Reviews for Presenting Nature: The Historic Landscape Design of the National Park Service, 1916 to 1942

The average rating for Presenting Nature: The Historic Landscape Design of the National Park Service, 1916 to 1942 based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-01-22 00:00:00 Oliver James The argument - heavily caveated throughout given the authors' concern over the weakness of their data on internal party working - is that political parties are networks comprised of "intense policy demanders", politically engaged individuals and groups with varying preferences, who all get a say in choosing nominees for elected office. These individuals may not be officeholders or even formal party members, but collectively they form the broader "party" organization. (Other studies define the party much more narrowly. A post-Citizens United version of this book would, I imagine, have quite a bit more on the constellation of PACs and 501c4s that now shadow the formal party organization.) Their goal is to support a candidate who "they can trust to advance their interests and agendas, who is acceptable to other members of the party coalition, and who can be elected in a general election." (Control over nominees is critical since policymaking decisions are delegated to elected representatives.) The authors argue that contrary to other accounts suggesting a weakening of organized party control over nominee choices since the introduction of primary elections and other reforms in the early 1970s (replacing convention systems where an oligarchy of regional bosses negotiated a nominee with primaries open to all voters) these party insiders continue to have the biggest impact in choosing a nominee, both in the "invisible primary" to narrow the field and in actual primaries and caucus voting. The makeup of exactly who constitutes this influential base of insiders and activists has changed, however, in some cases due to changes in communications technology and in some cases due to new cleavages within the policy coalitions. (The book, unfortunately, predates the Tea Party.) Insider choices are primarily signaled (and measured here) through endorsements, with endorsements from party factions a candidate does not belong to being some of the most significant, as a means of demonstrating broad acceptability within the party coalition. Even popular candidates who bring their own wealth, media coverage, dedicated activist base, or public opinion polling are not likely to secure the nomination if they lack sufficient endorsement from the insider base. The most generalizable takeaways (and the most interesting for me) here relate to how fairly non-centralized organizations (such as American political parties) coordinate to make decisions. While a hierarchical party led by a single boss might be better able to allocate resources and apply a strategy for selecting a winning candidate, in lractice securing the nomination and winning the election to the US presidency requires such a broad range of local-level organizing that it's effectively impossible to do so as a single candidate. Local networks led by the intense policy demanders must be tapped instead; winning their support again requires a combination of fealty to group interests, ability to unite factions, and credibility as a candidate with broad appeal. With pre-reform closed nominating conventions now a thing of the past, endorsement signals from other members of the coalition are apparently the main way in which consensus is reached. There's more food for thought in here that I think could be applied to other large networked organizations, even ones that appear to be more hierarchical, but by and large this study does not aim to be comparative outside of American political science. This would probably be more highly rated if I was more familiar with the field - 3.5 stars is more accurate.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-02-22 00:00:00 Foo Kee Yong Written in 2008, The Party Decides is oddly, and sometimes frustratingly, uninformed about politics events that occurred after its publication. I'm kidding, but the fact that this book came up before the Obama/Trump years means that probably not all of this material will be of interest to you. Even so, there are some sections that were worth the price of admission, particularly the bit about how America's 2-party system conceals many different parties, which duke it out during the primaries to form a coalition government in November. I'd feel really free to skim this one, and only commit to a thorough reading when the material interests you. Those sections can be enlightening.