Modern political conventions, it has been said, effectively amount to days-long infomercials for the parties’ candidates.
This year was no exception, aside from Clint Eastwood’s comedic ramblings and some last-minute discord among Democrats over a platform provision about Israel.
But in spite of the scripted grandstanding and political pageantry, the dozens of political-science students and professors who descended on Tampa, Fla., for the Republican National Convention and Charlotte, N.C., for the Democratic National Convention, found plenty to analyze and research—most of it away from the main stages.
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Watch: For students at Kennesaw State U., the convention is field work. | Link
“The speeches, the presentations are all made for television,” said Peter Ubertaccio, an associate professor and director of the Martin Institute for Law and Society at Stonehill College, in Massachusetts. “But what goes on during the course of the day is really interesting from a political-science perspective.”
Even though the results were preordained, there is still value to physically attending a convention as an observer, he said. “It’s the only opportunity, every four years, when you can see the full spectrum of the party—party elites, party leaders, the activist base.”
Mr. Ubertaccio was at the conventions this year to offer analysis for news media, hear what party leaders talked about, and mingle with delegates.
“I enjoy punditry. I enjoy analysis. But I also enjoy the funny hats,” said Mr. Ubertaccio, who also runs, with two other professors, a blog called MassPoliticsProfs. “I view it as a really interesting window into how Americans behave in politics.”
His willingness to explore politics on a practical level places Mr. Ubertaccio on one side of a longstanding divide within political science, he said, between those who engage in the day-to-day happenings of politics, such as the conventions, and those who prefer to focus on quantifiable trends.
The two categories aren’t mutually exclusive, and there is a place for both types, he said. But “political scientists a long time ago got sidetracked on a methodological approach in really trying to make it a hard-and-fast science. The result is we don’t speak as well as we could to practitioners or to citizens about the state of American politics.”
Daniel Urman, a lecturer in law and public policy at Northeastern University, said he attended the Democratic convention, which he likened to the “Comic-Con of politics,” to gain a better sense of “what was really going on in the room.”
Although he wasn’t conducting formal research there, his informal interactions with delegates and firsthand look at how the news media covered it would help inform his scholarship, he said. “It’s great to see it up close. It helps with credibility, and it’s important to have the ability to meet people who I’m writing about. You’re able to capture the nuance of the process.”
‘Party in the Street’
Other scholars focused their attention outside of each formal convention, on the protesters who marched through nearby streets or set up camp nearby.
Even if the scripted rallies in the convention hall don’t offer political scientists much value, the metaphorical “party in the street” does, said Michael T. Heaney, a professor of organizational studies and political science at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
Mr. Heaney, who has studied the relationship between mainstream political parties and outside movements, said conventions provide an important opportunity to track how the two interact. He and his research partner, Fabio Rojas, a sociologist at Indiana University at Bloomington, will soon publish a book, based in part on the research they conducted at previous political conventions, about how the Democratic Party has dealt with the antiwar movement since September 11, 2001.
Over the past eight years, Mr. Heaney said, the Democrats and the antiwar movement have split from each other. Recent conventions have provided an opportunity to see how the antiwar groups have changed. For example, there were far fewer of them at the 2012 convention than there were in 2008, and one of them, Code Pink, has evolved significantly, he says.
“By observing them, we can really learn a lot about what’s changed in the antiwar movement,” Mr. Heaney said as he observed and photographed about dozen Code Pink activists who were protesting in front of an event held by American Israel Public Affairs Committee near the Democratic convention.
“A lot of antiwar groups went out of business in 2008, when President Obama was elected, because many people on the left side of the political spectrum felt satisfied with Obama’s election,” he said.
Code Pink, though, has survived, he said, because it has diversified and broadened its message to include women’s issues, among others. The group also tends to use attention-grabbing tactics, he said, such as acting out a scene in which a Palestinian is denied passage through an Israeli checkpoint.
Most of the time, Mr. Heaney said, he studies outside groups through objective observation, but he also derives some of his findings from participant-observation research. In Charlotte, for example, he took part in many of Code Pink’s actions as well as a march for women’s reproductive rights. (He did not participate in the demonstration in front of Aipac, and said he does not take part in any other anti-Israel demonstrations.)
The participant-observations, Mr. Heaney said, help him provide more-compelling context for his students and improve his formal research by sharpening the focus of his hypotheses to questions that better reflect what activists on the ground are actually doing.
The method is a growing part of political-science research, one that favors field research, he said. “You’re really missing something if you don’t do participant-observation,” Mr. Heaney argued. A growing number of political scientists, he said, “are getting out of their offices and getting on to the streets.”
Random, anonymous surveys and statistical models still serve to understand political phenomena, he said, but so is “showing up in politics and talking to people.”
Students in the Hubbub
For undergraduates as well, political conventions can serve as experiential learning opportunities. Dozens of colleges sent students to the conventions to attend seminars, conduct research, or report on the proceedings.
Many students—more than 250 over both conventions—participated in sessions offered by the Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars. Participants were instructed by professors from around the country, heard lectures by political leaders, and held convention-related volunteer jobs.
In addition, a group of students from Kennesaw State University, in Georgia, traveled to both conventions to conduct qualitative research, led by two political scientists, Jeff DeWitt and Kerwin Swint. The students fanned out around the convention halls to interview activists and delegates for research papers.
Max Harris, a senior at Kennesaw State, was at the Democratic convention studying sociopolitical activism. He said he hoped the research would amplify the voices of people who didn’t have a formal role at the convention. “We’re trying to examine whether the activists at the grass-roots levels feel like their message is being heard and whether they are being effective,” he said.
Among the wide range of activists whom Mr. Harris asked about their causes and motivations, many said they felt that their concerns were not being heard by convention delegates.
Mr. Harris plans to combine his research with that of a partner who attended the Republican convention. They will produce a paper about their findings. “We’re actively doing political science,” he said. “We’re actively having to use critical-thinking skills to develop and expound on questions. That’s something you can’t get sitting in a classroom and listening to a lecture.”
