Sample Summary

Nelson Munz                                                                                           PS 101 01
9/5/07                                                                                              Summary #2
Uneasy Alliances: Race and Party Competition In America, by Paul Frymer

Frymer seeks to explain why African-Americans are consistently marginalized by the American two-party system. This marginalization is not accidental, he argues; the American electoral system that developed in the early 19th century was designed specifically to defuse and deny issues of race. Frymer begins with an example: the contemporary revitalization of the Democratic Party, culminating in the 1992 election of President Clinton. The Democratic Party leadership pursued ideologically moderate voters by downplaying or even neglecting traditional African-American interests such as welfare, affirmative action, and racial injustice. These leaders believed that commitment to Black interests alienated key white voters; playing down these commitments would enable the party to build the broad coalition necessary to elect a Democratic President. According to Frymer, this contemporary example is part of a larger pattern. Since the creation of the two-party system, party leaders have consistently followed this pattern, which was intended to minimize racial conflict.

Frymer introduces the concept of “electoral capture,” in which minority interests are rejected by the opposing party and have no choice but to remain with their current one. In this case, the current party can take the support of the minority interest for granted, focusing on voters who may swing to either party. While African-Americans are ideologically closer to Democrats than Republicans, the primary reason they are not courted by Republicans is that Republican Party leaders are afraid of the disruptive effects African-Americans would have on their party; these leaders believe that appeals to Blacks would drive racist whites from their party, destroying their national party coalition and costing them their chance at the Presidency.

Scholars of political parties tend to view parties as empowering minorities; they provide the best means for minorities to effect political change. These scholars point to the example of the Jacksonian Democrats, who brought disenfranchised white males into the political system. However, the two best examples of parties empowering Blacks (the Reconstruction Republicans and the 1960’s civil rights Democrats) actually occurred during periods in which a single party was dominant. It is only in the absence of a strong two-party system, argues Frymer, that African-American interests are represented.

Frymer argues that the traditional party model, in which competition leads parties to make appeals to all interests in order to balance against each other, does not work. Instead, parties have limited resources, and so will concentrate their efforts on those voters who require less effort to mobilize, i.e., those who already participate. Moreover, party scholars who suggest that minority interests will eventually be represented in the majority on some issue are incorrect; there is a long-term majority white interest in the US, and Black Americans will never end up on the majority side of this issue. The overall effect of the two-party system is to minimize explosive conflict, but at the expense of African-Americans.