Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T09:17:07.441Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Periodization Schemes and “Party Systems”: The “System of 1896” as a Case in Point

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Walter Dean Burnham
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

1. Was there any such thing as the “System of 1896”—or indeed any other “system” in American political history, for that matter? Professor McCormick’s paper suggests that he would clearly answer this question in the affirmative. For essentially he argues not that no such system existed, but that much too heavy an interpretative burden in my analyses has been placed on 1896 itself. I am sure that, so far as this is concerned, Professor McCormick is right. Yet there do seem undercurrents in this friendly critique of the broader doubt as to whether there is any substantiality at all to the model which I first attempted to sketch out quite a few years ago. On any one of a variety of specific details, I would have to plead, if not guilty, then at least nolo contendere. Yes, I undoubtedly placed too great a burden on 1896 itself, which inevitably should and does create scholarly doubts. Yes, the original sketch which attempted to link elite motivation with underlying power structure and those with electoral politics in and after the 1890s was painted in very vivid colors indeed. This may tell a dramatic story, but it may assume a greater conspiratorial intentionality and future-prediction on the part of elites than was actually there. But once we deal with issues such as these, is there anything left? Professor McCormick, a friendly critic, seems to think there is, but undercurrents of doubt remain.

Type
Walter Dean Burnham and the Dynamics of American Politics
Information
Social Science History , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , Fall 1986 , pp. 263 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1986 

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

Anderson, K. (1979) The Creation of a Democratic Majority. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bensel, R. F. (1984) Sectionalism and American Political Development, 1880-1980. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Benson, L. (1984) “The mistransference fallacy in explanations of human behavior.” Historical Methods 17: 118–131.Google Scholar
Burner, D. (1968) The Politics of Provincialism: The Democratic Party in Transition, 1918-1932. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Burnham, W. D. (1970) Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Burnham, W. D. (1982) “The Appearence and disappearence of the American voter,” in Burnham, W. D., the Current Crisis in American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press: 121–165.Google Scholar
Burnham, W. D. (1985)”The 1984 election and the future of American Politics,” in Sandoz, E. and Crabb, C. V. Jr. (eds.), Election 84: Landslide Without a Mandate? New York: New American Library: 204–260.Google Scholar
Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U.S. 238 (1936).Google Scholar
Chicago Daily News Almanac (1924) 336–339.Google Scholar
Clubb, J. M., Flanigan, W. H., and Zingale, N. H. (1980) Partisan Realignment: Voters, Parties and Government in American History. Beverly Hills: Sage.Google Scholar
Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U.S. 1 (1915).Google Scholar
Corwin, E. S. (1955) The “Higher-Law”Background of American Constitutional Law. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Croly, H. (1909) The Promise of American Life. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Fiorina, M. (1981) Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Gans, D. J. (1985) “Persistence of party success in American presidential elections.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 16 (Autumn): 221–237.Google Scholar
Ginsberg, B. (1982) The Consequences of Consent: Elections, Citizen Control and Popular Acquiescence. Reading, MA:Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Hays, S. P. (1967) “Political parties and the community-society continuum” in Chambers, W. N. and Burnham, W. D. (eds.) The American Party System: Stages of Political Development. New York: Oxford University Press: 152–181.Google Scholar
Holcombe, A. N. (1924) The Political Parties of Today: A Study in Republican and Democratic Politics. New York: Harper & Brothers.Google Scholar
In Re Debs, 158 U.S. 564 (1895).Google Scholar
Jackson, R. H. (1941) the Struggle for Judicial Supremacy. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Key, V. O. Jr. (1956) American State Politics. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Key, V. O. Jr. (1949) Southern Politics in State and Nation. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Kleppner, P. (1982) Who Voted? New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Kousser, J. M. (1985) “Must historians regress? An answer to Lee Benson.” CalTech Social Science Working Paper 580 (August).Google Scholar
Kousser, J. M. (1974) The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kuhn, T. J. (1962) The structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Lenin, V. I. (1965) “The constituent assembly elections and the dictatorship of the proletariat,” in Collected Works. 30 Moscow: Progress Publishers: 178–225.Google Scholar
Lerner, M. [ed.] (1943) The Mind and Faith of Justice Holmes. Boston: Little, Brown: 390.Google Scholar
Lichtman, A. J. (1976) “Critical elections theory and the reality of American presidential politics, 1916–40.” American Historical Review 81: 317–348.Google Scholar
Lipset, S. M. (1950) Agrarian Socialism. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lipset, S. M. and Rokkan, S. (1967) “Cleavage structures, party systems, and voter alignments,” in Lipset, S. M. and Rokkan, S. (eds.) Party Systems and Voter Alignments. New York: Free Press: 1–64.Google Scholar
Lowi, T. J. (1964) “American business, public policy, case-studies and political theory,” World Politics 16: 677–715.Google Scholar
Lowi, T. J.(1966) “Distribution, regulation, redistribution,” in Ripley, R. B. (ed.) Public Policies and Their Politics. New York: Norton: 27–40.Google Scholar
Lynd, R. S.and Lynd, H. (1929) Middletown: A Study in American Culture. New York: Harcourt Brace.Google Scholar
Martin, R. (1933) The People’s Party in Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Macpherson, C. B. (1953) Democracy in Alberta. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
McCloskey, R. G. (1951) American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Paul, A. M. (1960) Conservative Crisis and the Rule of Law. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Phelps Dodge v. NLRB, 313 U.S. 177 (1941).Google Scholar
Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Company, 157 U.S. 429 (1895).Google Scholar
Pollock v. Rehearing, 158 U.S. 601 (1895).Google Scholar
Pressman, J. L. (1975) Federal Programs and City Politics: The Dynamics of the Aid Process in Oakland. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rokkan, S. (1970) Citizens, Elections, Parties. Philadelphia: David McKay.Google Scholar
Rosenstone, S. J. and Wolfinger, R. (1980) Who Votes? New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Schattschneider, E. E. (1956) “United States: The functional approach to party government,” in Neuman, S. (ed.) Modern Political Parties: Approaches to Comparative Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 194–215.Google Scholar
Schattschneider, E. E. (1960) The Semisovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Skowronek, S. (1982) The Building of the Modern American State. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
U.S. v. E. C. Knight Co., 156 U.S. I (1895).Google Scholar
Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942).Google Scholar
Wiebe, R. P.(1969) The Search for Order, 1877-1920. New York: Hill & Wang.Google Scholar