The Historical Development of the U.S. Presidential Nomination Process
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Description
The institutional framework and legal rules through which democracies choose the nominees who compete to become a nation’s Chief Executive (the President or Prime Minister) are among the most important features in the institutional design of any democracy. Yet despite the considerable academic attention over the last thirty years to many other institutional and legal aspects of American democracy—redistricting, the regulation of money in politics, voting rights, election administration—surprisingly little scholarly focus has thus been devoted to the way we have come to structure the presidential nomination process. This scholarly gap is particularly striking because one of the most consequential and radical changes in the last fifty years to the way American democracy is structured is the change we made to the way the major party nominees for President are selected: the shift to a purely populist method in which primary elections (and a small dose of caucuses) completely determine the party’s nominees. Yet as those of us focused on the institutional design of democracy know all too well, different selection methods inevitably shape choices about the kind of people who choose to run; the kind of political figures most likely to succeed in capturing nominations and the White House; and, most importantly, on the way government functions and the interests and political forces to which it is most likely to respond. This chapter provides historical perspective on the evolution of the processes and institutions used to filter and present to the voters general-election presidential candidates since contested presidential elections began in the United States. Precisely because the dramatic new system put in place in the United States nearly fifty years ago has remained largely unchanged since then, most Americans undoubtedly have come to take for granted that our current system of presidential primaries and caucuses is the “natural” or the only “democratic” way to select nominees for President. Historical perspective can help destabilize that belief, and perhaps open up possibilities for considering changes to this system. Part I briefly chronicles the historical development from the Founding until the 1970s of the different methods and institutional frameworks used for selecting presidential nominees. This Part demonstrates that for most of American history until the 1970s, this process included a significant role for what is called “peer review,” in which those who were existing officeholders and party officials had significant weight in deciding who ought to represent the party as candidate for President. Part II then describes the radical change to this system that took place in the 1970s. That change can be characterized as the replacement of this “peer review” system with a purely populist selection process in which voters, through primaries and caucuses, completely determine the presidential nominees. In recovering this history, this chapter suggests that we did not so much intentionally choose this new “modern” populist system as much as stumble inadvertently into it. The current nominations process is unusual in two senses. Historically, we used various forms of “peer review” to select presidential nominees until relatively recently in our history. Comparatively, most democracies continue to use some form of peer review to filter candidates for chief executive before voters are given the final choice. In strong form peer review, such as the center-right parties use in Australia and New Zealand, the party leaders are chosen exclusively by the elected party figures who serve in Parliament. Voters have no direct say in the choice. In mixed systems, members of Parliament filter potential party leaders down to a certain number of candidates, with voters then being given a choice only between these pre-selected candidates. When the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom selects a new party leader, for example, the Conservative members of Parliament winnow down the candidates to two; party members then choose between these two candidates. Thus, the current U.S. system is unusual in a comparative sense in now opting for a system that completely bypasses elected members of the party and turns the process over to a purely popular vote process.
Source Publication
The Best Candidate: Presidential Nomination in Polarized Times
Source Editors/Authors
Eugene D. Mazo, Michael R. Dimino
Publication Date
2020
Recommended Citation
Pildes, Richard H., "The Historical Development of the U.S. Presidential Nomination Process" (2020). Faculty Chapters. 1947.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1947
