Conventions of Deliberation? Convention Addresses and Deliberative Containment in the Second Party System

Although party conventions were originally conceived of as deliberative institutions, subsequent reforms that bound national convention delegates to the results of state primaries and caucuses have resulted in national conventions that most scholars have tended to understand in the terms of ceremony and ritual. In order to better understand the "lost" deliberative dimension to party conventions, this study looks backward in time to the origin of the party convention in the second party system. Analysis of the convention addresses and floor debates recorded within the Democratic and Whig convention proceedings between 1836 and 1852 reveal an institution whose purported representative and deliberative functions were already being attenuated by the demands of interparty competition.