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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

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Aaron Wildavsky
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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

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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.

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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).

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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