Daniel Schlozman’s When Movements Anchor Parties stands out from other work on the interaction between political parties and social movements as the most historically sweeping book on this topic. It covers more than 150 years of American history, including movements for labor, the end to slavery, populism, Christian conservatism, and against the Vietnam War. Scholzman intricately weaves an account of groups and movements coevolving with parties as they struggle to maintain their organizations, advance their interests, and reconstitute the nature of party politics. This study deepens what is known about how party coalitions are shaped by the efforts of groups and the entrepreneurs that lead them, making it mandatory reading for any serious scholar of American politics or history.

The principal question of When Movements Anchor Parties is under what conditions are parties and movements in the United States able to sustain mutually beneficial alliances? Schlozman provides a compelling answer. He argues that party-movement alliances are sustained when there are organized groups that are able to anchor the relationship. These “anchoring groups” are usually led by strategic brokers who have a “hybrid” quality; they operate simultaneously inside and outside the formal party apparatus. Their goals are both to help their group advance its interests and to augment the party’s electoral success. These brokers need not be the same actors over time. Entrepreneurs may come and go, but alliances are sustained if new leaders arise from movements to take their place. In order to become an anchoring group, party elites must agree to work with the group’s leaders in promoting the group’s policy priorities (which Schlozman refers to as “ideological patronage”). Elites do so only when they see this cooperation as a winning path toward continuing electoral majorities.

The strength of anchoring groups depends not only on leaders, but also on followers; anchoring capacity depends on providing foot soldiers for parties to achieve and sustain majorities. When groups provide these resources, parties are willing to grant them a veto over important decisions (such as the selection of a vice presidential nominee), thus establishing the give-and-take of the alliance. Alliances with parties are one of the best ways for movements to achieve major changes in policy, but alliances also leave movements vulnerable to cooptation and exploitation.

The alliances between the Democratic Party and the labor movement, as well as the Republican Party and the Christian Right, ilustrate Schlozman’s argument. The labor-Democratic alliance had its origins in the rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) during the New Deal. It was buoyed by the National Industrial Recovery Act, which greatly facilitated the ability of unions to organize and bargain collectively. Yet it was not until the post-World War II period when campaign contributions through its Political Action Committee (PAC) enabled the CIO to play a significant power-broker role within the party. Skillful brokers, such as Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers (UAW), encouraged Democrats and labor leaders alike to find common cause on issues such as union pensions. Despite the decline in the unionized workforce from roughly a third to a tenth of all workers, a succession of labor leaders maintained their bargain with the party. The alliance has shifted in its orientation in recent years, focusing now more on guarding against attacks from the right wing, rather than advancing new policy initiatives.

The alliance between the Republican Party and the Christian Right was led by brokers who were motivated to achieve policy changes on specific issues. Leaders such as Richard Viguerie and Paul Weyrich were not initially interested in a broad alliance within the party, but in working on single-issue coalitions, such as for tax emptions for Christian schools. However, movement leaders eventually found their success—and a foothold in the party—by reframing a series of issues to forge a coherent new conservative worldview. They sowed race, taxes, and abortion together with a common thread that helped to give Republicans a new narrative. Brokers for the New Right came and went—notably Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed—but were always replaced. The robustness of this alliance owes to motivated and engaged grassroots constituents who are inclined to combine religion and party politics.

Alliances are not always sustainable. A critical strength of Schlozman’s argument is that he devotes considerable attention to cases where alliances failed. The abolition movement to end slavery, for example, was instrumental in founding the Republican Party, but it lacked a strong group basis to persist into the latter years of the nineteenth century. Similarly, populism and the Vietnam antiwar movement scored early successes, but were unable to accomplish the same transitions of leadership as was the case for labor and the Christian Right. These instances make clear that continuation of a party-movement alliance depends on whether party elites anticipate that they will be able to lean on the movement for future electoral victories. Antiwar movements are especially hindered on this score since the wars they oppose eventually deescalate or end, making it challenging to sustain mobilization around longer-term issues, such as ending the military-industrial complex.

Our first question about the book is whether it makes sense to assume that all alliances necessarily follow analogous organizational forms. Schlozman introduces evidence that both the labor movement and the Christian Right relied heavily on entrepreneurial brokers to mediate between voters and elites. Yet it seems to be a strong assumption that all relevant alliances must be brokered in the same way. For example, he notes (pp. 40–41) that the civil rights movement relied more heavily on black churches to broker relations with the Democratic Party than on the type of brokers used in his two principal cases, thus justifying its omission from the analysis. We would argue that differences in the organizational processes of facilitating party-movement brokerage may offer explanations for why some alliances yield greater benefits for the movement and others produce greater benefits for the party. Consequently, it strikes us as helpful to retain these relationships in the category of “alliance.”

Second, we wonder about the implications of asymmetries between the Democratic and Republican parties. The Democrats have historically built coalitions that revolve around multiple, contending groups, while the Republicans tend to forge coalitions that are ideological in nature. Republican coalitions have typically been more hierarchical, while Democratic coalitions tend to be more co-equal in their membership. We would expect, then, for the Republicans to have a smaller number of anchoring groups and for those groups to play a relatively more prominent role in the party than other groups. In contrast, the Democrats are composed of a larger number of anchoring groups, each of which has a smaller relative role in the coalition. Might these groups combine to anchor the Democrats in a way that differs from the Republicans?

Third, we are curious as to how the changing nature of media affects the ability of groups to anchor parties. Is it possible that the kind of elite-voter brokerage emphasized through Scholzman’s narrative is no longer possible in an era when candidates and voters are able to react quickly to one another through emerging electronic formats?

We look forward to Professor Schlozman’s responses to our questions, as well as to his review of our own work.