aldrich and Grynaviski 2015; Flavin and Shufeldt 2015).
If power abhors a vacuum, then the influence party organizations held during their brief period of revival had to go somewhere. Mostly, that power was ceded to outside groups. Organized interests, most notably SuperPACs , emerged as a powerful force. Initially, 527 organizations emerged as a response to BCRA’s soft-money ban, but they were supplanted by SuperPACs after the Citizens United and SpeechNOW! decisions of 2010 and 2011 (Dwyre and Braz 2014; Hasen 2014; Kang 2013). SuperPACs could not only deal in unlimited funds but they were shielded from the strict disclosure rules of the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) giving them an advantage that surpassed even that of soft-money-era parties.
The brief reinvigoration of party organization was thus a bubble, an aberration of renewal during a steady state of decline. In the aftermath of the end of that growth period, what is the future of the American political party? Is continuing decline inevitable, or can the parties find new opportunities for expansion and influence? With their primary method of gaining a coordinating influence over other electioneering actors removed, how will parties strategically respond?
As party organizations struggled with their changing role, the nature of the electorate was also undergoing a transformation. The electorate was moving in two seemingly conflicting directions: away from parties and more polarized (Smidt 2015; Abramowitz and Fiorina 2013; Fiorina et al. 2005). The public was becoming simultaneously more ideologically extreme and less partisan. Typically, political parties are arranged on an ideological continuum, so the disaggregation of ideology from partisanship meant that not only were political scientists challenged to identify the new partisanship, also partisan campaigners faced a new challenge in identifying and mobilizing potential supporters.
Candidates for office were also changing simultaneously. As campaigns became more expensive, longer and more arduous, the type of person who ran for office and the number of them changed (Hopmann 2014). Fewer candidates run for office now because of the unpalatable process through which one must venture to win office (Evans et al. 2014). Those candidates who run reflect the interests of the outside groups and ideological extremity of the voters.
The brief run of candidates identified as the “Tea Party ” or “Freedom Caucus ” are an excellent example of the shifting power base away from party organizations . The Tea Party was never a party per se, but a high-profile and briefly successful faction within the Republican Party . That success did more to rend the Republican Party asunder than help its party organization revive itself in the wake of BCRA’s shock (Collinson 2016).
Kansas’ Tim Huelskamp , one of the most visible of the Tea Party generation of firebrand candidate, served in Congress from 2011 to 2017. Huelskamp first ran for Congress in 2010, prior to Citizens United and SpeechNOW! but during the Tea Party’s rise. During his time in office, Huelskamp voted against his party frequently, publicly feuded with his party’s leadership, and as a result was kicked off of the district-critical Agriculture Committee. Speaker John Boehner actively marshaled forces behind consecutive primary challenges to Huelskamp, resulting in his defeat in a 2016 primary versus a first-time candidate, Roger Marshall.
Huelskamp is an excellent example of the challenges facing the political party today. The one element of strength the party had to keep itself vital, let alone relevant, in politics was electioneering. Candidates like Huelskamp emerge when that one differential advantage is taken away from the parties, though. When faced with such challenges, both internal and external, how can and do parties adjust? (Choksi and Mele 2016).
The House Freedom Caucus , made up of primarily of more conservative Republicans who had served three terms or less (Desilver 2016), worked against then Speaker of the House John Boehner to shift power away from party leadership and complicated the ability of Republicans to choose a new Speaker in 2015. Despite the trouble they made for party leadership, 42% of Republicans say they have never heard of them, and among those Republicans who have heard of them, 67% of those who identify as conservative h...