During the Jim Crow era, the Democratic Party dominated the American South, presiding over a racially segregated society while also playing an outsized role in national politics. In this compelling book, Devin Caughey provides an entirely new understanding of electoral competition and national representation in this exclusionary one-party enclave. Challenging the notion that the Democratic Party’s political monopoly inhibited competition and served only the Southern elite, he demonstrates how Democratic primaries—even as they excluded African Americans—provided forums for ordinary whites to press their interests. Focusing on politics during and after the New Deal, Caughey shows that congressional primary elections effectively substituted for partisan competition, in part because the spillover from national party conflict helped compensate for the informational deficits of elections without party labels. Caughey draws on a broad range of historical and quantitative evidence, including archival materials, primary election returns, congressional voting records, and hundreds of early public opinion polls that illuminate ideological patterns in the Southern public. Defying the received wisdom, this evidence reveals that members of Congress from the one-party South were no less responsive to their electorates than members from states with true partisan competition. Reinterpreting a critical period in American history, The Unsolid South reshapes our understanding of the role of parties in democratic theory and sheds critical new light on electoral politics in authoritarian regimes.

"At a time when race, class, and gender dominate historical writing, Leuchtenburg argues that place is no less significant. In a period when America is said to be homogenized, he shows that sectional distinctions persist. And in an era when political history is devalued, he demonstrates that government can profoundly affect people's lives and that presidents can be change-makers."--Jacket.

Examines the origins of the Dixiecrat movement of the 1930s and 1940s, analyzing the movement's influence in Southern politics as it severed ties with the Democratic Party and facilitated the rise of the Republican Party.

Southern-style politics was one of those peculiar institutions that differentiated the South from other American regions. This system—long referred to as the Solid South—embodied a distinctive regional culture and was perpetuated through an undemocratic distribution of power and a structure based on disfranchisement, malapportioned legislatures, and one-party politics. It was the mechanism that determined who would govern in the states and localities, and in national politics it was the means through which the South's politicians defended their region's special interests and political autonomy. The history of this remarkable institution can be traced in the gradual rise, long persistence, and ultimate decline of the Democratic Party dominance in the land below the Potomac and the Ohio. This is the story that Dewey W. Grantham tells in his fresh and authoritative account of the South's modern political experience. The distillation of many years of research and reflection, is both a synthesis of the extensive literature on politics in the recent South and a challenging reinterpretation of the region's political history.

The phenomenal growth of minority populations in the South, particularly Latinos and Asians, is quickly transforming the region's politics. Some argue that demography is destiny, and yet the analyses presented in The Changing Political South demonstrate little such certainty about the future competitiveness of the two major parties in the South. This volume substantiates the strong and persistent Democratic leanings of Black voters and a majority of women, yet it finds that the rising minority populations' votes are increasingly "up for grabs" by the two major parties. How the two parties fare in the future of Southern politics will be driven largely by their abilities to reach these new voters.

"The Social Roots of American Politics attempts to recover the shaping influence of social backgrounds on political conflict in the United States since the Second World War. The critical tool for this is partisan alignment, the manner in which social cleavages are linked to policy preferences and converted into ongoing conflicts by way of political parties. Along the way, it examines the way these parties transmit--but also transform--policy preferences rooted in basic social divisions. One cleavage, social class, proves to be a continuing influence on policy preferences from the start, expanding modestly but relentlessly thereafter. A second, racial background, would explode in the early postwar years, with policy divisions that were deeper but more narrowly focused than the others. The third, religious denomination, was largely dormant in those early years, rising to political prominence with social change and as active partisan came to recognize a religious potential for organizing politics. And the fourth, sex, would have the most mottled connection to policy preferences but the most direct connection to party attachment"--

The transformation of the American South--from authoritarian to democratic rule--is the most important political development since World War II. It has re-sorted voters into parties, remapped presidential elections, and helped polarize Congress. Most important, it is the final step in America's democratization. Paths Out of Dixie illuminates this sea change by analyzing the democratization experiences of Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Robert Mickey argues that Southern states, from the 1890s until the early 1970s, constituted pockets of authoritarian rule trapped within and sustained by a federal democracy. These enclaves--devoted to cheap agricultural labor and white supremacy--were established by conservative Democrats to protect their careers and clients. From the abolition of the whites-only Democratic primary in 1944 until the national party reforms of the early 1970s, enclaves were battered and destroyed by a series of democratization pressures from inside and outside their borders. Drawing on archival research, Mickey traces how Deep South rulers--dissimilar in their internal conflict and political institutions--varied in their responses to these challenges. Ultimately, enclaves differed in their degree of violence, incorporation of African Americans, and reconciliation of Democrats with the national party. These diverse paths generated political and economic legacies that continue to reverberate today. Focusing on enclave rulers, their governance challenges, and the monumental achievements of their adversaries, Paths Out of Dixie shows how the struggles of the recent past have reshaped the South and, in so doing, America's political development.

Is much of the current dysfunction in our political system attributable to the problematic discourse of politicians, pundits, and journalists? These authors on legal and political discourse say yes. This book contains essays by some of the best scholars of political communication that examine modern-day American political discourse. The contributors address what is problematic in our political discourse and what has resulted in unprecedented levels of gridlock, discord, and hostility, covering everything from the incivility of Congress to the spectacle of celebrity politicians... the arrogance of Republican and Democratic presidents to the difficulties of grassroots groups hoping to change the status quo... and the partisan shaping of news coverage to the growing influence of political comedians. This work provides a frank, hard-nosed look at what needs fixing, offers a critical lens from knowledgeable writers to help those frustrated with our political system to better understand why our discourse is so troubled, and lays out suggestions for reclaiming the commonwealth. Anyone interested in politics, government, or communication will benefit from learning how recent developments have created a "perfect storm" that is troubling the waters of our democracy.

Anthony Badger explains why liberal campaigns for race-neutral economic policies failed to win over white Southerners. When federal programs did not deliver the economic benefits that white Southerners expected, the appeal of biracial politics was supplanted by the values-based lure of conservative Republicans.

Originally published in 1975. This is a history of southern political life since the New Deal and World War II, encompassing a crucial epoch: an attempted Second Reconstruction of the South. The authors focus on the electoral response to candidates and issues. The authors contend that, despite the nationalizing and homogenizing forces that eroded much of the South's distinctiveness during the postwar years, the region's historical legacy perpetuated its distinctive patterns of cultural and political life. Further, the authors contend that despite the virtual destruction of the South's four inherited institutions of political sectionalism during the years of the Second Reconstruction—disenfranchisement, malapportionment, a one-party system, and de jure racial segregation—the new southern politics maintained a deep racial division that has militated against class coalitions, especially across racial lines, and has permitted government by relatively insulated elites.