The Republican South: Democratization and Partisan Change

Extract

The Republican South: Democratization and Partisan Change. By David Lublin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 272p. $35.00.

David Lublin's book attempts to describe and explain partisan change in the South. It examines the growth of Republicanism across the full range of elected offices, from president down to county officials, and investigates the role that issues, elites, and electoral arrangements have played in the political transformation of the South. This is an ambitious agenda for a book of fewer than 280 pages, but for the most part the author pulls it off. Lublin's success in covering such a broad topic is accomplished in part by relying on previously published work (some of which is his own). Thus, the book is partly a synthesis of existing work, but it also includes new data and analysis.