Where Are We in History? Political Orders and Political Eras in the Postwar U.S.
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Byron E. Shafer
An effort to pump new life into the notions of political order and political era suggests that the Untied States has seen three different mixes of key structural elements, influential policy conflicts, and the dynamic following from their interaction since the Second World War. For a full generation after the end of World War II, American politics was really just an extension of what had gone before, in effect the Late New Deal Era. Yet this same effort suggests that larger social trends were undermining the stability of this era well before major anomalies began to break through in the late 1960s, ultimately producing a different mix of structure and substance, one that we now recognize as the Era of Divided Government. And it suggests, by 2000, that major anomalies were breaking through again, so that the next analytic challenge is to see which of these are harbingers of lasting shifts and which are just the ructions that inevitably accompany the death of an old order, without revealing anything about the new.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Notes from a New Editor
- A Blair Era? The Political Order of Modern Britain
- From Collectivist Consensus to 21st Century Neoliberalism: Orders and Eras in Postwar Britain
- Where Are We in History? Political Orders and Political Eras in the Postwar U.S.
- The Grand Coalition and a Changing Political Order: Shifting Alliances and a New Era in German Politics
- Political Orders and Political Eras in France: Can There be a Sarkozy Era?
- Listening to the Coalition Merchants: Measuring the Intellectual Influence of Academic Scribblers
- The Utility of Staying on Message: Competing Partisan Frames and Public Awareness of Elite Differences on Political Issues
- Review
- Those Wild and Wooly Seventies
- The Great Society in Education: A Persistent National Consensus?
- Book Review: A Divider, Not a Uniter
- Poles Apart: The Effect of George W. Bush on the American Electorate--Review of A Divider, Not a Uniter: George W. Bush and the American People: The 2006 Election and Beyond
- Review of A Divider, Not a Uniter
- Saving Us from Liberals: A Commentary on Who Really Cares
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Notes from a New Editor
- A Blair Era? The Political Order of Modern Britain
- From Collectivist Consensus to 21st Century Neoliberalism: Orders and Eras in Postwar Britain
- Where Are We in History? Political Orders and Political Eras in the Postwar U.S.
- The Grand Coalition and a Changing Political Order: Shifting Alliances and a New Era in German Politics
- Political Orders and Political Eras in France: Can There be a Sarkozy Era?
- Listening to the Coalition Merchants: Measuring the Intellectual Influence of Academic Scribblers
- The Utility of Staying on Message: Competing Partisan Frames and Public Awareness of Elite Differences on Political Issues
- Review
- Those Wild and Wooly Seventies
- The Great Society in Education: A Persistent National Consensus?
- Book Review: A Divider, Not a Uniter
- Poles Apart: The Effect of George W. Bush on the American Electorate--Review of A Divider, Not a Uniter: George W. Bush and the American People: The 2006 Election and Beyond
- Review of A Divider, Not a Uniter
- Saving Us from Liberals: A Commentary on Who Really Cares
