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Constitutional Choices: Political Parties, Groups, and Prohibition Politics in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2018

Aaron J. Ley  and
Cornell W. Clayton
Aaron J. Ley
Affiliation:
University of Rhode Island
Cornell W. Clayton
Affiliation:
Washington State University
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Abstract:

Traditional accounts of the Eighteenth and Twenty-first Amendments to the U.S. Constitution largely ignore the role of the major political parties. We argue that partisan politics was an integral part of the constitutional politics of this period. The need to manage divisions within both parties’ electoral coalitions during the transition from the third to the fourth-party systems led to the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment without support from either national party. While most accounts trace prohibition’s demise to widespread noncompliance and the graft it generated, we argue that elite congressional support for prohibition gave way when civil service reforms removed federal prohibition agents as patronage resources. We also argue that by giving states control of designing state conventions, and thereby risking state malapportionment of conventions, Democrats succeeded in overcoming the traditional fissures that divided their southern and northern wings.

Keywords

ProhibitionEighteenth AmendmentSenator Morris SheppardU.S. political party politicsinterest groups
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , October 2018 , pp. 609 - 634
Copyright
Copyright © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

The authors wish to thank William Woodworth and Molly Burke for their research assistance during the development of this project. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers, the editor, and Gbemende Johnson for their comments and feedback.

References

NOTES

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