Class and Culture: American Political Cleavages in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

the New Deal political system had finally come to an end and what kind of system was replacing it. For some the New Deal system remained fundamentally intact except for aberrant presidential elections and short-term deviations (Sundquist 1983: 412-49). Others saw an emerging conservative coalition dominated by the GOP or a no-party politics based on single issues or personalities (Burnham 1970, 1982; Ladd and Hadley 1978; Phillips 1970). As the American political system enters the 1990s none of these alternatives is appropriate in describing the political scene. In presidential politics the New Deal era ended in 1968, and since that time the Republican party has consistently prevailed by winning over key elements of the Democrats' New Deal Coalition, particularly white Southerners and urban Catholics. Yet the Emerging Republican Majority remains stillborn in Congress and in the states. And while a case can be made for the dealignment hypothesis, the political parties are unlikely to vanish and in many respects are much more coherent entities in terms of ideology and national organization (if not voter mobilization) than they were a quarter-century ago. Rather than remaining caught in the thicket of the realignment/dealignment debate, this paradoxical situation may be better explained as a result of the resurgence in presidential politics of ethnoreligious cultural conflicts that were temporarily suppressed by the class-based party politics of the New Deal era. Culture in this context refers to cleavages that are based on questions of region, race, ethnicity, religion and morality, rather than questions of economic power or distribution of the national wealth. Divisions on foreign policy and national security issues that reflect differing conceptions of the U.S. role in the world are also rooted in cultural differences.