Abstract
The primary election process by which candidates are nominated by their parties to stand for election is an institution that is uniquely American (Bawn 2018). In their book, Primary Elections and American Politics: The Unintended Consequences of Progressive Era Reform, Chapman Rackaway and Joseph Romance draw on contemporary research to attempt to answer two important questions. First, what were the driving factors behind the adoption in the United States of this distinctive institution as a means of nominating candidates for office? And second, what were the consequences of the adoption of these reforms in the early 1900s for American democracy? Their work draws on an abundant volume of scholarship, marshalling the existing evidence in an attempt to provide the reader a comprehensive background behind the origins of the primary and also an argument based on a burgeoning scholarship about the consequences of those reforms for American democracy.
The strength of the book lies in its rich synthesis of scholarship on the progressive movement and primary elections. Rackaway and Romance do an excellent job at detailing, in broad strokes, the goals of the progressive movement and how the direct primary fit within the movement as a whole. Other work on the origins of the primary elections and the Progressives’ role in the emergence of this institution generally limits itself to understanding how the push for the primary election fits within the progressive movement’s larger push for other democratic reforms such as the Australian ballot, the referendum, and the recall. Rather than confining themselves to this narrower view, Rackaway and Romance provide a larger perspective of the policy and societal goals of the Progressive movement and situate Progressives’ push for primary elections in that larger context. While the causal effect of the Progressive movement’s efforts on causing states to ditch the caucus and convention system in favor of a primary election is strongly contested (Hirano and Snyder 2019; Ranney 1975; Reynolds 2006; Ware 2002), the Progressive movement helped lay the groundwork and set the agenda that enabled the adoption of the primary election. This manuscript provides a detailed account of the ideological motivations behind the Progressives’ efforts.
Unfortunately, Rackaway and Romance’s arguments about the negative consequences of the primary for American democracy are less convincing. In the later chapters of the book, Rackaway and Romance argue that primaries have caused party organisations to atrophy, thus limiting their ability to serve as intermediary institutions to “foster democratic accountability…and link the public with political participation” (p.19). According to the authors, weakened party organizations have, in turn, contributed to lower political participation, greater extremism among the partisans who participate in nominations, less control of candidates by party elites, greater control of campaigns by campaign professionals and candidates, and ultimately accelerated ideological and political polarisation amongst political elites and in the general public.
However, the research on which the authors rely to make these arguments is sometimes speculative, incomplete, and ultimately paints a picture of the effects of primaries that does not entirely fit with the existing research on the subject. While it is possible that that primaries may have caused a decrease in turnout indirectly by hastening the decline of party patronage and encouraging parties refocusing on policy issues (McGerr 1988), the direct link is not entirely clear and existing scholarship also suggests that primaries were enacted, in part, because the convention system could not adequately handle the increased participation in party politics (Reynolds 2006). In addition, there is less support for many of the other claims. There is not any good evidence that partisans who participate in primaries are more extreme than the partisans who participate in general elections or who abstain from voting (Sides et al., 2018). Nor is there strong evidence that the implementation of primaries increased ideological extremity in Congress (Hirano et al., 2010). Nor, even, is there clear evidence that party elites have less control over the nomination process as a result of the implementation of primaries (Hassell 2018; Masket 2016). In short, while the book makes a number of strong claims about the negative consequences of primary elections, the evidence on which it relies is often speculative, lacking the support of academic scholarship, and is at best one-sided and incomplete.
Overall, however, the book provides an excellent introduction to the progressive movement and the role that it played in the implementation of primary elections, but provides an incomplete depiction of the consequences of primary elections on the body politic. Given the increased attention to presidential primaries and their effects on nominations in recent years, the book should be of interest to those interested in getting a bird’s eye view of the research on the origins of the primary and a particular side of the argument of why primaries could be detrimental.
