Party Movements in the United States and Canada: Strategies of Persistence

Extract

Party Movements in the United States and Canada: Strategies of Persistence, Mildred A. Schwartz, Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006, pp. xi, 229.

This is an unusual book. Its subject is neither parties nor social movements, but party movements—organizations which combine the moral indignation of social movements with parties' goals of influencing elections. Students of American and Canadian parties know them as third or minor parties, given short shrift in the American literature and greater attention in Canada. Schwartz argues that party movements are underestimated. Successful or not, most persist, if not in the same organizational form, then through symbols or ideas they have generated, or in successor organizations