Denise Lor Baer

Examines women's entry into political leadership using key informant interviews and focus groups with women candidates and elected officials at federal, state and local levels and provides recommendations.

Argue that performance evaluation combines mixed research methods with both evidence-based evaluation and performance measurement. Seeks to place performance evaluation on a firm grounding as a social science methodology in its own right for both evaluators and policy makers.

Integrates the study of political parties and women's movements.

Provides the first empirical test of major theories of political party change and defines party institutionalization as being based in linkages between leaders and followers with a normative life that creates values and norms, and challenges prevailing views of parties as only bureaucratic top-down campaign entities.

Examines American political parties, the two party system, third parties and interest groups and discusses their relationship to concepts of democracy, and examines political science theories of intermediation. American social movements (civil rights, women's and gay rights) are analyzed alongside mass movements as an antidote to elite oligarchy.

Assesses conventional party theory and provides an extensive review of the history of party reform and contemporary assessments of its meaning with a test of the various theories of party behavior using survey data from The Party Elite Study and from the 1980 and 1984 National Election Studies. Four elite cadres in both parties: convention delegates, national committee members, and state and county chairs are compared.