Class and Culture: American Political Cleavages in the Twentieth Century
| Author | Nicol C. Rae |
| DOI | 10.1177/106591299204500305 |
| Published date | 01 September 1992 |
| Date | 01 September 1992 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
CLASS
AND
CULTURE:
AMERICAN
POLITICAL
CLEAVAGES
IN
THE
TWENTIETH
CENTURY
NICOL
C.
RAE
Florida
International
University,
Miami
or
years
observers
of
American
politics
debated
whether
or
not
the
New
Deal
political
system
had
finally
come
to
an
end
and
JL
what
kind
of
system
was
replacing
it.
For
some
the
New
Deal
system
remained
fundamentally
intact
except
for
aberrant
presidential
elections
and
short-term
deviations
(Sundquist
1983:
412-49).
Others
saw
an
emerging
conservative
coalition
dominated
by
the
GOP
or
a
&dquo;no-party&dquo;
politics
based
on
single
issues
or
personalities
(Burnham
1970,
1982;
Ladd
and
Hadley
1978;
Phillips
1970).
As
the
American
political
system
enters
the
1990s
none
of
these
alternatives
is
appropriate
in
describing
the
political
scene.
In
presi-
dential
politics
the
New
Deal
era
ended
in
1968,
and
since
that
time
the
Republican
party
has
consistently
prevailed
by
winning
over
key
elements
of
the
Democrats’
New
Deal
Coalition,
particularly
white
Southerners
and urban
Catholics.
Yet
the
&dquo;Emerging
Republican
Majority&dquo;
remains
stillborn
in
Congress
and
in
the
states.
And
while
a
case
can
be
made
for
the
dealignment
hypothesis,
the
political
parties
are
unlikely
to
vanish
and
in
many
respects
are
much
more
coherent
entities
in
terms
of
ideology
and
national
organization
(if
not
voter
mobilization)
than
they
were
a
quarter-century
ago.
Rather
than
remaining
caught
in
the
thicket
of
the
realign-
ment/dealignment
debate,
this
paradoxical
situation
may
be
better
explained
as
a
result
of
the
resurgence
in
presidential
politics
of
ethno-
religious
cultural
conflicts
that
were
temporarily
suppressed
by
the
class-based
party
politics
of
the
New
Deal
era.
&dquo;Culture&dquo;
in
this
con-
text
refers
to
cleavages
that
are
based
on
questions
of
region,
race,
ethnicity,
religion
and
morality,
rather
than
questions
of
economic
power
or
distribution
of
the
national
wealth.
Divisions
on
foreign
pol-
icy
and
national
security
issues
that
reflect
differing
conceptions
of
the
U.S.
role
in
the
world
are
also
rooted
in
cultural
differences.
This
is
not
to
deny
the
continuing
importance
of
economic
ques-
tions
in
the
American
political
debate
over
the
past
quarter-century.
Received:
March
4,
1991
Accepted
for
Publication:
September
16,
1991
630
Inflation,
unemployment,
taxation
and
regulation
are
perennially
crucial
matters
in
any
modern
liberal-democratic
political
system.
Ronald
Reagan’s
most
enduring
political
legacy
is
his
deliberate
dis-
mantling
of
the
postwar
consensus
on
macro-economic
policy
during
the
early
1980s,
rather
than
his
stances
on
cultural
issues
like
abortion
or
school
prayer.
Democratic
party
hegemony
has
also
been
main-
tained
in
congressional
and
state
elections
by
the old
New
Deal
prin-
ciple
of
government
delivering
economic
benefits
to
particular
constit-
uencies
(geographic
and
otherwise).
It
was
only
during
the
relatively
brief
period
of
the
New
Deal,
however,
that
economic
issues
assumed
a
class
dimension
in
terms
of
political
rhetoric
and
public
policy,
rather
than
being
concerned
with
more
general
public
interest
questions
(e.g.,
regulation),
regional
divisions,
or
questions
of
national
economic
performance
in
general.
With
the
resurgence
of
cultural
issues
over
the
past
few
decades
American
presidential
politics
is
reverting
to
type.
For
most
of
the
nineteenth
century,
and
the
first
quarter
of
the
twentieth,
American
society
was
riven
by
divisions
on
moral
and
cultural
issues
that
tran-
scended
the
lines
of
party
conflict:
Protestant
v.
Catholic
v.
Jew,
&dquo;native&dquo;
v.
&dquo;immigrant,&dquo;
&dquo;southerner&dquo;
v.
&dquo;Yankee,&dquo;
&dquo;reformers&dquo;
v.
&dquo;machines,&dquo;
&dquo;wet&dquo;
v.
&dquo;dry.&dquo;
Similar
lines
of
conflict
have
re-emerged
in
American
politics
since
the
early
1950s,
with
the
New
Deal
era
appearing
increas-
ingly
as
the
major
aberration
in
the
historical
pattern.
In
short,
it
is
the
argument
of
this
article
that
except
in
times
of
deep
economic
recession,
cultural
factors
are
more
powerful
determinants
of
Ameri-
can
presidential
electoral
outcomes
than
socioeconomic
class.
The
class
alignment
of
the
New
Deal
finally
broke
down
com-
pletely
during
the
1960s
and
has
now
been
supplanted -
at
least
in
presidential
politics -
by
an
electoral
alignment
based
on
moral/cultural
questions.
With
regard
to
the
stability
of
the
polity
however,
these
issues
tend
to
be
more
polarizing
and
more
difficult
to
resolve
than
economic
problems.
(In
the
nineteenth
century
cultural
cleavages
pre-
cipitated
the
outbreak
of
a
bloody
civil
war
that
threatened
the
very
survival
of
the
Republic.)
The
evolution
of
a
politics
based
on
cultural
as
opposed
to
economic
issues
may
therefore
prove
to
be
destabilizing
for
the
American
political
system
in
the
longer
term.
AMERICAN
POLITICS
IN
THE
PRE-NEW
DEAL
PERIOD:
1896-32
American
politics
in
the
period
prior
to
the
New
Deal
and
for
most
of
the
nineteenth
century
was
preoccupied
with
conflicts
over
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