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Electoral Realignment and the Outlook for American Democracy Electoral Realignment and the Outlook for American Democracy
Arthur Paulson  

$29.95 Paperback
Release Date: 12/1/2006
ISBN: 9781555536671    
240 Pages

Distributed for University Press of New England



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About the Book

Journalists and the general public have seized upon the notion of “red” and “blue” states to better understand the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, but this conception of political geography is seldom placed in historical perspective. In Electoral Realignment and the Outlook for American Democracy, Arthur Paulson analyzes the impact of ideological polarization on political parties and electoral realignment in the contemporary United States. Recalling the extensive realignment that occurred between 1964 and 1972 (with the contentious 1968 election as its fulcrum) and the three decades of split-ticket voting and “divided government” (most often featuring a Republican president and a Democratic Congress) that followed, Paulson recognizes the resurgence of party-line voting in the last decade. A new, ideologically polarized party system—resembling a responsible party system more than has ever been the case in the American experience—has taken shape. The American polity continues to realign, and Paulson discusses how the forces at work are reshaping the party system in particular and the health of American democracy in general. Although the United States is an “advanced” democracy, he demonstrates the need to view even American democracy as “developing.” If American democracy is to thrive, Paulson says, it must change to meet the realities of a rapidly changing world. The realigned system presents challenges to national unity, but it also offers opportunities for debating compelling issues that demand extreme choices, including zero-sum economics in a postindustrial society, globalization and the international economy, development and underdevelopment around the world, and terrorism, war, and peace.

About the Author(s)

ARTHUR PAULSON is Professor of Political Science at Southern Connecticut State University. He is the author of Realignment and Party Revival: Understanding American Electoral Politics at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century (2000) and has written many papers on electoral politics and democracy.

Table of Contents

• List of Figure and Tables • Preface • Realignment and American Politics
• Realignment Theory and Its Critics
• A Century of Presidential Elections: Realignment in Historical Perspective
• Ideological Polarization and Party Change in American Politics
• From Party Decay to Party Renewal: Ideological Homogenization and the New Nominating Equilibrium in American Politics • The Two-Tier Party System: Critical Realignment
at the Top, Secular Realignment at the Bottom
• Realignment and the Study of American Elections
• Toward a Responsible-Party System? • Epilogue - Political Parties, Public Policy, and Postindustrial Democracy in America
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index

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Sample Chapter

A sample chapter of this title is not available at this time. For further information, please email info@ubcpress.ubc.ca.

Related Topics

Political Science
History

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