ORGANIZING POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS: A SURVEY OF 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY TRENDS

This dissertation describes how the campaign role of the various entities which have combined to organize campaigns has changed since the early days of the Republic. From the short-run perspective of the leaders of these organizations, the party officials, candidates, labor leaders, etc., their role during campaigns--in 1830 or in 1980--was to attempt to win elections. This study, however, does not adopt their perspective. It deals with campaigning as a process of socializing citizens into the political system rather than as a determinant of electoral success. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, national elections and campaigns were embedded in state and local institutions. Indeed, one of the most important aspects of nineteenth century politics was its virtually total integration with community life. Not only did local political organizations display an incredibly high level of partisan activity, but ostensibly non-political agencies of the community, such as churches and saloons, also evidenced extraordinary degrees of partisanship. As the nineteenth century faded into the twentieth, partisanship and political organization were gradually isolated from other aspects of community life. Meanwhile, local political organizations, challenged by numerous civic reforms, became less effective agencies of voter mobilization. The national party organizations, on the other hand, took advantage of improvements in communications, transportation, and organizational techiques to increase their power over Presidential contests. Campaigning itself became a less sporadic endeavor, as party organizations began to plan and even conduct campaigns on a year-round basis. Ironically, at the very time that national parties were finally increasing their control over the campaign process, the advent of new technology gave individual candidate organizations a distinct advantage over the parties in conducting campaigns. By the 1960\u27s candidate organizations at all electoral levels displayed superior organizational capabilities to that of the parties. Indeed, with the parties in a state of disarray candidates often had to recruit their own volunteers and raise all necessary funds. In accomplishing this, candidates would seek assistance from the parties, but they would also expend considerable energy in courting a multitude of non-party political action groups