Adam Chamberlain
Biographic Data
| ID | 3587884 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Adam Chamberlain |
| GIVEN NAMES | Adam |
| FAMILY NAME | Chamberlain |
| SIGNATURE | CHAMBERLAIN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Coastal Carolina University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9928-0529 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 96 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 41 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Nativism and Fraternalism
Scholars who have studied the second Ku Klux Klan focus primarily on its rapid rise and decline, paying little heed to its connections with other nativist fraternal orders. Specifically, scholars have not focused their attention on the Klan's potential effect on the nation's second largest nativist organization at the time, the Junior Order United American Mechanics (JOUAM). In this study, we use data compiled from JOUAM annual records and Klan m…
Religious Diversity in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Iowa in 1915
Introduction The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) sought to unite late 19th‐ and early 20th‐century women behind an agenda of prohibition, moral reform, and women's rights. But scholars have rarely studied the denominational diversity of this “Christian” organization. Method We match directory listings of state, district, county, and local WCTU of Iowa leaders with a measure of church affiliation collected from the 1915 Iowa State Census…
Mobilizing Women to Vote? The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and School Voting in Massachusetts, 1900–1909
Organizing Black Business
Founded by Booker T. Washington in 1900, the National Negro Business League (NNBL) sought to unite Black business owners, promote entrepreneurship, and develop economic power. Despite its prominence in the early twentieth century, the group declined after Washington's death in 1915. As a result, little is known about its organizational development. This study uses data on state and local Negro Business Leagues (NBLs), along with active and life m…
A social network analysis of early twentieth-century elite Black male civil society
This study provides new empirical evidence on the relationships between early twentieth-century Black voluntary membership associations. Specifically, we utilize data on elite Black men's fraternal, professional, intellectual, and reform association memberships derived from the first Who's Who publication for Black citizens to consider how these individuals' organizational memberships may have helped to foster Black civil society, creating networ…
The rise of lobbying and interest groups in the states during the Progressive Era
The postbellum rise of voluntary, federated associations set the stage for modern pressure politics in the American states, yet the connection between associations and lobbying in this era is grossly understudied. Relying on associations' own records and a new dataset of state lobbyists, we explore this relationship more deeply, documenting how federated associations gained membership, created political agendas, and lobbied state legislators for …
The Southern Farmers’ Alliance, Populists, and lynching
The lynching literature often considers how the Populist Party affected lynching, yet the Southern Farmers’ Alliance—a short-lived but influential voluntary association that mobilized large numbers of white farmers—is overlooked. We argue that this is a critical oversight, as the Alliance was the origin of populism in the South. Specifically, we hypothesize that where the Alliance had more local organizations, the greater the likelihood of lynchi…
Managing membership
Do pandemics spawn extremism
Scholars and journalists connect pandemics to a rise in support for radical political movements. In this study, we draw on this insight to investigate the relationship between the 1918-1919 Spanish influenza pandemic and political extremism-here, the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan-in the United States. Specifically, we ask whether U.S. states and cities with higher death rates from the Spanish flu also had stronger Ku Klux Klan organizations in …
Our One Great Hope”
The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) played a critical role in the lives of many Union veterans after the Civil War. Its efforts were supported by its women’s auxiliary, the Woman’s Relief Corps (WRC). Yet scholars do not know much about the evolution of the relationship between the rising WRC and the slowly declining GAR, whose members were dying away in the early 20th century. Here, we evaluate state-level membership and local group data for bo…
Shaping the rise of brotherhood
Objective This study seeks to investigate how social, political, and economic factors shaped demand for membership in three major federated fraternal orders in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries: the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, and the Improved Order of Red Men. Methods Error‐correction, time‐series‐cross‐sectional models are estimated using state‐level data, with the first differences in…
An “urban voluntary association” in the rural South? Urbanity, race, and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, 1910–1930
Historians describe the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) as an urban movement, but the reasons for its urban focus have not been adequately explored. This is intriguing because the UDC was most vibrant during the first three decades of the twentieth century, when white and black citizens alike were leaving rural southern communities for urban centers – and as white politicians increasingly enforced Jim Crow restrictions. In this study, w…
Density dependence in economic sectors in the Progressive Era
Membership, Mobilization, and Policy Adoption in the Gilded Age
Relatively little is known about how late nineteenth-century associations worked to get their policy goals adopted by state governments. We study this question here, considering the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and three policies it supported: scientific temperance instruction, increasing the age of consent, and prohibiting tobacco sales to minors. Overall, WCTU-supported legislation was more likely to succeed in states with unified …
Monuments as Mobilization? The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Memorialization of the Lost Cause
Objective The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) played an important role in constructing monuments commemorating the Civil War. Memorialization of the “Lost Cause” and preserving southern heritage are often cited as reasons for monument construction. Here, we study whether these monuments were also used as tools to mobilize potential members. Method We use data on Confederate monuments and UDC membership to empirically test if monument co…
Evaluating federated voluntary associations’ membership data
Objective Large, federated voluntary associations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries produced detailed reports of national meetings that included comprehensive data on state‐level membership. Though used in previous scholarship, the veracity of these data has never been evaluated. Methods We test 16 associations’ state‐level membership data, generally between 1880 and 1920, using Benford's Law, a mathematical principle used to discern whet…
Unity in Diversity
Most neopluralist studies consider how interest groups form in robust organizational environments, not during developmental periods such as the Progressive Era. In this article, we argue that neopluralist approaches, specifically the energy-stability-area (ESA) model, can provide insights on group formation in these contexts. Using the case of the General Federation of Women's Clubs (GFWC), we illustrate how one federated, voluntary association w…
The Effect of “Do Everything” on “Unity in Diversity
The neopluralist approach to interest groups emphasizes how context affects group development and survival. Yet these studies focus on modern-day interest populations and not those from the past, when the development of politically oriented voluntary associations occurred in less dense and less competitive environments. Here, we study the effect of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (the Union), the largest women's association of the late nin…
Expanding the energy–stability–area model
Group Presence, Population, and Interest Group Theory
Objective This study seeks to learn about the development of large, federated voluntary associations in the antebellum era by combining insights from historical work and neopluralist interest group theory. The American Anti‐Slavery Society (AASS) is the case study. Methods Summary statistics and logistic regression models are used to investigate what variables predict the presence of an AASS local group in a town. Results Total population of a to…
The Southern Question
SOCIAL SCIENTISTS HAVE LONG BEEN FASCINATED with Americans’ propensity to join political organizations. Some accounts have gone so far as to dub the country a “nation of joiners.”1 At no point in American history was this phenomenon more obvious than during the so-called golden age (approximately 1876–1920) of large, federated, voluntary membership associations.2 Yet this picture is oversimplified. Evidence suggests that regional differences were…
Uniting the living through the dead
Exploring the legend of a “nation of joiners”
The promise of the USA as a “nation of joiners” has long motivated scholars, especially those studying voluntary associations. We reexamine this idea using evidence from three voluntary associations of the 19th century, the Sons of Temperance, the Knights of Labor, and the Grand Army of the Republic. Our analyses reveal that while each organization’s state-level branches were able to recruit new members, participation was often fleeting. Membersh…
Moral Suasion and Political Action
Moral suasion played an important role in the abolition and temperance movements, yet scholarship provides no guidance on how to systematically evaluate its place in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century reform efforts. Here this is addressed by studying moral suasion’s use in justifying social and political actions. By using the perspectives of prominent groups and leaders in the two movements to illuminate the nonpolitical and political motiv…
Revisiting the ESA model
Revisiting the ESA model
The (Dis)Connection Between Political Culture and External Efficacy
Theories of political culture have traditionally been based on how the mass public views the role of government, yet scholars have rarely studied this issue. Using American National Election Studies(ANES) data from 1952 to 2008, I track cultural changes in external efficacy, a measure of the public’s beliefs about government responsiveness. The aggregate- and individual-level results indicate that external efficacy varied across political culture…
Expanding the energy–stability–area model
From Reconstruction to Reform
The rise of voluntary associations in the late nineteenth century has received significant scholarly attention over the last few decades. Some studies argue that modernization facilitates group formation, but other analyses (e.g., Crowley and Skocpol 2001; Gamm and Putnam 1999) find little support for the argument that modernization caused group formation. Here, we extend this debate to the study of the strength of state-level, voluntary associat…
The Growth of Third-Party Voting
This article seeks to uncover reasons behind the relatively high levels of third-party voting found at the state level in the early- to mid-1800s. I argue that third parties needed to develop localized bases of support from which they could expand. By analyzing Liberty Party gubernatorial voting in Vermont during the 1840s, the article shows that the party developed support in particular towns, maintained this over election cycles, and spread the…
Membership, Mobilization, and Policy Adoption in the Gilded Age
Relatively little is known about how late nineteenth-century associations worked to get their policy goals adopted by state governments. We study this question here, considering the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and three policies it supported: scientific temperance instruction, increasing the age of consent, and prohibiting tobacco sales to minors. Overall, WCTU-supported legislation was more likely to succeed in states with unified …
The Southern Question
SOCIAL SCIENTISTS HAVE LONG BEEN FASCINATED with Americans’ propensity to join political organizations. Some accounts have gone so far as to dub the country a “nation of joiners.”1 At no point in American history was this phenomenon more obvious than during the so-called golden age (approximately 1876–1920) of large, federated, voluntary membership associations.2 Yet this picture is oversimplified. Evidence suggests that regional differences were…
Racial Threat or Racial Contact? How Race Affected Third‐Party Presidential Voting in the Antebellum North
Objective. In this study, the “racial threat” and “racial contact” hypotheses are evaluated in relation to voting for the Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the North during the 1840s. Methods. Regression models are used to predict the effect of county‐level black populations on Liberty and Free Soil vote percentages in relation to types of employment. Results. Racial threat occurred in high manufacturing counties, but racial contact/threat emerged…
Population ecology and niche seeking in the development of gay and lesbian rights groups
This paper explores the formation of groups within the framework of the population ecology literature. Specifically, I argue that newly formed groups' target membership bases and policy agendas will become more focused as the density of interest groups in a population increases, though groups will not necessarily continue this focused trend once the density of the population has reached its upper limits. To test this theory, I utilize Nownes' [No…
Exploring the legend of a “nation of joiners”
The promise of the USA as a “nation of joiners” has long motivated scholars, especially those studying voluntary associations. We reexamine this idea using evidence from three voluntary associations of the 19th century, the Sons of Temperance, the Knights of Labor, and the Grand Army of the Republic. Our analyses reveal that while each organization’s state-level branches were able to recruit new members, participation was often fleeting. Membersh…
Monuments as Mobilization? The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Memorialization of the Lost Cause
Objective The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) played an important role in constructing monuments commemorating the Civil War. Memorialization of the “Lost Cause” and preserving southern heritage are often cited as reasons for monument construction. Here, we study whether these monuments were also used as tools to mobilize potential members. Method We use data on Confederate monuments and UDC membership to empirically test if monument co…
Uniting the living through the dead
The Connection Between the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the Prohibition Party
Scholars have long been interested in the complementary relationships forged by membership groups and political parties. The post-bellum period presents an opportunity to consider these connections using a case study of two groups concerned with the ills of alcohol, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Prohibition Party. Our analysis of presidential elections from 1876 to 1900 reveals that-although women were disenfranchised at t…
The rise of lobbying and interest groups in the states during the Progressive Era
The postbellum rise of voluntary, federated associations set the stage for modern pressure politics in the American states, yet the connection between associations and lobbying in this era is grossly understudied. Relying on associations' own records and a new dataset of state lobbyists, we explore this relationship more deeply, documenting how federated associations gained membership, created political agendas, and lobbied state legislators for …
An “urban voluntary association” in the rural South? Urbanity, race, and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, 1910–1930
Historians describe the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) as an urban movement, but the reasons for its urban focus have not been adequately explored. This is intriguing because the UDC was most vibrant during the first three decades of the twentieth century, when white and black citizens alike were leaving rural southern communities for urban centers – and as white politicians increasingly enforced Jim Crow restrictions. In this study, w…
Moral Suasion and Political Action
Moral suasion played an important role in the abolition and temperance movements, yet scholarship provides no guidance on how to systematically evaluate its place in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century reform efforts. Here this is addressed by studying moral suasion’s use in justifying social and political actions. By using the perspectives of prominent groups and leaders in the two movements to illuminate the nonpolitical and political motiv…
Voter Coordination and the Rise of the Republican Party
The development of the Republican Party is a significant event in American political history. While scholars describe its formation as a realignment caused by the slavery issue, this article reinterprets this perspective. Focusing on gubernatorial elections in New England from 1840 to the mid-1850s, I present evidence that the rise of the Republican Party in the region was due to a lack of strategic voting coupled with third-party, antislavery vo…
Fusion Ballots and the Question of Organisational Type
The differences between political parties and interest groups are well-defined. However, how do minor parties that rely on fusion, or the cross-nomination of candidates from other parties, view themselves? To study this, I conducted interviews with prominent party officials in three minor parties in the state of New York, where fusion politics is the norm. The evidence suggests that minor-party officials develop partisan attachments and view succ…
Fusion ballots as a candidate-centered reform
This article argues that fusion balloting, or the ability of multiple parties to nominate a single candidate for office, can be viewed as a candidate-centered and incumbent-oriented reform. Using the recent passage of fusion legislation in Oregon in 2009 and its subsequent use in 2010 state legislative elections as a test case, I study the factors behind supporting fusion legislation in both chambers of the state legislature and how these same fa…
An Inside‐Outsider or an Outside‐Insider? The Republican Primary Campaign of Ron Paul from a Third‐Party Perspective
The 2007/2008 Republican presidential primary run for Ron Paul was a relatively unique candidacy, as he was a former third‐party presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party in 1988. In this article, I argue that his recent run as a Republican needs to be studied as a third‐party movement within a major party. To do so, I conduct a state‐level analysis of support for Paul using a dependent variable measuring the number of online Paul donors. …
Do pandemics spawn extremism
Scholars and journalists connect pandemics to a rise in support for radical political movements. In this study, we draw on this insight to investigate the relationship between the 1918-1919 Spanish influenza pandemic and political extremism-here, the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan-in the United States. Specifically, we ask whether U.S. states and cities with higher death rates from the Spanish flu also had stronger Ku Klux Klan organizations in …
Shaping the rise of brotherhood
Objective This study seeks to investigate how social, political, and economic factors shaped demand for membership in three major federated fraternal orders in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries: the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, and the Improved Order of Red Men. Methods Error‐correction, time‐series‐cross‐sectional models are estimated using state‐level data, with the first differences in…
Evaluating federated voluntary associations’ membership data
Objective Large, federated voluntary associations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries produced detailed reports of national meetings that included comprehensive data on state‐level membership. Though used in previous scholarship, the veracity of these data has never been evaluated. Methods We test 16 associations’ state‐level membership data, generally between 1880 and 1920, using Benford's Law, a mathematical principle used to discern whet…
Unity in Diversity
Most neopluralist studies consider how interest groups form in robust organizational environments, not during developmental periods such as the Progressive Era. In this article, we argue that neopluralist approaches, specifically the energy-stability-area (ESA) model, can provide insights on group formation in these contexts. Using the case of the General Federation of Women's Clubs (GFWC), we illustrate how one federated, voluntary association w…
The Effect of “Do Everything” on “Unity in Diversity
The neopluralist approach to interest groups emphasizes how context affects group development and survival. Yet these studies focus on modern-day interest populations and not those from the past, when the development of politically oriented voluntary associations occurred in less dense and less competitive environments. Here, we study the effect of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (the Union), the largest women's association of the late nin…
Population ecology and niche seeking in the development of gay and lesbian rights groups
This paper explores the formation of groups within the framework of the population ecology literature. Specifically, I argue that newly formed groups' target membership bases and policy agendas will become more focused as the density of interest groups in a population increases, though groups will not necessarily continue this focused trend once the density of the population has reached its upper limits. To test this theory, I utilize Nownes' [No…
An Inside‐Outsider or an Outside‐Insider? The Republican Primary Campaign of Ron Paul from a Third‐Party Perspective
The 2007/2008 Republican presidential primary run for Ron Paul was a relatively unique candidacy, as he was a former third‐party presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party in 1988. In this article, I argue that his recent run as a Republican needs to be studied as a third‐party movement within a major party. To do so, I conduct a state‐level analysis of support for Paul using a dependent variable measuring the number of online Paul donors. …
Racial Threat or Racial Contact? How Race Affected Third‐Party Presidential Voting in the Antebellum North
Objective. In this study, the “racial threat” and “racial contact” hypotheses are evaluated in relation to voting for the Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the North during the 1840s. Methods. Regression models are used to predict the effect of county‐level black populations on Liberty and Free Soil vote percentages in relation to types of employment. Results. Racial threat occurred in high manufacturing counties, but racial contact/threat emerged…
Fusion ballots as a candidate-centered reform
This article argues that fusion balloting, or the ability of multiple parties to nominate a single candidate for office, can be viewed as a candidate-centered and incumbent-oriented reform. Using the recent passage of fusion legislation in Oregon in 2009 and its subsequent use in 2010 state legislative elections as a test case, I study the factors behind supporting fusion legislation in both chambers of the state legislature and how these same fa…
Out and Running
Out and Running: Gay and Lesbian Candidates, Elections, and Policy Representation." The Social Science Journal, 49(2), pp. 243–244
The Growth of Third-Party Voting
This article seeks to uncover reasons behind the relatively high levels of third-party voting found at the state level in the early- to mid-1800s. I argue that third parties needed to develop localized bases of support from which they could expand. By analyzing Liberty Party gubernatorial voting in Vermont during the 1840s, the article shows that the party developed support in particular towns, maintained this over election cycles, and spread the…
The Democratic Imagination
Fusion Ballots and the Question of Organisational Type
The differences between political parties and interest groups are well-defined. However, how do minor parties that rely on fusion, or the cross-nomination of candidates from other parties, view themselves? To study this, I conducted interviews with prominent party officials in three minor parties in the state of New York, where fusion politics is the norm. The evidence suggests that minor-party officials develop partisan attachments and view succ…
The (Dis)Connection Between Political Culture and External Efficacy
Theories of political culture have traditionally been based on how the mass public views the role of government, yet scholars have rarely studied this issue. Using American National Election Studies(ANES) data from 1952 to 2008, I track cultural changes in external efficacy, a measure of the public’s beliefs about government responsiveness. The aggregate- and individual-level results indicate that external efficacy varied across political culture…
Administrative Appointments
Morrow's research addresses theories of international politics, both the logical development and empirical testing of such theories. He is best known for pioneering the application of noncooperative game theory, drawn from economics, to international politics. His published work covers crisis bargaining, the causes of war, military alliances, arms races, power transition theory, links b e t w e e n international trade and confl ict, the role of i…
Voter Coordination and the Rise of the Republican Party
The development of the Republican Party is a significant event in American political history. While scholars describe its formation as a realignment caused by the slavery issue, this article reinterprets this perspective. Focusing on gubernatorial elections in New England from 1840 to the mid-1850s, I present evidence that the rise of the Republican Party in the region was due to a lack of strategic voting coupled with third-party, antislavery vo…
The Role of Minor Parties in Political Competition
The study of minor parties has largely focused on well-established democracies, even though these political organizations play significant roles in new and emerging democracies. With Ghana as a case study, this investigation provides a theoretical path to understanding the normative role of minor parties in political competition, especially in developing nations with single-member plurality systems. By placing emphasis on the experiences of such …
The Connection Between the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the Prohibition Party
Scholars have long been interested in the complementary relationships forged by membership groups and political parties. The post-bellum period presents an opportunity to consider these connections using a case study of two groups concerned with the ills of alcohol, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Prohibition Party. Our analysis of presidential elections from 1876 to 1900 reveals that-although women were disenfranchised at t…
From Reconstruction to Reform
The rise of voluntary associations in the late nineteenth century has received significant scholarly attention over the last few decades. Some studies argue that modernization facilitates group formation, but other analyses (e.g., Crowley and Skocpol 2001; Gamm and Putnam 1999) find little support for the argument that modernization caused group formation. Here, we extend this debate to the study of the strength of state-level, voluntary associat…
Moral Suasion and Political Action
Moral suasion played an important role in the abolition and temperance movements, yet scholarship provides no guidance on how to systematically evaluate its place in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century reform efforts. Here this is addressed by studying moral suasion’s use in justifying social and political actions. By using the perspectives of prominent groups and leaders in the two movements to illuminate the nonpolitical and political motiv…
Revisiting the ESA model
Perceptions and Policy Failure
This article evaluates the policy positions of President James Buchanan through the concept of latent opinion, or politicians worrying less about current public opinion and more about what it will be at the next election. Though Buchanan is often viewed as disconnected from the public’s opinions, the evidence shows that his positions on Kansas statehood and the acquisition of Cuba (or Mexican territory) were shaped by his perceptions of, and conc…
From Pressure Group to Political Party
Objective This study evaluates how the leaders in the American Anti‐Slavery Society (AASS) either aided or hindered the formation of the Liberty Party, thus building on Bawn et al.’s (2012) theory of political party formation. Methods Regression models are used to study how the presence of AASS organizations affected Liberty Party voting in the early 1840s. Results The findings show that AASS organizations had little to no effect on Liberty votin…
Uniting the living through the dead
Exploring the legend of a “nation of joiners”
The promise of the USA as a “nation of joiners” has long motivated scholars, especially those studying voluntary associations. We reexamine this idea using evidence from three voluntary associations of the 19th century, the Sons of Temperance, the Knights of Labor, and the Grand Army of the Republic. Our analyses reveal that while each organization’s state-level branches were able to recruit new members, participation was often fleeting. Membersh…
Expanding the energy–stability–area model
Group Presence, Population, and Interest Group Theory
Objective This study seeks to learn about the development of large, federated voluntary associations in the antebellum era by combining insights from historical work and neopluralist interest group theory. The American Anti‐Slavery Society (AASS) is the case study. Methods Summary statistics and logistic regression models are used to investigate what variables predict the presence of an AASS local group in a town. Results Total population of a to…
The Southern Question
SOCIAL SCIENTISTS HAVE LONG BEEN FASCINATED with Americans’ propensity to join political organizations. Some accounts have gone so far as to dub the country a “nation of joiners.”1 At no point in American history was this phenomenon more obvious than during the so-called golden age (approximately 1876–1920) of large, federated, voluntary membership associations.2 Yet this picture is oversimplified. Evidence suggests that regional differences were…
An “urban voluntary association” in the rural South? Urbanity, race, and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, 1910–1930
Historians describe the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) as an urban movement, but the reasons for its urban focus have not been adequately explored. This is intriguing because the UDC was most vibrant during the first three decades of the twentieth century, when white and black citizens alike were leaving rural southern communities for urban centers – and as white politicians increasingly enforced Jim Crow restrictions. In this study, w…
Density dependence in economic sectors in the Progressive Era
Political science (38 works) · Law (34 works) · Sociology (30 works) · Politics (29 works) · Law (26 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (21 works) · Political economy (17 works) · Economics (13 works) · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies (13 works) · State (computer science (12 works)