The Social Roots of American Politics

Abstract

Abstract The Social Roots of American Politics attempts to recover the shaping influence of social backgrounds on political conflict in the United States since the Second World War. The critical tool for this is partisan alignment, the manner in which social cleavages are linked to policy preferences and converted into ongoing conflicts by way of political parties. Along the way, it examines the way these parties transmit—but also transform—policy preferences rooted in basic social divisions. One cleavage, social class, proves to be a continuing influence on policy preferences from the start, expanding modestly but relentlessly thereafter. A second, racial background, would explode in the early postwar years, with policy divisions that were deeper but more narrowly focused than the others. The third, religious denomination, was largely dormant in those early years, rising to political prominence with social change and as active partisans came to recognize a religious potential for organizing politics. And the fourth, sex, would have the most mottled connection to policy preferences but the most direct connection to party attachment.