Representation without Parties: Reconsidering the One-Party South, 1930062

Abstract

Political scientists have long viewed the one-party South as exemplifying the impossibility of democracy in the absence of partisan competition. I argue that this view conflates the effects of disfranchisement and one-partyism. Despite the lack of partisan competition, Democratic primaries induced a qualified but real electoral connection between Southern members of Congress and the (white) eligible electorate. I show that Southern representatives exhibited strong responsiveness to the economic policy preferences of their median voter. I also demonstrate that Southern MCs’ collective shift from New Deal liberals to pivotal centrists in the 1930s and 1940s mirrored shifts in white public opinion in the South. These findings suggest important qualifications to the view of the one-party South as an “authoritarian” regime and to the conventional wisdom that that representation requires partisan competition.