Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I The Marketplace of Ideas
- Part II The Great Twentieth-Century Governing Ideas
- 3 The Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism in the United States
- 4 The Rise and Fall of the Folkhem in Swedish Politics
- Part III Rhetoric and Government: Understanding Public Policy and Elections
- Part IV Making Democracy Work
- Notes
- References
- Index
3 - The Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism in the United States
from Part II - The Great Twentieth-Century Governing Ideas
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 October 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I The Marketplace of Ideas
- Part II The Great Twentieth-Century Governing Ideas
- 3 The Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism in the United States
- 4 The Rise and Fall of the Folkhem in Swedish Politics
- Part III Rhetoric and Government: Understanding Public Policy and Elections
- Part IV Making Democracy Work
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
The Democrats are in danger of again playing the role they did in the era of Grover Cleveland, that is of being the Everybody Else Party, a loose ragtag union, born of historical accidents and composed of … disparate elements….
To anyone living among the tired, two-jobbed, worried and scrambling middle classes, it should be obvious there are uncounted millions whom the Republicans do not and never will represent. But neither do the Democrats and the ones who led their party into this election should all be locked up under a witless protection program.
- Nicholas von Hoffman, on the 1994 electionWithin the bounds of culture and the fates of history, societies are often characterized most sharply by the political ideas that evolve to guide public debates. Governing ideas and the market mechanisms that act upon them (parties, finance arrangements, interest processes, and mass communications media) structure national debates on policy questions like tax reform, and they affect the clarity of choices, the credibility of promises, and the degree of party loyalty in elections. More generally, governing ideas set the terms for conflict and change in society.
In this chapter and the next, we explore the great domestic political debates of the twentieth century in Sweden and the United States, showing how two grand sets of governing ideas arose in response to the economic crisis of the 1930s and continued to set the tone of national politics until the 1990s. T h e important differences we identify are not so much the obvious contrasts between the Swedish and the American ways of thinking about society and its problems, but the deeper structure of political rhetoric itself. In the Swedish case, we find the development of an ideology that broke free of earlier conservative ideas, articulating a coherent set of social principles and goals, along with guidelines about how government should promote those goals. T h e key, and the irony, here is that this ideational break with Swedish conservatism was accomplished not through a forcefully articulated socialist ideology but with a more broadly appealing image of a government that would provide security, order, and respect for the members of society, much as a well-functioning home cares for all the members of a family.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Democracy and the Marketplace of IdeasCommunication and Government in Sweden and the United States, pp. 53 - 85Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997