Party Campaigning in the 1980s

Paul Herrnson's excellent study provides a wealth of information from campaign participants and statistical sources about the greatly enlarged activities of national party committees in congressional elections during the 1980s, and it places these activities in an analytical framework suggesting that parties have adjusted to candidate centered politics by becoming useful intermediaries rather than dominant role-players. The book thus contributes significantly to a realistic understanding of late-twentieth-century American politics.

Little attention has been paid to the role of parties in congressional elections, largely on the unexamined assumption that they had no role... Herrnson has inquired about the activities of the national parties in supporting the congressional campaign efforts of their partisans. And, he has sought to get at the importance of party campaign efforts from the candidates' eye view. He finds a considerable effect... [and] throws new light on the role of the contemporary political parties in American electoral politics.