The Next Realignment

The Next Realignment
Author: Frank J. DiStefano
Publisher:
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2019
Genre: History
ISBN: 1633885089

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Introduction: the next realignment is coming -- America's first and second party systems: the early republic's love-hate affair with two-party politics -- America's second and third party systems: the rise of Jackson and collapse of the Whigs -- America's third and fourth party systems: the incredible story of William Jennings Bryan -- The fifth party system: how the New Deal forged the parties we know and maybe love -- The liberal and conservative myth -- The American ideal of liberty -- The progressive plan -- The virtue of a republic -- The fury of populism -- The choice: renewal or collapse -- The last hurrah of the fifth party system -- The pendulum of Great Awakenings -- The fourth Great Awakening and the 1960s -- The end of the industrial era -- An unravelling -- What happens next -- Renewal, not decline -- The party of the American Dream.

Dynamics of the Party System

Dynamics of the Party System
Author: James L. Sundquist
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2011-10-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780815723189

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Since the original edition of Dynamics of the Party System was published in 1973, American politics have continued on a tumultuous course. In the vacuum left by the decline of the Democratic and Republican parties, single-interest groups have risen and flourished. Protest movements on the left and the New Right at the opposite pole have challenged and divided the major parties, and the Reagan Revolution--in reversing a fifty-year trend toward governmental expansion--may turn out to have revolutionized the party system too. In this edition, as in the first, current political trends and events are placed in a historical and theoretical context. Focusing upon three major realignments of the past--those of the 1850s, the 1890s, and the 1930s--Sundquist traces the processes by which basic transformations of the country's two-party system occur. From the historical case studies, he fashions a theory as to the why and how of party realignment, then applies it to current and recent developments, through the first two years of the Reagan presidency and the midterm election of 1982. The theoretical sections of the first edition are refined in this one, the historical sections are revised to take account of recent scholarship, and the chapters dealing with the postwar period are almost wholly rewritten. The conclusion of the original work is, in general, confirmed: the existing party system is likely to be strengthened as public attention is again riveted on domestic economic issues, and the headlong trend of recent decades toward political independence and party disintegration reversed, at least for a time.

The Realignment of Pennsylvania Politics Since 1960

The Realignment of Pennsylvania Politics Since 1960
Author: Renée M. Lamis
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2009-04-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0271085770

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The political party system in the United States has periodically undergone major realignments at various critical junctures in the country’s history. The Civil War boosted the Republican Party’s fortunes and catapulted it into majority status at the national level, a status that was further solidified during the Populist realignment in the 1890s. Starting in the 1930s, however, Roosevelt’s New Deal reversed the parties’ fortunes, bringing the Democratic Party back to national power, and this realignment was further modified by the “culture wars” beginning in the mid-1960s. Each of these realignments occasioned shifts in the electorate’s support for the major parties, and they were superimposed on each other in a way that did not negate entirely the consequences of the preceding realignments. The story of realignment is further complicated by the variations that occurred within individual states whose own particular political legacies, circumstances, and personalities resulted in modulations and modifications of the patterns playing out at the national level. In this book, Renée Lamis investigates how Pennsylvania experienced this series of realignments, with special attention to the period since 1960. She uses a wealth of data from a wide variety of sources to produce an analysis that allows her to trace the evolution of electoral behavior in the Keystone State in a narrative that is accessible to a broad range of readers. Her account helps explain why Senator Arlen Specter was reelected whereas Senator Rick Santorum was not, and why Pennsylvania Republicans have been highly successful in major statewide elections in an era when Democratic presidential standard-bearers have regularly carried the state. Overall, her book constitutes a gold mine of information and interpretation for political junkies as well as scholars who want to know more about how national-level politics plays out within individual states.

Political Realignment

Political Realignment
Author: Russell J. Dalton
Publisher:
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2018
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 019883098X

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This volume examines how social modernization has changed the framework of political competition for citizens and political parties in affluent democracies, and discusses the electoral and political implications of these trends.

Racial Realignment

Racial Realignment
Author: Eric Schickler
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2016-04-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0691153884

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Few transformations in American politics have been as important as the integration of African Americans into the Democratic Party and the Republican embrace of racial policy conservatism. The story of this partisan realignment on race is often told as one in which political elites—such as Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater—set in motion a dramatic and sudden reshuffling of party positioning on racial issues during the 1960s. Racial Realignment instead argues that top party leaders were actually among the last to move, and that their choices were dictated by changes that had already occurred beneath them. Drawing upon rich data sources and original historical research, Eric Schickler shows that the two parties' transformation on civil rights took place gradually over decades. Schickler reveals that Democratic partisanship, economic liberalism, and support for civil rights had crystallized in public opinion, state parties, and Congress by the mid-1940s. This trend was propelled forward by the incorporation of African Americans and the pro-civil-rights Congress of Industrial Organizations into the Democratic coalition. Meanwhile, Republican partisanship became aligned with economic and racial conservatism. Scrambling to maintain existing power bases, national party elites refused to acknowledge these changes for as long as they could, but the civil rights movement finally forced them to choose where their respective parties would stand. Presenting original ideas about political change, Racial Realignment sheds new light on twentieth and twenty-first century racial politics.

The Great Alignment

The Great Alignment
Author: Alan I. Abramowitz
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2018-06-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0300235127

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Alan I. Abramowitz has emerged as a leading spokesman for the view that our current political divide is not confined to a small group of elites and activists but a key feature of the American social and cultural landscape. The polarization of the political and media elites, he argues, arose and persists because it accurately reflects the state of American society. Here, he goes further: the polarization is unique in modern U.S. history. Today’s party divide reflects an unprecedented alignment of many different divides: racial and ethnic, religious, ideological, and geographic. Abramowitz shows how the partisan alignment arose out of the breakup of the old New Deal coalition; introduces the most important difference between our current era and past eras, the rise of “negative partisanship”; explains how this phenomenon paved the way for the Trump presidency; and examines why our polarization could even grow deeper. This statistically based analysis shows that racial anxiety is by far a better predictor of support for Donald Trump than any other factor, including economic discontent.

Race, Campaign Politics, and the Realignment in the South

Race, Campaign Politics, and the Realignment in the South
Author: James M. Glaser
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 1998-09-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780300077230

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Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, while Republican candidates have carried the South in presidential elections, the Democratic Party has persisted in winning southern congressional elections. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, this text examines this political phenomenon.

Dynamics of the Party System

Dynamics of the Party System
Author: James L. Sundquist
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2011-10-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0815723180

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Since the original edition of Dynamics of the Party System was published in 1973, American politics have continued on a tumultuous course. In the vacuum left by the decline of the Democratic and Republican parties, single-interest groups have risen and flourished. Protest movements on the left and the New Right at the opposite pole have challenged and divided the major parties, and the Reagan Revolution--in reversing a fifty-year trend toward governmental expansion--may turn out to have revolutionized the party system too. In this edition, as in the first, current political trends and events are placed in a historical and theoretical context. Focusing upon three major realignments of the past--those of the 1850s, the 1890s, and the 1930s--Sundquist traces the processes by which basic transformations of the country's two-party system occur. From the historical case studies, he fashions a theory as to the why and how of party realignment, then applies it to current and recent developments, through the first two years of the Reagan presidency and the midterm election of 1982. The theoretical sections of the first edition are refined in this one, the historical sections are revised to take account of recent scholarship, and the chapters dealing with the postwar period are almost wholly rewritten. The conclusion of the original work is, in general, confirmed: the existing party system is likely to be strengthened as public attention is again riveted on domestic economic issues, and the headlong trend of recent decades toward political independence and party disintegration reversed, at least for a time.

The Big Sort

The Big Sort
Author: Bill Bishop
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 478
Release: 2009-05-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0547525192

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The award-winning journalist reveals the untold story of why America is so culturally and politically divided in this groundbreaking book. Armed with startling demographic data, Bill Bishop demonstrates how Americans have spent decades sorting themselves into alarmingly homogeneous communities—not by region or by state, but by city and neighborhood. With ever-increasing specificity, we choose the communities and media that are compatible with our lifestyles and beliefs. The result is a country that has become so ideologically inbred that people don't know and can't understand those who live just a few miles away. In The Big Sort, Bishop explores how this phenomenon came to be, and its dire implications for our country. He begins with stories about how we live today and then draws on history, economics, and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.

Electoral Realignments

Electoral Realignments
Author: David R. Mayhew
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2008-10-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0300130031

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The study of electoral realignments is one of the most influential and intellectually stimulating enterprises undertaken by American political scientists. Realignment theory has been seen as a science able to predict changes, and generations of students, journalists, pundits, and political scientists have been trained to be on the lookout for “signs” of new electoral realignments. Now a major political scientist argues that the essential claims of realignment theory are wrong—that American elections, parties, and policymaking are not (and never were) reconfigured according to the realignment calendar. David Mayhew examines fifteen key empirical claims of realignment theory in detail and shows us why each in turn does not hold up under scrutiny. It is time, he insists, to open the field to new ideas. We might, for example, adopt a more nominalistic, skeptical way of thinking about American elections that highlights contingency, short-term election strategies, and valence issues. Or we might examine such broad topics as bellicosity in early American history, or racial questions in much of our electoral history. But we must move on from an old orthodoxy and failed model of illumination.