American Political Life Research Articles

Imagined Hillarys: Feminism, Fantasy, and Fictional Clintons inThe Good WifeandThe Good Fight

In the 2010s, Hillary Clinton emerged as a central character not only in American political life but also in its imagined political scenarios. This article considers the centrality of Clinton as a model for women's legal and political empowerment in CBS dramaThe Good Wife(2009–16), arguing that the show's generic blend of the television procedural with melodrama and soap is key to both its normative portrayal of women in the corporate workplace and its positioning of Clinton as an aspirational figure for white liberal feminists. A similar tension is also central to Clinton's bid for the presidency in 2016, and this article dissects the ways in which Clinton's anticipated victory has provided a powerful but ultimately misleading “feminist” fantasy for many television shows of the last decade. A final section concludes this article with a brief analysis ofThe Good Wife's 2017 spin-offThe Good Fight, to argue that this show pivots from a fantasy of women's empowerment to a much more interesting dystopic picture, tapping into the surrealism of the present moment to convey the difficulty of women's aspiration under a Trump administration in ways that more directly, if still imperfectly, tackle the failings of liberal feminism to account for racial and economic difference.

“Attempts to Change the World Itself”: American Political Theory and Rhetorics of Political Significance

ABSTRACT Although the subfield of political theory often struggles to be recognized as producing scholarship that meaningfully contributes to the practical improvement of American political life, claims concerning the potentially immense political significance of theory work remain prominent within the subfield itself. The primary aim of this article is to demonstrate that such claims are manifestations of a rhetoric that has circulated in American political theory for much of the twentieth century. The second is to argue that political theorists should seek to modify this rhetoric. This is not only because it is incongruent with the material, institutional, and professional circumstances that largely define and increasingly contain academic political theory today. It is also because its very rootedness within the subfield may also be occluding recognition of other, more credible, and more unabashedly quotidian ways of speaking of the political significance of theory work.

Antitrust and the Corporate Tax, 1909–1928

Between the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, the question of what to do about “trusts” dominated American political life. Before 1889, the dominant form of amalgamating competing businesses was the trust, because corporations could not hold shares in other corporations, and instead the shareholders would exchange their shares for trust certificates. But in 1889 New Jersey (the “traitor state”, according to muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens) changed its corporate law to allow for holding company structures, setting of a great wave of amalgamations in areas like oil, tobacco, sugar and steel. This paper will focus on one attempt to address the “trust problem” by means other than the Sherman Act (which faced some resistance in the courts, as the government lost the E.C. Knight case in the Supreme Court in 1895 and barely won the Northern Securities case in 1905). This was the corporate tax act of 1909, which as will be seen below, was primarily intended as an antitrust measure. However, after the enactment of the Clayton Act and the creation of the FTC in 1914, the corporate tax was less needed as an antitrust measure, and between 1919 and 1928 its antitrust features were largely eliminated.

Populism

The concept of populism has generated endless controversy marked by both the contrasting political feelings it conveys and a particular problem of definition. This article—based on political speeches, academic literature, and relevant online sources, such as Google Ngram Viewer, catalogs of great libraries, and digital archives of newspapers—adopts a pragmatic approach to the concept throughout its history, from the moment when the noun appeared in North American political life in the late nineteenth century until the most recent “populist moment” in response to the economic crisis that started in 2008. The study of its changing meanings shows, however, some elements of continuity that make sense of what Margaret Canovan defined as “a notoriously vague term.”

Burzum shirts, paramilitarism and National Socialist Black Metal in the twenty-first century

Over the last ten years, the radical right has proliferated at an alarming rate in the United States. National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) has become an important feature of neo-Nazi, White supremacist and militant racist groups as the radical right as a whole has gained traction in American political life. Although rooted in underground music-based subculture, NSBM has become an important crypto-signifier for the radical right in the twenty-first century providing both symbolic value and ideological inspiration. The anti-racist and apolitical elements of the North American metal scene have responded in a variety of different ways, sometimes challenging racist elements directly, at other times providing ambivalent acceptance of the far right within the scene. While fans, musicians, journalists and record labels struggle to come to terms with the meaning of NSBM and how it should be addressed, NSBM-affiliated political and paramilitary groups have formed and started making their violent fantasies a reality. As many elements within the American metal scene continue to perceive NSBM as a purely artistic movement of no concern to the world outside of the metal scene, proponents of NSBM are marching in the streets of Charlottesville, burning African American churches, murdering LGBTQ people and plotting acts of domestic terrorism.

Partisanship, sexuality, and perceptions of candidates

ABSTRACT Cultural debates over gay rights have prompted a great deal of scholarship assessing the nature and resiliency of citizen attitudes toward homosexuality in American political life. We posit, however, that more attention should be devoted to LGBT individuals themselves as potential office holders. Specifically, we argue that in an era of increased affective polarization and partisan sorting, party identification of candidates, as well as affectual and ideological attitudes of voters, must be integrated into analyses of the effects of sexuality as a voting heuristic. Drawing on social identity and subtyping theories, we contend that candidate sexuality will influence attitudes about some candidates, but not others. We then present the results of an original survey experiment in which candidate partisanship and sexuality are both manipulated. The data reveal substantial support of our theory: while sexuality is a relevant consideration in the candidate evaluation process, both partisanship of candidates and political attributes of voters can severely condition its effects.

Political Performance, Profanation, and Mundane Interaction: a Revised Cultural Sociology of the 2016 American Presidential Election

For more than a decade, Jeffrey Alexander has been developing the cultural sociology of politics as an alternative to rationalist theories of political life. Nearly every part of the 2016 US presidential election offers some vindication for Alexander’s cultural sociology of politics. The election of Donald Trump suggested that performance, stage craft, and messaging might be more fundamental to presidential campaigns. Yet on closer examination, political performance in the 2016 election challenges certain aspects of the cultural sociology of politics. Specifically, the performance of Donald Trump frequently occasioned the violation of the background representations of American political life. This article uses the 2016 campaign of Donald Trump to investigate how a single candidate can be a successful political performer even while profaning a society’s sacred or animating ideals. In the course of this analysis, I argue for a greater appreciation of the value of mundane social interaction in political performance. In liberal and democratic societies, the value of individualism means that the principles of social interaction will be as important to political performance as the ability to channel other principles and ideals.

Latino Political Participation by Citizenship Status and Immigrant Generation

ObjectiveUsing the complementary 2012 American National Election Study and 2012 Latino Immigrant National Election Study, we examine Latino political participation by citizenship and immigrant generation status.MethodsWe use logistic regression to examine three political participation modes—voting, campaign activity, and civic participation—across four Latino subgroups (noncitizens, naturalized citizens, second generation, and third‐plus generation), and non‐Latino whites. We assess whether political participation patterns can be explained by demographics and standard political predictors (i.e., religiosity, partisanship, political efficacy, and social trust) and whether patterns differ for older and younger adults.ResultsAcross all political participation modes, third‐plus‐generation Latinos and non‐Latino whites participate equally. Second‐generation Latinos demonstrate a political participation disadvantage: their political participation is as low as, or lower than, that of noncitizen Latinos—a disadvantage driven mostly by younger Latinos.ConclusionResults suggest diverging patterns of Latino political incorporation, and raise concerns that young second‐generation Latinos may not fully integrate into American political life.

Socialism in America: Shifts in Public Consciousness

In the American political life of the last two decades and three election campaigns – 2016, 2018 and 2020 the ideology of socialism, as an alternative to the existing liberal democracy and capitalism in the country's economic system, has played a significant role. The article examines the origins of socialism in the United States, the reasons for its rise in the early XX century and its retreat under the influence of the "Red Scare" campaigns later. The article analyzes the reasons for the rise in popularity of socialism in the last two decades, primarily among young people, and examines the attitude of the population, various strata and groups to the main programs of reforming the country on socialist principles. The article examines the impact of the discussed social reforms in the programs of politicians in the 2020 campaign on the outcome of elections and possible changes in American political life under the influence of new generations of socialist-oriented politicians.

Pathos, Poverty, and Politics: Booker T. Washington’s Radically Reimagined American Civilization

This article contends that in the period of his greatest political influence (1895–1905), Booker T. Washington called for a radical reimagining of American social and political life as a civilization characterized by reciprocity and equal dignity between the races. As this period corresponds with the nadir of black life in America, Washington has been derided as politically inept and his program of economic uplift has been condemned as miserably incapable of improving the condition of African Americans. These critiques have purchase, but fail to duly analyze the substance of Washington’s thinking. Examining Washington’s writing from this period for a political theory underlying his political program, I claim that these texts contain an internally coherent and often-attractive account of civilization comprised of black citizens who share equal social standing with white citizens, since all are industrious, confident, clean, and dignified. I argue that Washington’s object lessons contain examples of this dynamic of civilization and that Washington is part of a tradition of black political theory, which qualifies him as deserving of consideration as a political theorist on his own terms.

Justice Finch: The Complicated Law and Politics of Harper Lee’s Atticus and Scout

The 2015 release of Harper Lee’s novel Go Set a Watchman led to a frenzied reaction from admirers of To Kill a Mockingbird. This rush to decipher Atticus’s racial attitudes overshadowed Lee’s full unveiling of important new dimensions in the Finch family tale. First and foremost, the heart of both novels is the moral and political development of Jean Louise “Scout” Finch. Scout’s complicated education in civic, moral, and legal virtue requires readers to make sense of Atticus as a teacher. His lessons on justice and his political actions in Watchman illuminate his jurisprudence in Mockingbird as within the rule of law and civil rights traditions of a jurist such as Hugo Black. Finally, Watchman completes the arc of Jean Louise’s education by illustrating the dangerous consequences of political life without friendship. Read together, the novels offer a coherent and extraordinary commentary on American political life and thought.

Corporations and the American Welfare State: Adversaries or Allies?

One of the most widely held views about American political life is that business is hostile to the welfare state. In the 1970s, David Vogel asked why American businessmen “distrusted their state.” Kim Phillips-Fein has written of the “businessmen's crusade against the New Deal.” Jane Mayer and Nancy MacLean have recounted the efforts of the Koch Brothers and their wealthy allies to remake American politics in a more conservative direction. What could be more uncontroversial than the view that American business is broadly opposed to government social policies?

A Political Companion to James Baldwin ed. by Susan J. McWilliams

Reviewed by: A Political Companion to James Baldwin ed. by Susan J. McWilliams Douglas Field Ed. Susan J. McWilliams. A Political Companion to James Baldwin. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2017. 426 pp. $80.00. In "The Price of the Ticket," James Baldwin briefly recalls his Trotskyite years in the 1940s, recalling that he was a member of the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL). Baldwin's tantalizing reference to his political past is brushed aside by the writer, who claims, "[m]y life on the Left is of absolutely no interest. It did not last long. It was useful in that I learned that it may be impossible to indoctrinate me." As Susan J. McWilliams points out in the introduction to A Political Companion to James Baldwin, despite Baldwin's reluctance to identify with one or other political camp, [End Page 112] he emerges as "not just one of the nation's most important thinkers on matters of racial consciousness and injustice but also one of our most articulate theorists of democratic life" (6). Baldwin's work, McWilliams observes, points to "the interconnectedness of all our lives," as well as "an essential commitment to the idea that bearing witness to other human beings is a central political responsibility, and in striving to meet that responsibility we give ourselves the best chance of transformation or even salvation" (9). Across fourteen chapters, the essays in A Political Companion to James Baldwin, written by established and emerging scholars, examine the writer as activist, citizen, and democratic theorist, as well as reading his work against the civil rights movement, religion, homosexuality, and women's liberation. In "'A Most Disagreeable Mirror': Race Consciousness as Double Consciousness," Lawrie Balfour reads Baldwin against W. E. B. Du Bois's notion of double consciousness, exploring Baldwin's polyphonic voice in essays such as "Many Thousands Gone," where the writer's use of "we" provides "moments of keen insight into the psychological burdens and the moral and political implications—for all citizens—of living with the color line" (31-32). In "The Race of a More Perfect Union: James Baldwin, Segregated Memory, and the Presidential Race," P. J. Brendese argues that the writer's "insights illuminate and counter a willful innocence about the complex legacy of segregated memory in American politics in general, and the [Obama] presidential race in particular" (50). Drawing on the work of Balfour and George Shulman, Brendese recuperates Baldwin as an invaluable theorist of the role of race in American political life, just as Susan J. McWilliams in "James Baldwin and the Politics of Disconnection" points out that "[y]ears before it was common to talk about 'social construction' … Baldwin became one of social construction's greatest theorists" (100). Baldwin's complexity is explored by Nicholas Buccola in "What William F. Buckley Jr. Did Not Understand about James Baldwin: On Baldwin's Politics of Freedom," which focuses on the debate between Buckley and Baldwin at the Cambridge Union Society in 1965. Buccola rightly points out that Baldwin's suspicion of ideology was "applied across the political spectrum" (121) but nonetheless offered keen insights into the notions of freedom and liberty. As George Shulman points out in "Baldwin, Prophecy, and Politics," he is rarely recognized "as a political thinker or even contributing to the understanding of politics" (151). By focusing on his prophetic tradition, Shulman explores the ways in which Baldwin's religiosity is deeply connected to his personal political practice. While the majority of the essays collected focus on Baldwin's essays, in "Go Tell it on the Mountain: James Baldwin and the Politics of Faith," Wilson Carey McWilliams provides an insightful close reading of Baldwin's first novel in order to illuminate how the author's religious past informs his views on identity and the importance of love, a neglected theme that nonetheless courses through his fiction and nonfiction. In "The Negative Political Theology of James Baldwin," Vincent Lloyd also explores the importance of love in the writer's work by arguing that the writer "transformed, rather than rejected, his father's Christianity" (172). Drawing on Cornel West's book Democracy Matters, in "Socrates in a Different Key: James Baldwin and Race in America...

First Ladies of the Republic: Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, and the Creation of an Iconic American Role by Jeanne E. Abrams

Reviewed by: First Ladies of the Republic: Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, and the Creation of an Iconic American Role by Jeanne E. Abrams Jacqueline Beatty First Ladies of the Republic: Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, and the Creation of an Iconic American Role. By Jeanne E. Abrams. (New York: New York University Press, 2018. 328 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $28.95.) In First Ladies of the Republic, Jeanne Abrams details the ways in which her three subjects—Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, and Dolley Madison—fashioned the position of the first lady in American political life. Though the term "first lady" is anachronistic, Abrams asserts its usefulness due to the formative influence her three subjects had on the position. Drawing from extensive records of correspondence, Abrams demonstrates that each of these figures had a unique approach to their posts, navigating their duties in a way that matched their personalities and the politics of their husbands' presidencies. Notably, the first first ladies "created a role that was uniquely American in both style and substance," a purposeful, marked departure from the standards of contemporary European courts (5). Each woman left her own imprint on the office while learning from the others' experiences. In so doing, their work shaped and defined their husbands' presidencies and the political world of the early American republic. Martha Washington served as a model first lady with no example to follow. At first reluctant in her position, Martha maintained a dogged focus on exemplifying a republican ideology in the construction of these sociopolitical spaces. Her calm temperament and modest personality provided the necessary foundation for the republican court. Abigail Adams, along with her husband, John, receive added attention in Abrams's tome—two chapters, as opposed to the one that both Washington and Madison receive—emphasizing the special relationship the two famously enjoyed. Abrams characterizes the Adams' marriage as a "long apprenticeship to the White House" (101). Abigail's intellect set her tenure as first lady apart from both Martha's and Dolley's, as she followed international politics and advised her husband in such matters. Dolley Madison was the "republican queen," adopting a style quite different from her predecessors (10). Representing a new femininity that was above partisanship, Dolley's sociability, relative youth, and comfort in the spotlight made Dolley, in Abrams's estimation, the "most successful" architect of this uniquely American political style (229). Complementing work by Catherine Allgor and Rosemarie Zagarri, First Ladies of the Republic presents a good synthesis of the field. Its well-written and accessible prose will likely appeal to a popular audience as well. Abrams's argument draws much-needed attention to the ways in which each of these figures was dedicated to preserving the personal and political legacies of her husband. Collectively, they viewed their intertwined domestic and patriotic obligations as essential in the establishment of the new nation. They prioritized their positions as republican wives in support of their powerful husbands but recognized that they played an important political role in setting the tone for each administration and bolstering its effectiveness. Though they existed in a liminal political space, Abrams's three subjects left a remarkable impression on the office of the presidency itself. Abrams's work, though heavily reliant upon canonical scholarship in the field, finds its most important contribution in defining the ways in which these women infused their marital partnerships with political power and in her [End Page 223] argument about these three women's collective, rather than individual, influence on this critical American role. Jacqueline Beatty York College of Pennsylvania Copyright © 2019 The Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and the Catholic Church

At the center of American political and diplomatic life for four decades, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. although an Episcopalian by faith, was a constant ally of powerful Catholic clergy in both America and the Vatican during the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the Cold War. His service as President Richard Nixon's special envoy to the Vatican during the papacy of Paul VI from 1970 to 1977 was the culmination of a long and fruitful collaboration with the Catholic Church, which was partially the product of political expediency and partly due to ideological and spiritual similarities. While there were failures as well as successes, Lodge's determination to cultivate leaders of the Catholic Church as allies revealed the growing importance of the Church in both the American political environment and in the tumultuous field of international diplomacy in the twentieth century marked by wars hot and cold.

Julius Rosenwald: Repairing the World by Hasia R. Diner

Reviewed by: Julius Rosenwald: Repairing the World by Hasia R. Diner Cheryl Greenberg Julius Rosenwald: Repairing the World. By Hasia R. Diner. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. xi + 237 pp. Julius Rosenwald, possibly the most celebrated Jewish philanthropist of the Progressive Era, is virtually unknown today (although work such as Aviva Kempner's documentary Rosenwald may spur new awareness). In this thorough and engaging biography, Hasia R. Diner explores both the man in his time and the reasons for his disappearance from historical memory. Rosenwald, who came up through the garment trade and eventually owned Sears, Roebuck, supported many causes from Chicago's Hull House to public health and social work programs, from Jewish cultural and community centers to schools for African Americans in the South. At the time, his expansive generosity, public commitment to his religion and seriousness of purpose brought renown not only to himself but to American Jewry as a whole. Yet his commitment to disbursing his money while he lived rather than establishing an endowment, and his refusal to put his name on most of his projects, meant that while his works endured, his name lived on only in the memories and records of his family and of those to whom he gave. In Diner's words, Rosenwald directed his money to "countering prejudice, easing poverty and promoting civic unity" (54) and encouraged others to give both by example and often by providing explicit matching fund grants. Because he believed in Booker T. Washington's ideal of self-help, he also required those communities to whom he donated to give to the projects themselves, whether in money or labor. He saw his efforts as community building partnerships rather than largesse, and [End Page 553] primarily pursued projects that helped integrate community members—Jews, the poor, African Americans—into the larger society. He had faith that everyone could benefit from exposure to middle class culture and opportunities. Thus he built schools to educate black children that southern whites did not, but required those schools to be bound by the same state requirements white public schools were. He established black public health centers and made southern states agree to support them once his grants expired. He supported Yiddish theater, the American Jewish Committee, and efforts to combat antisemitism but refused to support Zionism or any other project he saw as contradicting Jews' engagement with their Americanness. Rosenwald acted out of both his Jewish and his Progressive Era values—optimism that life could improve and faith in rationality and reason. If the right people, experts, led the way, America could live up to its ideals of a fairer society for all. While certainly reflecting some of the same biases of his time from acceptance of segregation to antagonism to unions, Rosenwald nonetheless supported groups and organizations aiding the poor, immigrants, Jews, African Americans and others marginalized by society. While he never engaged in political efforts like anti-lynching or voting rights, he held a capitalist's faith in the system—if it could be made open to all—and a Reform Jew's commitment to a Judaism centered in ethics rather than ritual. To him, this charitable giving was what it meant to be a wealthy American and a good Jew. In that sense, giving to African American and other causes was an intrinsic part of his Jewishness. Rosenwald gave generously, and publicly, to many many institutions and causes but he is (or should be) best known for his extraordinary contributions to the African American community. His money (with community contributions and other philanthropic donations he encouraged) built 5,000 southern schools for black children, supported black colleges, medical and law schools from Howard and Fisk to Meharry Medical School, and established year-long fellowships for promising young African Americans. A list of recipients reads like a Who's Who of African American cultural, political and scholarly life from W.E.B. Du Bois to Langston Hughes, Ralph Bunch to Marian Anderson. He also offered capital investments to black businesses, and provided scholarships for African American students to attend white universities and programs. He contributed to the Urban League and facilitated Chicago's commission to study the 1919...

The Rise of Partisan Affective Polarization in the British Public

Partisan affective polarization is an increasingly salient feature of American political life. Yet, this phenomenon and its drivers have received comparatively little attention in the UK. This paper addresses this gap by systematically analyzing trends in partisan animosity among the British public between 1997 and 2018. Using data from the British Election Study (BES), we demonstrate that British partisans, especially older and strong identifiers, have become substantially more hostile towards opposite parties while favorizing their own over the past two decades. Against conventional wisdom which associates partisan animosity with divergences in policy attitudes, our data show that political identity — particularly the degree of one’s attachment to a political party — is a much stronger predictor of voters’ affective evaluations than holding extreme policy views or displaying consistent ideological and partisan loyalties.

The feeling of the incommensurable: Lawrence Grossberg on affect and incommensurability

ABSTRACTThis essay analyzes Lawrence Grossberg's work on the concept of commensuration, and especially his suggestion that we face a generalized crisis in our mechanisms for commensurating values. In making explicit the ways in which Grossberg's reflections on commensuration connect with his recent assessment of the contemporary social landscape in the United States – particularly the affective landscape that he describes in his work on the election of Donald Trump – I suggest that Grossberg's approach is, in part, distinguished by its attentiveness to the affective dimensions of commensuration (and of incommensurability). It can thus be contrasted with many previous approaches to commensuration, which view it exclusively as a problem at the level of practical reason, focusing on how we adjudicate between different bearers of value and how we justify, or give reasons for, our choices among them. Although such questions are also present in Grossberg's work, I argue that his writings contain a subtle treatment of the moods, attitudes, and tacit dispositions that characterize what if feels like to live through significant breakdowns in established logics of measure and comparison. Following Grossberg, I claim that having an adequate account of this affective dimension is crucial if we are to construct political alternatives that can address the felt sense of crisis in American political life.

Framing kids: children, immigration reform, and same-sex marriage

ABSTRACTChildren often have played crucial roles – both as political symbols and frontline activists – in the struggles of marginalized groups to secure basic membership rights. This was true of the African American civil rights movement and labor movement in earlier eras, and as this article illuminates, children are prominent in current battles for immigrant and LGBTQ rights. In particular, this article focuses on the ways children are framed in contemporary's policy debates over immigration reform and same-sex marriage to advance distinctive political interests and agendas. Employing original content analysis of how the media covered these two contentious issues, we find that both advocates and opponents of expanding the membership rights of undocumented immigrants and LGBTQ people regularly invoked child-centered frames in their public discourse but they do so in markedly different ways. These include striking contrasts in the construction of narratives about “real” versus “abstract” children and about “our kids” and “their kids.” More generally, this study underscores the need for more scholarship that considers how childhood status intersects with a variety of other critical identities in American political life.

Why Aren't We Paying Attention? Religion and Politics in Everyday Life.

The sociology of contemporary religious behavior is vital to understanding a whole range of other social and political issues. The current deep division in contemporary American political and social life tracks the deep ideological divide between white conservative Christians and others (both white and nonwhite) so closely that it is almost impossible to intellectually suggest there is no relationship between the two. Contemporary sociology has assumed that American institutions (if not individuals) have become so secular that they are shielded from religious practices, in favor of organizing logics that are scientific, technical, and organizational in nature. What most sociologists missed were the roots of contemporary backlash against technocratic regimes in the white suburbs and small towns of America where conservative religious affiliations became aligned with a profoundly nativist, anti-intellectual populism.