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Podcast: In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Episode: Robert G. Boatright, "Reform and Retrenchment: A Century of Efforts to Fix Primary Elections" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Description: Until 1900, most political parties in the United States chose their leaders – either in back rooms with a few party elites making decisions or in conventions. The direct primary, in which voters select party nominees for state and federal offices, was one of the most widely adopted political reforms of the early twentieth century Progressive movement.Intuitively, the direct primary sounds democratic. Voters directly select the candidates. They have more of say over who will ultimately represent or govern them. But decades of scholarship suggests that direct primaries might not have changed the outcomes of party nominations. The co...