Collaborative Research: Southern Grassroots Party Activists, 2001

University Of North Carolina Greensboro, Greensboro NC

Investigators

Abstract

This investigation surveys local-level activists in the Democratic and Republican parties, in each of the eleven southern states, through a mail questionnaire. The project complements a similar survey, the Southern Grassroots Activists project conducted in 1991. By collecting similar data in 2001, the investigators produce a data set that is of great interest to scholars interested in political parties and southern politics. The research is organized in a manner similar to the 1991 project. The investigators are responsible for: 1) overall project management and coordination; 2) the construction and production of the questionnaire; 3) the coding and processing of the data; 4) preparation of the codebook and the data set for dissemination; and, 5) editing three volumes that represent the immediate published work from the project. The research team also includes state investigators in each of the eleven states who: A) construct the sampling frames; B) conduct the mail surveys of party activists; C) collect related contextual data; and, D) analyze the data and contribute chapters to the three edited volumes. The research team for this project includes many of the individuals who were involved in the 1991 study. While the project would produce a data set suitable for a variety of uses by the scholarly community, two major theoretical concerns guide the research: a) investigating the nature of and relationship between inter-party and intra-party conflict; and b) investigating the organizational development and change that has taken place in both parties in the region. Both concerns are related to the work done by the 1991 project, but this project goes well beyond the original study in its investigation of these two areas. Being able to compare activists at two points in time gives us substantial leverage over a variety of research questions. This study and the data are of use to other scholars interested in this topic.