Votes without Leverage: Women in American Electoral Politics, 1920-1970

by Anna L. Harvey

Overview

Using recent theoretical developments in the political economy of institutions and electoral behavior, this book attempts to solve an enduring puzzle in women's electoral politics, namely why the increasing importance of women's votes in the 1920s did not imply increasing success for the lobbying efforts of women's organizations. The book argues that women's exclusion from the suffrage created terms that led to distinctive patterns of post-suffrage female electoral politics. These electoral dynamics in turn are responsible for the decline in the political influence of women's organizations by the mid-1920s.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521597432
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/13/1998
Series:	Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	270
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.59(d)

Table of Contents

1. The legacy of female disenfranchisement; 2. The logic of policy change: voters, organizations, and institutions; 3. Testing competing hypotheses: pre- and post- suffrage in New York State, 1909–20; 4. The national race to mobilize women, 1917–32; 5. One step forward, two steps back: women in the parties, 1917–32; 6. The re-emergence of policy and party benefits for women, 1970–present; References.

Editorial Reviews

"Harvey combines theoretical and emperical tools from economics, political science, and history in a well-written and forcefully argued book..." Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"...Harvey's work serves as an exemplary model of social science research, with theory conciously shaping the questions that guide the research. Perhaps more important, it explains the long absence of women's political influence in a manner at once sensible and satisfying." Patricia G. Zelman, American Historical Review

From the Publisher