| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Demise of the American Convention System, 1880–1911. By John F. Reynolds. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xiv, 270 pp. $75.00, ISBN 978-0-521-85963-9.)

The author of a valuable book on electoral behavior and Progressive reform in New Jersey, John F. Reynolds here analyzes the transition in the workings of American political parties from a nineteenth-century system that used conventions to select nominees to a system of direct primaries in which voters chose them. To make the case, he examines in detail the convention system in four states—New Jersey, Michigan, Colorado, and California—and concludes that the change occurred in part because of an important shift in candidate strategy. As candidates began actively to pursue their parties' nominations, they brought to life forces that led to the direct primary, "the most radical of all party reforms," he quotes a political scientist as saying, "adopted in the whole course of American history" (p. 3). The change was rapid and widespread. By World War I, only a handful of states still used the convention system.

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