In a blog published today on the Washington Post website, Seth Masket, a political science professor at the University of Denver, argues that political parties today aren’t fragmented, as is often argued, but rather are networked.
“The modern American party is a network in this sense: It is a collection of different sorts of political actors — candidates, officeholders, activists, major donors, media figures, and others — working together to determine who gets nominated for office and thus what direction the government moves,” Masket writes. “These different actors are connected to each other in a variety of ways, including the exchange of information and the transfer of campaign money, all of which involve picking candidates and backing them at the presidential, congressional, or local level.”
Read the blog in its entirety on the Washington Post site.