The Social Roots of American Politics: A Widening Gyre?

A novel and powerful explanation of the social roots of American politics and the powerful forces in the background.\nThe usual approach to political conflict is to look at policy battles inside government, then trace them back to political parties and organized interests. Yet, in The Social Roots of American Politics, Regina L. Wagner and Byron E. Shafer begin at the opposite end of the causal chain by looking at the social roots of American political conflict, how these roots produce differing policy preferences in the general public, and how those preferences get transmitted into American government. Drawing from over a half-century of public surveys of American voters, they demonstrate that class, race, religion, and gender provide the roots of these conflicts across the four primary domains of policy conflict: social welfare, civil rights, foreign affairs, and cultural values. They also factor in how regional differences affect partisan attachment, focusing on the South in particular. By turning the focus to deep-rooted social cleavages, this book provides a novel and powerful explanation of the 
basic forces that shape the contours of conflict in American politics.

Politics & Social Sciences

Shafer, Byron E.

Wagner, Regina L.

Social Sciences

Oxford University Press

A long-standing debate in American politics is about the proper structure for political parties and the relative power that should be afforded to party professionals versus issue activists. In this book, Byron E. Shafer and Regina L. Wagner draw systematically on new data and indexes to evaluate the extent to which party structure changed from the 1950s on, and what the consequences have been for policy responsiveness, democratic representation, and party alignment across different issue domains. They argue that the reputed triumph of volunteer parties since the 1970s has been less comprehensive than the orthodox narrative assumes, but that the balance of power did shift, with unintended and sometimes perverse consequences. In the process of evaluating its central questions, this book gives an account of how partisan alignments evolved with newly empowered issue activists and major post-war developments from the civil rights movement to the culture wars.

The Long War over Party Structure: Democratic Representation and Policy Responsiveness in American Politics

Politics & Government

Cambridge University Press

Electoral Patterns in Alabama: Local Change and Continuity Amid National Trends (Palgrave Studies in US Elections)

Specialties

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wagner, Regina L.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wagner, Regina L.