Primary Elections and American Politics

Argues that Progressive Era reforms had the counterintuitive effect of weakening political parties and their role in representative government. The last twenty years has seen a series of changes to American party politics: polarization, negative partisanship, decreasing voter turnout, and decreasing faith in elections and government. In Primary Elections and American Politics , Chapman Rackaway and Joseph Romance trace the origins of these and other problems to one of the most controversial refo