Jeffrey M. Stonecash and Sara E. Keith, "Maintaining a Political Party: Providing and Withdrawing Party Campaign Funds," Party Politics, 2 (July, 1996), 313-328.

First Paragraph: The test of cohesiveness of a political party is its ability to act collectively. Cohesiveness also involves the ability to marshall and distribute campaign resources in ways that help the collective position of the party. The emergence of state legislative campaign committees has made issues of allocating party resources particularly important. These committees are now able to raise substantial sums of money which are at the disposal of party leaders (Dwyre and Stonecash, 1992; Gierzynski, 1992: 33-9). With many claimants on these funds, legislative party leaders must restrain competing demands if they are to allocate the resources to serve party interests.

Figures and Tables:
Table 1: Factors affecting party money allocation, New York legislative elections (1984-90).
Table 2: Allocations of party money by status of party candidate, by result, by house and by party (all years pooled).
Table 3: Repeated allocation of party money: the example of Senate district no. 55.
Table 4: Party commitment to Republican candidates leaving the assembly for the Senate.
Table 5: The importance of party spending: amounts spent on races and the percentage of total expenditure from party spending, by House and party all years, winners only.
Table 6: The withdrawal of party money, New York Senate elections (1984-90).
Table 7: Patterns of party and candidate expenditure across election cycles.

Last Paragraph: This analysis suggests that they do this fairly well in New York. There appears to be a strong commitment to focusing on close elections. Devoting resources to potential party members is important. But parties also appear capable of withdrawing that support, though the withdrawal is conditional and gradual. The ability of parties to act cohesively continues, at least in New York. Only similar studies in other contexts will indicate how well other party organizations are able to do this.