Partisan Regimes in American Politics

Polity . January 2011 r 2011 Northeastern Political Science Association 0032-3497/11 www.palgrave-journals.com/polity/ Partisan Regimes in American Politics Andrew J. Polsky Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City of New York University Some scholars of American political development have used the phrase “partisan regimes” to refer to an important recurring pattern in American politics: a short, tumultuous period of partisan upheaval and political and policy change followed by extended stability. This article develops the concept of a partisan regime as an ideal type that can help scholars not only explain variations among historical cases, but identify the different elements that contribute to the rise of regimes and understand what these potent coalitions do once they secure power. The ideal type points to entrepreneurial leadership, political crises, and partisan narratives as the key contributors to the emergence of new governing orders. Furthermore, once a partisan regime achieves control, it only temporarily disrupts and remakes national policy, politics, and political debate. After achieving its core priorities, the regime primarily operates to preserve its gains. The concept of a partisan regime therefore offers only a limited explanation for many policy changes that occur during the long periods between regime upheavals. Polity advance online publication, 14 November 2011; doi:10.1057/pol.2011.18 Keywords partisan regimes; political parties; realignment; political entrepreneurship; narratives; political coalitions By many accounts, American political development has been informed and shaped by two temporal logics. Some scholars stress the weight of historical constants, notably the Constitution: the durability of the founding constitutional arrangements explains many aspects of American political life.1 Other scholars, though, discern broad changes over time—often viewed as secular “modernizing” processes—that apparently have altered many aspects of politics, For comments on earlier drafts of this essay, the author wishes to thank Peter Breiner and the participants in the Rockefeller College Seminar Series at SUNY Albany, John Gerring, Michael Goldfield, Scott James, Roger Karapin, Ira Katznelson, Kenneth Koford, Howard Lentner, David Mayhew, Sidney Milkis and the participants in the Political History Workshop at the University of Virginia, Joseph Mink, Bruce Miroff, Ruth O’Brien, Howard L. Reiter, Nancy Rosenblum, Elizabeth Sanders, Robert Y. Shapiro, Stephen Skowronek, Rogers Smith and the participants in the American politics colloquium at the University of Pennsylvania, and Deborah Stone. Several anonymous referees for Polity offered useful criticisms and suggestions, as did the journal’s editor, Ernie Zirakzadeh. 1. Peter Nardulli, The Constitution and American Political Development: An Institutional Approach (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992). 2 PARTISAN REGIMES IN AMERICAN POLITICS ranging from the extent of the franchise to the presidency. As an analytical convenience, the modernizing trends are often grouped in ways that allow us to speak broadly of eras (for example, a patrician period from the founding to the 1820s, and the modern presidency dating from either Roosevelt to the present).2 Together, the two temporal logics provide the context for what we usually think of as the substance of politics—the interplay of interests, the rise and decline of popular movements, swings in public opinion, the unsettling effects of wars and natural disasters, scandals, and more. Occasionally, historical circumstances, events, and political forces combine to produce enormous political upheavals and waves of change. From the continuity-modernization developmental perspective, each such episode is sui generis, expressing no “big story” with broader theoretical implications. Another coterie of scholars has identified a third temporal pattern, a recurring one, in American political development. This group focuses on the pivotal role of party coalitions: newly dominant parties propel bursts of broad political change and then preside over longer interludes of relative stability. From a party- centered perspective, significant turning points in American politics include the Democratic-Republican triumph in the election of 1800, the emergence of the Jacksonian Democrats in the 1830s, the Republican victory in 1860, the Democratic ascendance during the Great Depression, and the conservative era ushered in by the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. (Often accounts also include the 1896 Republican landslide among the pivotal partisan transitions.) Each episode begins with the advent of a strong party coalition and its policy innovations. Then a period of calm follows, during which the dominant party attempts to preserve its major policy achievements. Party-oriented approaches to American political development have assumed two forms. The most familiar is the electoral-realignment synthesis.3 More recently, some scholars, building upon the realignment approach, have posited the concept of “partisan regime” as an alternative framework for understanding the pattern of partisan upheaval followed by extended stability.4 2. Attempts to periodize have proven to be problematic and are often contested. Each proposed schema seems to capture some features of an era although obscuring others. This has led some to warn against such efforts. David R. Mayhew, “Suggested Guidelines for Periodization,” Polity 37 (2005): 531–35. 3. Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: Norton, 1970); Jerome M. Clubb, William H. Flanigan, and Nancy H. Zingale, Partisan Realignment: Voters, Parties, and Government in American History (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980); James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1983). 4. Stephen Skowronek, “Notes on the Presidency in the Political Order,” Studies in American Political Development 1 (1986): 286–302; Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to George Bush (Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1993); Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, “Regimes and Regime Building in American Government: A Review of the Literature on the 1940s,” Political Science Quarterly 113 (1999): 689–701; David Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Andrew J. Polsky 3 Although different in key respects, the two party-based frameworks concur that partisan coalitions have been both the primary vehicle of broad-scale political change in the United States and a key instrument for preserving the status quo. Notwithstanding the popularity of party-centered historical analysis, several factors call into doubt its continued utility. The electoral-realignment synthesis has been subjected to many telling critiques and now seems indefensible as a general framework for explaining American political development. Although the partisan-regime approach rests upon different premises, it still may be vulnerable along the same lines as its intellectual ancestor. Further, some empirical cases defy party-based periodization. Major policy changes occurred in the 1960s absent the rise of a new dominant partisan coalition; likewise, far-reaching reforms cut across party lines during the Progressive era. If political upheavals are possible in an extra-partisan context, then we have to question the added value of a theory that focuses specifically on partisan regimes. Finally, the partisan- regime framework has evolved haphazardly. As a result, some of the early theoretical formulations, in which key assumptions were left implicit, collide with subsequent theoretical contributions. Responding to the vulnerabilities of the partisan-regime framework, I clarify its explanatory power by offering a descriptive theory of American partisan regimes. The theory addresses the challenges to a partisan-regime approach that arise from its association with realignment theory, accounts for important anomalies across regimes, and mediates the differences among regime scholars. In addition, the descriptive theory clarifies what dominant partisan coalitions do that differentiates them from other forces that scholars have identified as significant in shaping political outcomes and public discourse. Finally, the theory situates the recurrent pattern of partisan regimes vis-a`-vis other historical logics of constitutional continuity and modernization. I construct a theory of partisan regimes by formulating an ideal type that can serve as a basis for empirical investigation and comparison. Because this is primarily a heuristic exercise, historical examples will serve to illustrate claims rather than to provide conclusive proofs. The descriptive theory of partisan regimes has two components. First, I approach a partisan regime as an outcome or dependent variable. To clarify how regime formation differs from the phenomenon of electoral realignment, I lay out the processes by which a regime is constructed. I use that term deliberately to Order: Reshaping American Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Andrew J. Polsky, “When Business Speaks: Political Entrepreneurship, Discourse, and Mobilization in American Partisan Regimes,” Journal of Theoretical Politics 12 (2000): 451–72; Howard Gillman, “How Political Parties Can Use the Courts to Advance Their Agendas: Federal Courts in the United States, 1875–1891,” American

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