Political Conventions

"This volume of essays is the first to focus on the Colored Conventions movement, the nineteenth century's longest campaign for Black civil rights. Well before the founding of the NAACP and other twentieth-century pillars of the civil rights movement, tens of thousands of Black leaders organized state and national conventions across North America. Over seven decades, they advocated for social justice and against slavery, protesting state-sanctioned and mob violence while demanding voting, legal, labor, and educational rights. Collectively, these essays highlight the vital role of the Colored Conventions in the lives of thousands of early organizers, including many of the most famous writers, ministers, politicians, and entrepreneurs in the long history of Black activism"--

Launched in honour of President Obama's inaugural, this book was written during the most remarkable political season in American history. The author visited all major presidential campaign offices in New York and New Hampshire, attended the presidential debates and was a commentator for PBS and National Public Radio. Allan also attended the historic Democratic convention and toured most presidential libraries.

Do Conventions Matter? provides a complete overview of national party conventions in Canada, from 1919, when the first convention was held, to 1993, including the selection of Stanfield, Trudeau, Broadbent, Clark, Mulroney, Turner, McLaughlin, Chrétien, Campbell, and Manning. Courtney compares leadership selection practices in Canada with those in the United States, Britain, and Australia, and shows that Canadian conventions remain a distinctive means of choosing party leaders. Focusing on modern developments in the convention process, Courtney highlights changes in representation over the last thirty years, addresses criticisms about costs and delegate selection practices, and examines the role of the media. He concludes with an examination of the future of conventions in the context of Canadian democracy, given sky-rocketing costs, the movement to reform political parties, and the push towards a universal membership vote. He argues convincingly that the objectives of greater representation and greater democracy explain both the emergence of conventions to choose the leaders of federal parties and their possible demise in the near future.

Uncovers the politics involved when a city recruits and implements a presidential convention. Political party conventions have lost much of their original political nature, serving now primarily as elaborate infomercials while ratifying the decisions made by voters in state primaries and caucuses. While this activity hasn’t changed significantly since the 1970s, conventions themselves have changed significantly in terms of how they are recruited, implemented, and paid for. American Cities and the Politics of Party Conventions analyzes how and why cities advance through the site selection process. Just as parties use conventions to communicate their policies, unity, and competence to the electorate, cities use the convention selection process to communicate their merits to political parties, businesses and residents. While hosting such a “mega-event” provides some direct economic stimulus for host cities, the major benefit of the convention is the opportunity it provides for branding and signaling status. Combining a case studies approach as well as interviews with party and local officials, Eric S. Heberlig, Suzanne M. Leland, and David Swindell bring party convention scholarship up to date while highlighting the costs and benefits of hosting such events for tourism bureaus, city administrators, elected officials, and the citizens they represent.

For almost two centuries, Americans have relied upon political conventions to provide the nation with new leadership. The modern convention, a four-day, carefully choreographed, prime-time television event designed to portray the party and its candidate in the most favorable light, continues many of the traditions and rules developed during the first conventions in the mid-19th century. This study analyzes the birth of the convention process in the 1830s and follows its development over 40 years, chronicling each of the presidential elections between 1832 and 1872, the leading candidates, and an analysis of the key issues, and memorable speeches and events on the convention floor. Other topics include back-room deal making, "dark horse" candidacies, meeting halls, parades, rallies, and other accompanying hoopla. This volume reveals the origins of a quintessentially American spectacle and sheds new light on an understudied aspect of the nation's political past.