In this conversation, we dig into:
What were you up to in the late ‘80s when you wrote those two papers?
I've been thinking about the political cultures of the two parties for a very long time. I've been to every Democratic convention since ‘64 and every Republican convention since ‘76. I've been particularly focused on what women were doing within the two parties, although I'll admit that in ‘64 they weren't really doing very much. In ‘76, they both were doing a lot, but they were doing it differently.
Because I saw feminists do things differently in the different parties, I began to ask myself, “Why?” The answer I came up with is that the environments they were working in were very different. We tend to think that if you’ve seen one political party, you've seen them all, but that's simply not true. Party cultures differ just as societies do, and if you're going to be active in one, it helps to know what the culture is.
- Why do the two parties fight so differently?
- What makes someone powerful in each party?
- How did the women's movement transform the Democratic Party?
- What happened to convention caucuses? Did they stop mattering?
- What does it mean when a movement starts "trashing" its own leaders?
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Jo, you’ve written two papers on the political organization of the two parties, “Who You Know Versus Who You Represent: Feminist Influence in the Democratic and Republican Parties,” and “The Political Culture of the Democratic and Republican Parties.”What were you up to in the late ‘80s when you wrote those two papers?
I've been thinking about the political cultures of the two parties for a very long time. I've been to every Democratic convention since ‘64 and every Republican convention since ‘76. I've been particularly focused on what women were doing within the two parties, although I'll admit that in ‘64 they weren't really doing very much. In ‘76, they both were doing a lot, but they were doing it differently.
Because I saw feminists do things differently in the different parties, I began to ask myself, “Why?” The answer I came up with is that the environments they were working in were very different. We tend to think that if you’ve seen one political party, you've seen them all, but that's simply not true. Party cultures differ just as societies do, and if you're going to be active in one, it helps to know what the culture is.
In that second paper, you wrote:
"There are two fundamental differences between the parties in which all others are rooted. The first one is structural: In the Democratic Party power flows upward and in the Republican Party power flows downward. The second is attitudinal: Republicans perceive themselves as insiders even when they are out of power and Democrats perceive themselves as outsiders even when they are in power."
Tell me more about what those fundamental differences mean.
The Democratic Party is composed of constituent groups, and it has pretty much always been that way, long before feminism or anything else. Therefore, exercising power within the Democratic Party involves being able to say that you accurately reflect the interests of a particular group. Those groups can be organized or they can just be ideational groups, but to be listened to, you need to be able to say, “I represent X” — “I represent black women,” or “I represent Jews,” or “I'm speaking for the people of South Carolina.” It has to be some sort of unit.
The Republican Party flows downward; it's having personal connections that counts. You could see that in the last year — those who claimed to have a personal connection to Donald Trump were paid more attention than those who didn't. In previous years, it would have been a different set of connections to a different person or people, but right now it's Donald Trump; if Donald Trump wants to say bad things about you, your influence just disappears. And that's because people in the party listen to what the top is saying rather than the other way around.
It seems straightforwardly true that the GOP is dominated by a single person today, but I think we tend to take Trump as a sui generis case. What's an example of that orientation from a previous era of American politics?
Let me give you an example from the ‘60s. Goldwater won the Republican nomination in 1964. He was not favored by everyone in the party, but he won the nomination. Phyllis Schlafly, whom we often think of as the organizer of the opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, gained her influence because of her relationship with Goldwater. If not for that relationship, it's highly unlikely that she would have risen to the top of her own group.
Let me give you an example from the ‘60s. Goldwater won the Republican nomination in 1964. He was not favored by everyone in the party, but he won the nomination. Phyllis Schlafly, whom we often think of as the organizer of the opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, gained her influence because of her relationship with Goldwater. If not for that relationship, it's highly unlikely that she would have risen to the top of her own group.
I'm curious about the second difference you mentioned as well, that Republicans perceive themselves as insiders even when they're out, and Democrats perceive themselves as outsiders even when they're in.
This has a lot to do with the social basis of the parties, which does change over time. The social basis today is not entirely the same as it was 60, 70, 80 years ago. The Democratic Party has generally been composed of people who do not view themselves as elites. As it becomes the party of the educated middle and upper classes, it looks less and less like that.
Republican Party members, on the other hand, do view themselves as a party of elites. Today, to some extent, it's aspirational — people they want to be like, rather than people they actually are. But traditionally, they tended to be the people of the upper middle and upper classes. The Republican Party still has an awful lot of upper class people in it, whereas the Democrats tend to be people who are socially upwardly mobile, but not already at the top of the social hierarchy. Again, the social basis is changing, so what I was saying is not 100% true anymore.
This has a lot to do with the social basis of the parties, which does change over time. The social basis today is not entirely the same as it was 60, 70, 80 years ago. The Democratic Party has generally been composed of people who do not view themselves as elites. As it becomes the party of the educated middle and upper classes, it looks less and less like that.
Republican Party members, on the other hand, do view themselves as a party of elites. Today, to some extent, it's aspirational — people they want to be like, rather than people they actually are. But traditionally, they tended to be the people of the upper middle and upper classes. The Republican Party still has an awful lot of upper class people in it, whereas the Democrats tend to be people who are socially upwardly mobile, but not already at the top of the social hierarchy. Again, the social basis is changing, so what I was saying is not 100% true anymore.
by Santi Ruiz, Statecraft | Read more:
Image: Britannica via
Image: Britannica via
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The Republican and Democratic parties are not the same: power flows differently within them. If these party differences were more widely recognized, I suspect we would see fewer evangelicals frustrated with their limited influence over the GOP party platform, fewer journalists shocked with J.D. Vance’s journey from never-Trump land to MAGA-maximalism, and greater alarm among centrist Democrats about the longer-term influence that the Palestine protests will have on the contours of their coalition.My perspective on all this has been strongly shaped by two research articles penned by political scientist Jo Freeman. In her youth Freeman was a new left activist, one of the founding activist-intellectuals of feminism’s second wave. She is perhaps most famous today for two essays she wrote in her activist days (both under her movement name “Joreen”). The first, “The Tyranny of Structurelessness,” is a biting critique of the counterculture dream of eliminating hierarchy from activist organizations. The second, “Trashing: the Dark Side of Sisterhood,” is one of the original descriptions of “Cancel Culture.” There Freeman provides a psychological account of how cancellation (she calls it “trashing”) works and the paralyzing effect it has within leftist organizations, where cancellations are most common. If you have never read these essays I recommend you do. Freeman’s internal critiques of left-wing movements at work are more insightful than most rightwing jeremiads against them.
Neither of these essays shed much light on the Republican Party. For that we must turn to her later, more academic work. In particular, her 1987 article “Who You Know vs. Who You Represent: Feminist Influence in the Democratic and Republican Parties,” and her 1986 “The Political Culture of the Democratic and Republican Parties.”
