The US Presidential Nomination System and Its Evolution

• Název práce v češtině: Vývoj nominačního systému amerických prezidentských voleb
• Název v anglickém jazyce: The US Presidential Nomination System and Its Evolution
• Klíčová slova: election, primaries, campaign, National Convention, delegates, caucuses, Democratic Party, Republican Party, the USA
• Klíčová slova anglicky: election, primaries, campaign, National Convention, delegates, caucuses, Democratic Party, Republican Party, the USA
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2010/2011
• Typ práce: diplomová práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Katedra politologie (23-KP)
• Vedoucí / školitel: PhDr. Věra Kotábová
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno vedoucím/školitelem
• Datum přihlášení: 03.02.2011
• Datum zadání: 07.06.2011
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 25.06.2012 00:00
• Místo konání obhajoby: IPS FSV UK, U Kříže 8, 158 00 Praha 5 - Jinonice
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 16.05.2012
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 25.06.2012
• Oponenti: PhDr. Mgr. et Mgr. Jakub Landovský, Ph.D.

Seznam odborné literatury

Resources:
• Bartels, L. M.: Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1988
• Bibby, J., Holbrook, T.: Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis, 8th Edition. Ed. Virginia Gray and Russell L. Hanson, Washington D.C.: CQ Press, 2004. p. 62-100
• Brereton, Ch. First in the Nation: New Hampshire and the Premier Presidential Primary. Portsmouth, NH: Peter E. Randall Publishers, 1987
• Citrin, J., Karol, D.: Nominating the President: Evolution and Revolution in 2008 and Beyond, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009
• Edwards, G. C., Wayne, S. J.: Presidential Leadership. Politics and Policy Making. 7th Edition. USA
• Greer, P.-H., Haynes, A.-H.: Campaign Strategy in Presidential Primaries, 1976-1988, American Journal of Political Science 37, 1993
• Hershey, M.: Political Parties in America, 12th Edition. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007
• Janda, K., Berry, J., Goldman, J., Huff, E.: Vyzva demokracie. System vlády v USA. Praha: Sociologicke nakladatelstvi, 1998
• Kamarck, E.C.: How Presidential Candidates Have Shaped the Modern Nominating Systém, Brookings Institution Press, 2009
• Karas, P. Kupka, K: Atlas prezidentských voleb USA 1904-2004, Praha: P3K, 2005
• Magleby, D.B.: Getting Inside the Outside Campaign, Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, 2000
• Mayer, W. G.: In Pursuit of the White House, Chatham, N.J., Chatham Hoouse, 2000
• Norrander, B.: Ideological Representativeness of Presidential Primary Voters, in: American Journal of Political Science, 1989
• Norrander, B.: The Imperfect Primary, Routledge, 2010
• Palmer, N. A.: The New Hampshire Primary and the American Electoral Process, 1997
• Říchová, B. et al: Komparace politických systémů I. VŠE, Fakulta mezinárodních vztahů, 2. vydání, 1999
• Říchová, B.: Přehled moderních politologických teorií. Portál, Praha 2000
• Scala, D. J.: Stormy Weather: The New Hampshire Primary and Presidential Politics, 2003
• Smith, S. S., Springer, M. J., eds.: Reforming the Presidential Nomination Process, Brookings Institution Press 2009
• Wayne, S. J.: The Road to the White House 2004. The politics of Presidential Elections. Canada: Wadsworth, 2004
• The Electoral College: How It Works in Contemporary Presidential Elections" (PDF) http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/36762.pdf
• The Constitution of the United States of America

Other sources:
• Official websites of Democrats and Rpublicans
www.democrats.org
www.republicans.org

• www.jfklibrary.org
• www.uselections.com
• www.whitehouse.gov

Předběžná náplň práce

Summary:
The main focus of my thesis is to introduce the system of the presidential primaries in the United States of America over the period of the country’s modern history. The main attention will be given to the 20th century, especially its second half. In the second part of my thesis I will illustrate the way the present nomination system works on three particular case studies describing three specific primary elections.

Description:
In the first section of my thesis the attention will be paid to political parties. America’s modern political two-party system consists of the Democratic Party (left-of-center) and the Republican Party (right-of-center). The historical evolution of both parties as well as their main ideologies – Democrats as a liberal and Republicans as a conservative party – will be described there, as well as their different views on economic, social, foreign or legal issues. To understand better the nomination system of each party, I will also analyze structures and compositions of both Democrats and Republicans.
Primary election system itself is an internal party process that chooses the political party’s candidate (in some cases more than just one) for the next general election. Over the period of the past 240 years it is obvious that the nomination rules have changed. As the Constitution doesn’t specify the presidential primary system at all, there have been lots of strong debates about how to establish the rules. The historical evolution will be described in details in the second part of my thesis. This section should present early period after the Continental Congresses in Philadelphia and within the 19th century, followed by significant changes instituted in the beginning of the 20th century up to the modern rules that have been used for primaries since the second half on the past century, including a more detailed description of two different systems that Democrats and Republicans use to vote for their final candidates.
The priority will be given to factual case studies. I have chosen three primary elections that I consider to be interesting, appropriate and worth to be described in more detailed way. Those are 1960 primary election that preceded the general election after which John Fitzgerald Kennedy became the 35th president of the United States. The second are 1980 primaries after which Ronald Reagan took over the presidential office. Those will be compared to primaries that were held four years earlier, namely 1976 elections when Reagan almost defeated the incumbent president Gerald Ford. And then last but not least presidential primaries of 2008 that were the first step for Barack Obama to be the first Afro-American president of the US. One way or another, there would be either the first woman president candidate or the first Afro-American one, so the primaries were specific for both important political parties.

Topic selection:
I have chosen American nomination system to be my main focus, because not only I am particularly interested in the US political system, but I am also convinced that the whole system of American presidential elections is way too confusing to understand and I would like to bring a comprehensible resource of how the candidates, who run for the president in general elections, are chosen by their political parties. The language selection is then obvious as well, because most of the sources are written in English, which prevents me from making mistakes and misunderstandings in my own translation.

Hypothesis:
The aim of my thesis is to present American primary election and their evolution over the past years and to point out some important moments from the history that contributed to create the system that is used nowadays. The goal is to describe the mechanism of choosing the candidate for president for each specific party, in our case Democrats and Republicans. To make the process more understandable, I picked three primary elections to describe the process on. Those are all unique and differ in the times when they were held, e.i. 1960, 1980 (1976) and 2008.
The main methods I will use are descriptive and comparative. The first named will be used while clarifying the whole nomination process and its evolution within the history as well as while speaking about the American political system. Comparative method will be applied while equating presidential primaries in the last part of my thesis with the main focus of transfer theoretical concepts into practice.

Questions:
In my final paper I will try to answer following questions:

What are the most influential factors that affected the long-term generation of the presidential primary election system?
Why does the Democratic Party use system of proportional representation to select candidates unlike the Republican Party that prefers majority election?
Are there any differences in organization of primaries in various parts of the country?
What strategies were used in 1960, 1980 and 2008 primary elections and why do they differ?
What are the perspectives for the future? Are there any changes soon-to-be adopted?

Structure:
The introduction will cover the main features of American political parties and its two-party political system. There two major contemporary political parties that have won every American presidential election since 1852 – Democrats and Republicans. I will focus on their historical evolution, organization, ideologies and differences in their programs, as Democrats support an American liberalism platform, but Republicans support an American conservative platform.
The main section will be divided into two chapters:

1. The Evolution of the Presidential Primaries

The first part will cover the historical evolution of the presidential primary election system over the period of the last 240 years with the main focus on the 20th (21st) century. It will be divided into four parts:

1.1. The Early Evolution
In this part I will present the very first ideas of how the presidential candidate should be nominated and how the political parties (fractions to be exact) used to choose their delegates. This part will then cover the period from the time of Continental Congresses to approximately the year of 1824.

1.2. Since the Nominating Convention Establishment
Second part’s main subject will be the evolution in 19th century, creation of the national nominating convention and differences in the states all over the country.

1.3. Since Adopting Direct-vote-system
The third part will focus on implementation of the direct vote of the delegates, the characteristics of election, the electoral system as well as the differences between The Democratic Party and The Republican Party.

1.4 Modern Period - 1970s until Now
The last part will cover the last forty years. I will try to analyze increasing importance and prestige of presidential primaries and I will also focus on nominating contests and various strategies and tactics used while reaching for the priority to be nominated as the party’s candidate.

2. Democratic Party and Republican Party Rules

This chapter’s main focus will be on current rules that Democrats and Republicans follow to select their delegates for National Conventions, differences between pledged delegates and superdelegates, the “winner-take-all” method versus proportional representation, specific criteria that vary state by state, campaigns, meetings, caucuses, voter turnout, calendar of presidential primaries and other attributes that characterize the whole process of selecting a presidential candidate.

3. Case Studies

The third chapter will be more specific. I will use three different primaries to apply the theoretical concepts from the first chapter into practice. I will also focus on different mechanisms and I will analyze the main factors that led to each specific results.

3.1. 1960 Primary Election

3.2. 1980 Primary Election (with a complementation of 1976 primary election)

3.3. 2008 Primary Election

In the conclusion I will answer the questions I had mentioned earlier above. I will also summarize the knowledge I got from analyzing specific elections and find some features those elections had in common as well as the main differences. I expect to provide an intelligible interpretation of the nominating system followed by predictions for the future development.

Předběžná náplň práce v anglickém jazyce

As stated above.