Politics was about getting rich and, for those at risk, not becoming (nor staying) poor. According to Jeffrey Broxmeyer, this is how the party system operated in New York City of the nineteenth century—and possibly at other times and places. An obvious question is whether “electoral capitalism” can be found in those times or places. If it can, the book “smokes out” some assumptions in our thinking on parties. It also raises questions about prospects for reform.

The book is built on four empirical descriptions, plus two more chapters on their generalizability and implications for theory. Each descriptive chapter covers some dimension of “electoral capitalism”: party finance, party-building, poor relief, and reform efforts. Three of these cover the associated policy lever in the party we might expect to oppose it most. These descriptions draw on personal correspondence among power brokers and people at or near “the bottom.”

Specific topics covered include the following: Tammany-run financial houses, formed in opposition to Republican hegemony in the wake of the Civil War; Republicans’ own efforts to perfect the spoils system, having crushed the Tammany banks by causing a run on them; Republican spoils centered on the city’s custom house, as well as a bank with extensive federal influence (e.g., control of government bonds and transfers to and from foreign governments); how everyday people interfaced with the postwar spoils system; and how Republican Party regulars, operating through newspapers, defeated the early fusion of the incipient civil rights and labor movements. Threats to the electoral-capitalist system stemmed from its sensitivity to financial crisis—its inability to satisfy spiraling demand for patronage against a backdrop of rising inequality.

The introductory and concluding chapters take aim at contemporary theories of parties and then critics who might say that the story does not generalize. With respect to generality, the book offers three points. First, decisions made within the city had effects across the country. This is partly due to New York’s pivotal status in the Electoral College, partly due to its role in the national financial system, and partly because this mode of organization (with attendant mass “cynicism”) spilled over into other states. Examples include the financing of newspapers and railroads elsewhere (p. 137), and then the election of 1884 when New York’s Typographical Union No. 6 orchestrated the defeat of Republican James G. Blaine for president (pp. 140–42). This is a description of politics in the metropole.

On the temporal dimension, “electoral capitalism” becomes visible where electoral democracy takes root. Andrew Jackson is the book’s earliest example, billing his new spoils system as a “reform” itself (throwing the “bums” out of sinecures, not just elected office). If we accept that politics tends to follow wealth accumulation, electoral capitalism may have even deeper roots. Hence the author sees its budding logic both in the early republic and in the bureaucratization of Western Europe’s early monarchies (p. 9).

On the comparative front, the author reinterprets Max Weber’s essay, “Politics as a Vocation.” He reads this as a warning to young radicals that “mass democracy may not empower quite who you expect” (p. 161). Here it may be useful to recall Robert Michels’ “iron law of oligarchy,” arrived at via study of the German Social Democrats themselves. Depending on how one weighs these claims, electoral capitalism seems unavoidable.

The book’s critique of party theory is both normative and positive. On the positive side, the New York story does not square with ambition theory (Joseph Schlesinger, Political Parties and the Winning of Office, 1994), because most of the key players were content with minor (if any) office. Nor does the story square with theories built on legislators’ need for stable coalitions, whether to manage plenary time (Gary Cox, “The Organization of Democratic Legislatures,” in Donald A. Wittman and Barry R. Weingast, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, 2006), policy fights, or the demands of reelection (John Aldrich, Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America, 1995). Where agenda setting does appear, its purpose is to hold down the cash costs of coalition maintenance; for example, by opposing Reconstruction (p. 1) or to purchase audience among state legislators (p. 43). Finally, the book targets a newer ideational theory of where party alignments originate (Hans Noel, Political Parties and Political Ideologies in America, 2014). These “coalition merchants” turn up in a few strategic places: as beneficiaries of Republican arts patronage (p. 117), as publishers of newspapers useful to job seekers (p. 102), and as Confederate union-busters working for the Republican-leaning New York Tribune (pp. 134–39).

The normative critique is that our theories overlook (or understate) a “party noir” (pp. 10, 12–16)—that voter turnout in excess of 70% resulted not from competition over principles, but instead from mobilizing desperate job seekers. Maybe this is true, and maybe it is not. A theory of party based on the management of plenary time does seem less than satisfying. At the same time, some of these theories do make space for “electoral capitalism.” Consider the ideational theory, in which pundits and their editors shape party competition over the long haul. If an editor says “no,” the story does not run.

One of the book’s contributions, then, is to bring materialism back into the theory behind many of our theories: William Riker’s (The Theory of Political Coalitions, 1962) “size principle.” Recall that minimum-winning coalitions form because people are stingy. They team up with as many others as are needed to claim the “spoils” while minimizing sharing. The nature of spoils, in this book’s view, is very straightforward.

Say we want “to confront the party noir,” as the author calls on us to do (p. 12). Here, the book distinguishes “elite” from “grassroots” reform. Repeated financial crises toward the end of the nineteenth century engendered two responses to the problem of “monopoly” (in politics and economy alike). One was the upper-class mugwump tradition, which found its way into political science and Progressive reform more broadly (pp. 155–61). Another was that typified by Typographical Union No. 6, which the Tribune later co-opted amidst the Panic of 1893 (pp. 149–50).

Elite reform proved compatible with interests in both parties; otherwise, they would not have let such cost cutting go forward (cf., Steven Erie, Rainbow’s End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1988). Grassroots reform has yet to get its shot, at least in the United States: “Truly, any problem in democracy that party helps to create will require party to resolve” (p. 12).

Overall, Electoral Capitalism gives a painstakingly researched view of New York City’s early machine politics. That view includes an extensive analysis of the lesser-understood Republican organization, its ties to the national-level party system, and how its interaction with Tammany shaped both parties’ strategies and agendas. The book also skillfully sets the stage for a nuanced understanding of the Progressive Era. Generalizability aside, the book’s main weakness is that one must read it closely. For specialists in parties or democracy, however, the theory-level challenge is profound.