Political Parties Must Respond to Disruption

I’m headed to Chicago this week to attend the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, and I’m on a roundtable about the 2020 nomination; I’ve also been finishing up a chapter I’m writing about where the process stands after 2016. So I’ve had presidential nominations on my mind even more than usual.

I expected, when I revisited Donald Trump’s nomination, to find that one reason Republican Party actors failed to prevent it was that they didn’t anticipate changes in the process. Stability is good for parties and for coalition-building; it allows for a shared understanding of campaign developments and ensures that party actors know how to influence the process. Changes to the system give candidates an opportunity to exploit the rules and win on their own, without the party. That’s essentially what happened in 1972 and 1976 after Democrats radically changed their nomination practices.