IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/polstu/v51y2003i2p217-240.html

Critical Elections and Political Realignments in the USA: 1860–2000

Author

Listed:
  • Norman Schofield
  • Gary Miller
  • Andrew Martin

Abstract

The sequence of US presidential elections from 1964 to 1972 is generally regarded as heralding a fundamental political realignment, during which time civil rights became as important a cleavage as economic rights. In certain respects, this realignment mirrored the transformation of politics that occurred in the period before the Civil War. Formal models of voting (based on assumptions of rational voters, and plurality‐maximizing candidates) have typically been unable to provide an account of such realignments. In this paper, we propose that US politics necessarily involves two dimensions of policy. Whatever positions US presidential candidates adopt, there will always be two groups of disaffected voters. Such voters may be mobilized by third party candidates, and may eventually be absorbed into one or other of the two dominant party coalitions. The policy compromise, or change, required of the successful presidential candidate then triggers the political realignment. A formal activist‐voter model is presented, as a first step in understanding such a dynamic equilibrium between parties and voters.

Suggested Citation

  • Norman Schofield & Gary Miller & Andrew Martin, 2003. "Critical Elections and Political Realignments in the USA: 1860–2000," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 51(2), pages 217-240, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:polstu:v:51:y:2003:i:2:p:217-240
    DOI: 10.1111/1467-923X.00181-i1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.00181-i1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1467-923X.00181-i1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Aldrich, 1983. "A spatial model with party activists: implications for electoral dynamics," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 63-100, January.
    2. repec:cup:apsrev:v:57:y:1963:i:02:p:368-377_24 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. McKelvey, Richard D. & Ordeshook, Peter C., 1985. "Elections with limited information: A fulfilled expectations model using contemporaneous poll and endorsement data as information sources," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 55-85, June.
    4. Beard, Charles A., 1913. "An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, edition 127, number beard1913.
    5. Norman Schofield & Itai Sened, 2002. "Local Nash Equilibrium in Multiparty Politics," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 109(1), pages 193-211, January.
    6. Aldrich, John H., 1983. "A Downsian Spatial Model with Party Activism," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(4), pages 974-990, December.
    7. Bordo, Michael D. & Rockoff, Hugh, 1996. "The Gold Standard as a “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval”," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 56(2), pages 389-428, June.
    8. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    9. Ansolabehere, Stephen & Snyder, James M, Jr, 2000. "Valence Politics and Equilibrium in Spatial Election Models," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 103(3-4), pages 327-336, June.
    10. Schofield, Normal & Martin, Andrew D. & Quinn, Kevin M. & Whitford, Andrew B., 1998. "Multiparty Electoral Competition in the Netherlands and Germany: A Model Based on Multinomial Probit," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 97(3), pages 257-293, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jane Green, 2007. "When Voters and Parties Agree: Valence Issues and Party Competition," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 55(3), pages 629-655, October.
    2. Nunnari, Salvatore & Zápal, Jan, 2017. "Dynamic Elections and Ideological Polarization," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(4), pages 505-534, October.
    3. Norman Schofield, 2007. "Modelling Politics," ICER Working Papers 33-2007, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Norman Schofield, 2003. "Valence Competition in the Spatial Stochastic Model," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 15(4), pages 371-383, October.
    2. Kristin Kanthak, 2002. "Top-Down Divergence," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 14(3), pages 301-323, July.
    3. Hummel, Patrick, 2012. "Deliberative democracy and electoral competition," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 646-667.
    4. Walter J. Stone & Elizabeth N. Simas, 2010. "Candidate Valence and Ideological Positions in U.S. House Elections," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(2), pages 371-388, April.
    5. Per G. Fredriksson & Le Wang, 2020. "The politics of environmental enforcement: the case of the Resource and Conservation Recovery Act," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(6), pages 2593-2613, June.
    6. Schönenberger, Felix, 2023. "Strategic Policy Responsiveness to Opponent Platforms: Evidence From U.S. House Incumbents Running Against Moderate or Extremist Challengers," MPRA Paper 120160, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Crutzen, Benoît S.Y. & Flamand, Sabine, 2023. "Leaders, factions and the determinants of electoral success," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    8. Burkhard Schipper & Hee Yeul Woo, 2012. "Political Awareness and Microtargeting of Voters in Electoral Competition," Working Papers 124, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    9. Fabian Gouret & Guillaume Hollard & Stéphane Rossignol, 2011. "An empirical analysis of valence in electoral competition," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(2), pages 309-340, July.
    10. Michael K Miller, 2011. "Seizing the mantle of change: Modeling candidate quality as effectiveness instead of valence," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 23(1), pages 52-68, January.
    11. Martínez-Mora, Francisco & Puy, M. Socorro, 2014. "The determinants and electoral consequences of asymmetric preferences," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 85-97.
    12. Anna L. Harvey, 2001. "Partisanship As A Social Convention," Rationality and Society, , vol. 13(4), pages 462-504, November.
    13. Maria Gallego & Norman Schofield & Kevin McAlister & Jee Jeon, 2014. "The variable choice set logit model applied to the 2004 Canadian election," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 427-463, March.
    14. Andrei M. Gomberg & Francisco Marhuenda & Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín, 2016. "Endogenous party platforms: ‘stochastic’ membership," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 62(4), pages 839-866, October.
    15. Tanner, Thomas Cole, 1994. "The spatial theory of elections: an analysis of voters' predictive dimensions and recovery of the underlying issue space," ISU General Staff Papers 1994010108000018174, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    16. Gersbach, Hans & Tejada, Oriol, 2018. "A Reform Dilemma in polarized democracies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 148-158.
    17. Tovey, Craig A., 2010. "The instability of instability of centered distributions," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 53-73, January.
    18. Bekkouche, Yasmine & Cagé, Julia & Dewitte, Edgard, 2022. "The heterogeneous price of a vote: Evidence from multiparty systems, 1993–2017," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    19. Melvin J. Hinich & Michael C. Munger, 1992. "A Spatial Theory of Ideology," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 4(1), pages 5-30, January.
    20. Eguia, Jon X. & Giovannoni, Francesco, 2019. "Tactical Extremism," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 113(1), pages 282-286, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:polstu:v:51:y:2003:i:2:p:217-240. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0032-3217 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.