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Political Scientists as Professional Observers

Walter Beach has provided a roster of political scientists as delegates and alternates to national party conventions and short essays by a number of them. Elaine Kamarck and John Bibby have contributed some more extended thoughts on political scientists as campaign operatives and party officials at national party conventions. And I have been asked to add a few words on political scientists as, well, political scientists in the same locale. I doubt that many political scientists who have been convention delegates would trade the experience. Delegate status is not a particularly good way to observe the full convention as an institution, or to get a sense of the convention in the larger political system. But it is the best means for examining the micropolitics of the convention, i.e., the small discussions and bargains, or the utilization of a delegate's time, and it is perhaps the quintessential way to develop an appreciation for the impact of the convention as a social context—as a peculiar, small, short-lived world unto itself.