Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-qxdb6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T05:51:23.204Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Are American Political Parties Pretty Much the Same as They Used to Be in the 1950s, Only a Little Different, or Are They Radically Different? A Review Essay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Aaron Wildavsky
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the last fifteen years or so I have found myself at odds with friends, colleagues, and other luminaries over whether the changes among political activists within the major political parties are real but modest in their impact or whether, as I believe, the changes are fundamental. Most commentaries on political parties by pundits and political scientists give no clue that anything fundamental has occurred. The Democratic party is described as if it were still the party of Harry Truman and Hubert Humphrey, and the Republican party is still conceived as tantamount to the party of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. True, the presidency of Ronald Reagan led to discussions of a strong conservative trend; by and large, however, this trend is treated as an aberration, a product of Reagan's peculiar personality and popularity rather than an indicator of basic change within the Republican party.

Type
Review Article
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , April 1992 , pp. 228 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Powell, Lynda W., “Changes in Liberalism-Conservatism in the U.S. House of Representatives: 1978–1988,” Prepared for Annual Meeting, American Political Science Association, Washington Hilton, August 29–Sept. 1, 1991, p. 4.Google Scholar

2. Ibid.

3. Rohde, David W., “The Electoral Roots of the Resurgence of Partisanship Among Southern Democrats in the House of Representatives,” Prepared for Annual Meeting, American Political Science Association, Washington Hilton, August 29–Sept. 1, 1991, p. 2.Google Scholar See also, Sara Brandes Crook and John R. Hibbing, “Congressional Reform and Party Discipline: The Effects of Changes in the Seniority System on Party Loyalty in the US House of Representatives,” British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 15, pp. 207–226; and Weingast, Barry R., “Floor Behavior in the U.S. Congress: Committee Power Under the Open Rule,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 83, No. 3 (September 1989), pp. 795–815.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Clark, John A., Bruce, John M., Kessel, John H., and Jacoby, William G., “I'd Rather Switch Than Fight: Lifelong Democrats and Converts to Republicanism Among Campaign Activists,” American Journal of Political Science, Vol.35, No. 3 (August 1991), pp. 577–597, quote on p. 595.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Center for Political Studies, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, “Convention Delegate Study: Report to Respondents” (Ann Arbor, 1985). Research by the University of Michigan's Center for Political Studies of 1984 convention delegates showed that the parties differed on virtually every issue, whether it concerned domestic or defense or foreign policy, prayer, abortion, social security, the environment, except for spending less on foreign aid and fighting crime. Moreover, there was “a deep schism among Republican delegates, much deeper than those which separated the policy preferences of supporters of the major Democratic candidates.” In 1984, busing still disunited the Democrats. But on most other issues, from abortion to defense spending to prayer in schools, treatment of minorities to Medicare, spending on education, Republicans showed much larger divisions than Democrats.

6. Miller, Warren E. and Jennings, M. Kent, with Barbara G. Farah, Parties in Transition: A Longitudinal Study of Party Elites and Party Supporters (New York, 1986).Google Scholar

7. The 1972 Democratic platform, quoted in Carmines and Stimson, 51 (emphasis added).

8. Douglas, Mary and Wildavsky, Aaron, Risk and Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982);Google ScholarThompson, Michael, Ellis, Richard, and Wildavsky, Aaron, Cultural Theory (Boulder, Colo., 1990);Google ScholarDake, Karl and Wildavsky, Aaron, “Theories of Risk Perception: Who Fears What and Why?” Daedalus 119:4 (1990): 41–60; Aaron Wildavsky, “The Comparative Study of Risk Perception: A Beginning,” forthcoming in Peter Wiedemann, ed., Society and Uncertainty: Risk Perception.Google Scholar

9. Sniderman, Paul M., Piazza, Thomas, Tetlock, Philip E., and Kendrick, Ann, “The New Racism,” American Journal of Political Science 35:2 (May 1991): 423–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gaertner, Samuel L. and Dovidio, John F., “The Aversive Form of Racism,” in Dovidio, John F. and Gaertner, Samuel L., eds., Prejudice, Discrimination, and Racism (New York, 1986)Google Scholar; Kinder, Donald R. and Sears, David O., “Prejudice and Politics: Symbolic Racism versus Racial Threats to the Good Life,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 40 (1981): 414–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; John B. McConahay, “Modem Racism, Ambivalence, and the Modern Racism Scale,” in Dovidio and Gaertner, eds, Prejudice, Discrimination, and Racism; McConahay, John B., Hardee, Betty B., and Batts, Valerie, “Has Racism Declined in America? It Depends on Who Is Asking and What Is Asked?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 25 (1981): 563–79;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMcConahay, John B. and Hough, J. C., Jr., “Symbolic Racism,” Journal of Social Issues 32 (1976): 23–45;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPettigrew, Thomas, “Racial Change and Social Policy,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 441 (1979): 114–31;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSears, David O., “Symbolic Racism,” in Katz, Phyllis A. and Taylor, Dalmas A., eds., Eliminating Racism (New York, 1988);Google ScholarSears, David O., Hensler, Carl P., and Speer, Leslie K., “Whites' Opposition to ‘Busing’: Self-Interest or Symbolic Politics?” American Political Science Review 73 (1979): 369–84;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSniderman, Paul M., Brody, Richard A., and Kuklinski, James H., “Policy Reasoning and Political Issues: The Case of Racial Equality,” American Journal of Political Science 28 (1984): 75–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sniderman, Paul M., Gray-Iagen, Michael, Tetlock, Philip E., and Brady, Henry E., “Reasoning Chains: Causal Models of Racial Policy Reasoning,” British Journal of Political Science 16 (1986): 405–30;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSniderman, Paul M. and Tetlock, Philip E., “Symbolic Racism: Problems of Political Motive Attribution,” Journal of Social Issues 42 (1986): 129– 50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Sniderman et al., “The New Racism,” quotation on p. 125.

11. Lipset, Seymour Martin, “Two Americas—Two Stratification Systems—Black and White,” typescript, 9 May 1991, 14.Google Scholar See also Kluegel, James R. and Smith, Elliot R., Beliefs About Inequality: Americans' Views of Is and What Ought to Be (New York, 1986), 200–203;Google ScholarBunzel, John H., “Affirmative Re-actions,” Public Opinion 9 (February/March 1989): 45–49.Google Scholar

12. Lipset, “Two Americas,” 15.

13. Ibid., 15–16.

14. Cited in Edsall, Thomas B., “Rights Drive Said to Lose Underpinnings,” Washington Post, 9 March 1991, A6, cited in Lipset, 21.Google Scholar

15. Raspberry, William, “Why Civil Rights Isn't Selling?” Washington Post, 13 March 1991, A17, cited in Lipset, 21.Google Scholar