Realignment

3 Key excerpts on "Realignment"

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  When Political Parties Die

  A Cross-National Analysis of Disalignment and Realignment

  • Charles S. Mack(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  50 When Political Parties Die in the South and New England are now “virtually a mirror image” of the Roosevelt era. 38 He observed that the philosophical Realignment seemed clear-cut, even though the parties were then more or less at parity, as they had been for the preceding 15 years. “[But] today’s postindustrial sociopo- litical environment makes it exceedingly difficult for any party to establish stable, long-term loyalties across much of the population.” As Ladd was expanding on this conception of philosophical realign- ment, a new theory of voting and elections had emerged that dealt with some of the same problems he and Burnham had discussed. Observing signs that voters were moving away from political participation and that party strength was weakening, Martin Wattenberg said that Realignment had stopped as the party system became dealigned. Voter turnout was de- clining and the public seemed to perceive decreasing value in their lives from political parties. We will return to this subject of dealignment pres- ently, but it is important at least to introduce it at this point before launch- ing into the next discussion of works by Paulson and Stonecash. Realignment is a phenomenon of party-based voting; dealignment rep- resents processes affecting the party system: disaffection from the politi- cal process, the attenuation of party strength and affiliation, lower voter turnout, and the increased importance large numbers of voters give to choices of individual candidates rather than party preference. While some political analysts had perceived in political developments the demise of Realignment, others had seen it transformed through the instrument of dealignment. Two recent books have sought to revive Realignment theory as it applies to American politics.

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  Electoral Realignments

  A Critique of an American Genre

  • David R. Mayhew(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • (Publisher)

  ‘‘The rise in intensity [during re-alignments] is associated with a considerable increase in ideological polarizations, at first within one or more of the major parties and then between them. Issue distances 40. Schattschneider, The Semisovereign People, 78–82. 41. Ibid., 86–90. 42. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System (1983), 35, 298–99. 24 The Realignments Perspective between the parties are markedly increased, and elections tend to involve highly salient issue-clusters, often with strongly emotional and symbolic overtones, far more than is customary in American electoral politics.’’ 43 Also: ‘‘In the campaign or campaigns [during a Realignment], the insurgents’ political style is exceptionally ideological by American standards; this in turn produces a sense of grave threat among defenders of the established order, who in turn develop opposing ideological positions.’’ 44 10) At least as regards the U.S. House, realigning elec-tions hinge on national issues, nonrealigning elections on local ones. This is a recent contribution by David W. Brady that I have not come across in any other scholar-ship. ‘‘Certain elections,’’ he claims, ‘‘are dominated by na-tional rather than local issues.’’ Brady undertakes to dem-onstrate that ’’during Realignments’’ the House is elected ‘‘on national, not local issues, thus giving a sense of man-date to the new majority party.’’ 45 Particularly important are the next three claims about government policy. Claim 12 overlaps claim 11, but their logics and factual structures differ. 43. Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings, 7. 44. Burnham, ‘‘Party Systems and the Political Process,’’ 288. 45. David W. Brady, Critical Elections and Congressional Policy Making (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 14, 18. The Realignments Perspective 25 11) Electoral Realignments are associated with major changes in government policy.

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  The Collapse Of The Democratic Presidential Majority

  Realignment, Dealignment, And Electoral Change From Franklin Roosevelt To Bill Clinton

  • David G Lawrence(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Conclusion: Realignment, Dealignment, and Electoral Change from Roosevelt to Clinton

  Realignment attracted considerable attention in the late 1960s and early 1970s by providing a powerful dynamic theory of periodic, large-scale, far-reaching political change. Realignment predicted regular substantial change in mass voting behavior, party control of government, and the nature of policy outputs; it provided a rich framework for reinterpreting the whole of American electoral history. Realignment made sense of the widely perceived disruptive changes in the American party system occurring at the time: emergence of new cross-cutting issues like race, foreign policy, and social order; the decline in strength of mass party loyalties; ideological tensions and conflict within parties, culminating in insurgencies like Goldwater's or McGovern's or Wallace's.

  Realignment theory made clear that the fifth party system, with its roots in the Depression and New Deal forty years before, was coming to an end, but it did not itself point to any one inevitable result of the process of change. The period around 1970 did not lack plausible scenarios. Phillips (1970) described a "black socio-economic revolution" that would drive the Democrats to the left and leave the Republicans with a centrist/conservative majority; Scammon and Wattenberg (1971) identified a Social Issue of perceived social disintegration and threatening cultural change on which their perceived permissiveness made the Democrats vulnerable and which would provide (given reduced concern with the traditionally Democratic issue of economics) the basis of a new era of Republican domination; Sundquist (1983) saw a continuation of the class-based New Deal system, with the Democrats' dominant position nationally undermined somewhat by extension of class cleavage into the previously monolithically Democratic south; Newfield and Greenfield (1972) write of an economically-based populist resurgence that a Democratic Party recommitted to its class base could make the cornerstone of a revitalized national majority; Miller and Levitin (1976) described a New Liberalism in which suspicion of the agents of social control and concern with self-expression would offer the Democrats the chance to construct a new majority not dependent on economics.

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