While I do not dispute the pivotal role played by party leaders in setting and shifting a party position, I argue that the impetus for party shifts sometimes comes from the "bottom-up"--that is, from party members themselves. At times, the party position held by the leadership conflicts with some members' constituency interests. Faced with this conflict, backbench members use the legislative process to signal their intention to defect from the party on policy unless the leadership modifies the party's existing position. Party members' party-splitting votes under constituency pressures, however, do not always lead the party into a new brand. If one party, particularly a majority party, is divided but the other party is united over a policy issue, this issue drives a wedge within the majority party. If this wedge issue continues to split the majority party and unite the minority party, the majority party is likely to shift its policy position to solve its dilemma of party division. To test my theory of party position shifts, I explore three historical cases in which there was position change by one or both parties over immigration, national security, and trade. More specifically, these include: the switch of congressional Republicans from anti- to pro-exclusion on Chinese immigration in the post-Reconstruction period; the shift of congressional Democrats from a party of "guns" and "butter" to a party of only "butter" in the post-Vietnam War era; and Republican and Democratic flip-flopping on China and MFN in the post-Cold War period. My findings suggest that policy change in these cases is driven by the shifting preferences of members as they try to resolve tension between the party and the constituency. Sometimes party rank-and-file members are in the driver's seat in defining the parties' positions. This is as true for foreign policy as it is for domestic policy. My dissertation shows that in a representative democracy, the transition from voters' preferences to lawmakers' votes occurs through the politics of procedural voting strategies in Congress. / text

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Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1966. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 51).

The purpose of this study is to examine two major psychological determinants of the vote in presidential elections - candidate image and party orientation. The central thesis of this study is that candidate image, as measured here, has been a greater determinant of electoral choice in the majority of presidential elections since 1952 than has party orientation. One of the vices as well as virtues of a democratic society is that the people often get what they want. This is especially true in the case of electing our leaders. Political scientists have often concentrated their efforts on attempting to ascertain why people vote as they do. Studies have been conducted focusing on the behavior of voters in making that important decision-who should govern?

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In the mid-1960's, the American people were gripped by a certain nameless fear brought on by America's military failure in Viet Nam, racial tension, student unrest, crumbling cities, and the nuclear arms race. This fear caused many to turn to a new conservatism, for the Democratic Party, symbolized by Lyndon Johnson, seemed to be the cause of many of these frightening problems. The Democrats were believed to be responsible for Viet Nam, for the growing racial confrontations, and for the overgrowing federal bureaucracy. This new conservatism benefited the Republican Party, and between 1964 and 1968, this party became ascendant. Throughout American history, a realignment of party identification has occurred every thirty to thirty-five years, and now the time was ripe. This thesis attempts to prove that there was a realignment in the partisan identifications of the electorate's support for the two parties, and that in the last half of the past decade realignment did take place.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.