The Ballot as a Party-System Switch (original) (raw)

Party Politics, 2005

Abstract

Diverging from the generally accepted argument that Australian ballot adoption in the USA was the work of anti-party forces, this article revitalizes Key's taxonomy of the political party and advances the argument that the merger of party organization and party-in-government interests in part led to adoption of the ballot and facilitated the 1896 party-system change. The pattern of Australian ballot adoption – particularly the rapid adoption of the ballot in Western states – indicates that the state party organization and the party-in-government were united in their frustration prompted by their mutual inability to curb opposition party success and unpredictability of party-in-the-electorate activity at the congressional level. Using the Australian ballot as an outcome variable in a prior-to-adoption model and as an explanatory variable in a subsequent-to-adoption model, findings indicate that state party organizations accepted the ballot partly to obtain control over congressional election outcomes.

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