With the presidential election 8 months away, Political Science professors Doug Roscoe and Shannon Jenkins just released their newest book which  demonstrates that party organization has remained critically important in American politics, especially at the local level. Local Party Organizations in the Twenty-First Century, published by State University of New York Press (SUNY Press), examines the central role of local political parties and the "electoral payoff" for candidates who are helped by more active parties at the local level.

 

Roscoe and Jenkins  utilized data collected from more than 1,100 local parties in forty-eight states, and learned about the changes in the local parties. "One of the key patterns we find in our data is a shift in local party activity toward more grass-roots activities like canvassing, placing lawn signs, voter registration and so on," Roscoe said. "Local parties are doing more with this kind of volunteer labor. We think this reflects an adaptation to a changing environment. More and more, candidates are coming back to the ground game."

 

Their research, which began as a pilot survey in 2008, was fully developed and in full swing by 2010. Roscoe and Jenkins borrowed from management theory and looked at the organizational culture of local political parties. They found that local parties are a valuable resource for campaigns, and local party activists are effective contributors to the campaigns they work for.

And according to Jenkins, local parties are  highly  adaptable.  "One of the key themes of our book is that political parties are remarkably adaptive organizations," Professor Jenkins said. "They have survived numerous challenges to their survival - the introduction of the secret ballot, the direct primary, and campaign finance to name a few. Despite this, they continue to remain relevant to candidates, politicians, and voters. The political landscape will continue to evolve, and so will political parties."