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Party Realignment in the United States and Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Philip Williams
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Extract

Realignment theory is a recent but flourishing sub-branch of the study of American political parties. Over the last thirty years, the original suggestions of its inventor, V. O. Key, have been elaborated and refined in several directions and through several phases, gradually being modified to take variations in historical circumstances more carefully into account. Problems of the same kind often occur, and are likely to prove even less manageable, when efforts are made to apply the theory to another political system and culture as authors from both countries (and from neither) have in recent years tried, more or less explicitly, to use it to explain developments in the British party system. Some techniques travel quite well, and some useful insights can be obtained by looking afresh at familiar patterns in the light of similar experiences elsewhere. But the differences between the two nations and states preclude any rigorous attempt to apply a theory derived from the history of one country with a view to explaining the experiences of the other.

Type
Review Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , January 1985 , pp. 97 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

1 Ladd, E. C. Jr, and Hadley, C. D., Transformations of the American Party System (New York: Norton, 1975), p. 24.Google Scholar Key's article, ‘A Theory of Critical Elections’, appeared in Journal of Politics, XVII (1955), 3–18Google Scholar, and was followed by ‘Secular Realignment and the Party System’, Journal of Politics, XXI (1959), 198–210.Google Scholar However, Paul David, in a Brookings lecture given within a few weeks of Key's first article, referred to party realignment as having ‘attracted the attention of political scientists almost continuously for at least thirty years’. But the sense was more restrictive, for while it had been happening as long as parties existed ‘Currently, however, the phrase is used primarily to refer to the increasing division between the parties along class and economic lines’. Research Frontiers in Politics and Government (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1955). pp. 189. 192.Google Scholar

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17 Price, D. E., Bringing Back the Parties (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly. 1984), p. 11Google Scholar: based on figures from the Michigan Center for Political Studies. Also (less up to date) in Hill, D. B. and Luttbeg, N. R., Trends in American Electoral Behaviour (Itasca, Ill.: F. E. Peacock, 1980). p. 34Google Scholar: Crotty, W. J. and Jacobson, G., American Parties In Decline (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1980), pp. 27–8.Google Scholar

18 For presidential contests, Crotty, and Jacobson, , American Parties, p. 31Google Scholar (though 1968 and 1980 were notable exceptions: see Abramson, et al. , Change and Continuity, p. 177Google Scholar). For other contests, Petrocik, , Party Coalitions, p. 159Google Scholar, and his paper quoted by Crotty, and Jacobson, , American Parties, pp. 32–3Google Scholar; and, for state and local ticket-splitting 1952–72, Clubb, et al. , Partisan Realignment, p. 130.Google Scholar However, in House elections 1952–80 white voters showed the same pattern as in presidential ones: Abramson, et al. , Change and Continuity, p. 217.Google Scholar (All analyse Michigan figures.) ‘Pure’ Independents confirmed, but ‘leaners’ contradicted, the old view that they were poorly educated and unideological: Schneider, W., ‘Antipartisanship in America’, in Bogdanor, V., ed., Parties and Democracy in Britain and America (New York: Praeger, 1984), pp. 116–17.Google Scholar

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20 Schneider, in Lipset, S. M., ed., Party Coalitions in the 1980s (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1981), esp. pp. 226–31Google Scholar; Petrocik, , Party Coalitions, Chapter 2.Google Scholar P. A. Beck shares that view: ‘Context, Choice and Consequence…’ (paper for American Political Science Association annual meeting, 1983), p. 20.Google Scholar Contrast the stress on across-the-board rather than differential change by Clubb, et al. , Partisan Realignment, pp. 102–6, 114–15.Google Scholar

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22 Wattenberg, M. P., ‘The Decline of Political Partisanship in the U.S.’, American Political Science Review, LXXV (1981), 941–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Pomper, , Voters' Choice, p. 183Google Scholar; Schneider's criticism in ‘Antipartisanship’, pp. 105–12.Google Scholar

23 Hays, S. P., ‘Politics and Society, Beyond the Political Party’Google Scholar, in Kleppner, , The Evolution (quotation on p. 263).Google Scholar

24 On that debate, see Andersen, , The CreationGoogle Scholar; Erikson, R. S. and Tedin, K. L. in American Political Science Review, LXXV (1981), 951–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beck, , ‘Context, Choice and Consequence’, p. 21.Google Scholar

25 Beck, , ‘A Socialization Theory…’, pp. 402–6 and 409Google Scholar on youth; and in American Political Science Review, LXXI (1977), 477–96Google Scholar, on the South; Campbell, and Trilling, , Realignment, pp. 76–80 (youth), pp. 74–6, 85–108Google Scholar (South); Petrocik, , Party Coalitions, pp. 82–7, 102–8 (South)Google Scholar; pp. 98–101, 146–8 (youth). On gradual change and its workings, Clubb, et al. , Partisan Realignment, pp. 105–6, 114–15 and 257Google Scholar; Norpoth, H. and Rusk, J. G., ‘Partisan Dealignment, (1964–76)’, American Political Science Review, LXXVI (1982), 522–37, especially pp. 534–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and particularly Carmines, E. G. and Stimson, J. A., ‘Issue Evolution, Population Replacement and Normal Partisan Change’, American Political Science Review, LXXV (1981), 107–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also, on the South only: Converse, in Campbell, et al. , Elections, Chapter 12Google Scholar; Sundquist, , Dynamics, Chapter 12 and (2nd edn) Chapter 16Google Scholar; Ladd, and Hadley, , Transformations, Chapter 3.Google Scholar

26 Carmines, and Stimson, , ‘Issue Evolution…’Google Scholar; and their unpublished paper (with J. M. McIver), ‘Unrealised Partisanship: a Theory of Dealignment’. Cf. Petrocik, , Party Coalitions pp. 146–53.Google Scholar

27 Burnham, , Critical Elections, pp. 4, 136–7 and 178–83Google Scholar; Beck, P. A., ‘The Electoral Cycle and Patterns of American Politics’, British Journal of Political Science, IX (1979), 129–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar ‘Prescientific’ writers like Schattschneider, The Semisovereign People, had taken the connection for granted.

28 Burnham, , Critical Elections, pp. 9–10Google Scholar; Kleppner, , The Evolution, pp. 9–11.Google Scholar Also Ginsberg, B., ‘Elections and Public Policy’, American Political Science Review, LXX (1976), 41–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, analysing differences between party platforms in both crisis and normal periods.

29 Clubb, et al. , Partisan Realignment, pp. 183–4, 195–204, 212 and 269–70Google Scholar; Kleppner, , The Evolution, pp. 14–16.Google Scholar Also, on Congress only. Beck, , ‘The Electoral Cycle’, pp. 144–52Google Scholar, and ‘Context, Choice and Consequence’, pp. 27–8Google Scholar; Campbell, and Trilling, , Realignment, Chapters 8 and 9Google Scholar; Sinclair, B., Congressional Realignment 1925–1978 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), especially Chapter 9Google Scholar; Brady, D. with Stewart, J., ‘Congressional Party Realignment and the Transformation of Public Policy’, American Journal of Political Science, XXVI (1982), 332–60.Google Scholar

30 Clubb, et al. , Partisan Realignment, pp. 213, 244–5, 259–60 and 268–9.Google Scholar

31 Campbell, and Trilling, . Realignment, Chapters 10Google Scholar (K. Meier and K. Kramer on the bureaucracy) and 11 (D. Adamany on the Court). Cf. Beck, , ‘The Electoral Cycle’, pp. 151–2 on the Court.Google Scholar

32 Kleppner, , The Evolution, p. 12.Google Scholar This view was adumbrated by Burnham, , Critical Elections, pp. 91–2, 132–4, 173–4 and 191–3.Google Scholar and developed by him with growing insistence and alarm: compare the first and second editions of Chambers, and Burnham, , The American Party Systems, Chapter 10, esp. pp. 305–7, and 2nd edn, Chapter 11, pp. 354–5.Google Scholar

33 Beck, , ‘The Electoral Cycle’, pp. 135–41Google Scholar

34 Beck, , ‘The Electoral Cycle’, pp. 143–55Google Scholar, discusses all but the plebiscitary political appeals. On those, see his ‘Context, Choice and Consequence’, pp. 22 and 28–9Google Scholar; Phillips, K., Post Conservative America, pp. 225–7Google Scholar; Ladd, E. C. Jr, in Political Science Quarterly, XCVI (1981), 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Other features briefly suggested as perhaps specific to dealignment periods include declining turnout (Phillips, pp. 100 and 103), and also both incrementalism in policy-making, and what Theodore Lowi has called ‘interest-group liberalism’ (Beck, , ‘Context, Choice and Consequence’, p. 29).Google Scholar

35 Beck, , ‘Context, Choice and Consequence’, p. 29.Google Scholar

36 In The Deadlock of Democracy: Four-Party Politics in America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Spectrum edn. 1964)Google Scholar, J. M. Burns argued that Republicans and Democrats each had a conservative wing dominant in Congress, and a liberal wing from which came candidates for executive offices. There never has been anything similar in Britain.

37 On the ideological polarization, evidence in P. M. Williams' chapter in Bogdanor, , Parties and Democracy, pp. 21–5Google Scholar; Schneider, , ‘Antipartisanship’, in Parties and Democracy, pp. 100–1, 117–19.Google Scholar and in Lipset, , Party Coalitions, Chapter 9Google Scholar, For the perception of it, Pomper, , Voters' Choice, Chapter 8.Google Scholar For the growth of issue voting, Pomper, , Voters' Choice, Chapters 7–9Google Scholar; Nie, et al. , Changing American VoterGoogle Scholar, especially Chapters 10. 12, 16 and (2nd edn) 20. For the United Kingdom in 1979, Särlvik, B. and Crewe, I., Decade of Dealignment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), especially pp. 320–5.Google Scholar

38 See for Britain, I. Crewe in Bogdanor, , Parties and Democracy, Chapter 4Google Scholar; for the United States, Schneider, , ‘Antipartisanship’Google Scholar, also in Bogdanor, , Parties and Democracy, pp. 103–14.Google Scholar He argues that trust in government varies as the respondent's party gains or loses power, but has fallen sharply in all categories after ‘a long sequence of events interpreted by the public as “bad news”’ (p. 113). Though Wattenberg's neutrals (fn. 22 above) showed no hostility to Democrats or Republicans, they disliked parties as such (p. 106 ff).

39 Schneider, , ‘Antipartisanship’, pp. 117–21.Google Scholar On cross-cutting issues, Sundquist, , Dynamics, 2nd edn, pp. 403–11 and 437–9Google Scholar; Särlvik, and Crewe, , Decade, Chapter 7.Google Scholar

40 Broder, D. S. in Lipset, , Party Coalitions, p. 11Google Scholar; Sabato, L. J., The Rise of Political Consultants (New York: Basic Books, 1981), pp. 293–4.Google Scholar

41 Phillips, , Post-Conservative America, pp. 228–32Google Scholar, stresses how abnormal was Anderson's constituency.

42 Because parliamentary voting figures exist only at the constituency level, and local figures, though available by smaller units (wards etc.) are hard to use for comparative purposes because of low turnout and erratic patterns of candidatures in local elections.

43 Ladd, and Hadley, , Transformations, pp. 257–66Google Scholar; the phrase occurs on pp. 259, 265–6 and 271.

44 Clubb, et al. , Partisan Realignment, pp. 290–1Google Scholar; Sabato, , The Rise, pp. 290–7 and 333–6.Google Scholar Benjamin Ginsberg, however, argues that the shift from labour-intensive to capital-intensive methods is bound to benefit the Right, and may indeed turn out to be ‘the functional equivalent of a critical electoral realignment’: ‘Electoral Politics and the Redistribution of Political Power’ (paper for the annual meeting of American Political Science Association, 1983), p. 2. The Republicans have adapted far more rapidly and successfully than the Democrats.

45 They have been painstakingly catalogued by Norton, P., Dissension in the House of Commons 1945–1974 (London: Macmillan, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dissension in the House of Commons 1974–1979 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; and more argumentatively, The Commons in Perspective (Oxford: Martin Robertson. 1981), Chapter 9.Google Scholar

46 Butler, D. and Stokes, D., Political Change in Britain (London: Macmillan, 1969).Google Scholar

47 Särlvik, and Crewe, , with Alt, J., also wrote ‘Partisan Dealignment in Britain 1964–74’, British Journal of Political Science, VII (1977), 129–90.Google Scholar In the United States the corresponding revisionist authors were Nie, et al. , The Changing American Voter. They remark (pp. 156–7n)Google Scholar that party identification seemed far less significant in Britain; but cf. Crewe, in Bogdanor, , Parties and Democracy, pp. 76–9.Google Scholar

48 Finer, S. E., ed., Adversary Politics and Electoral Reform (London: Anthony Wigram, 1975)Google Scholar; Finer, S. E., The Changing British Party System 1945–1979 (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1980)Google Scholar; Johnson, N., In Search of the Constitution (Oxford: Pergamon, 1977)Google Scholar; Butler, D., ed., Coalitions in British Politics (London: Macmillan, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bogdanor, V., The People and the Party System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; and Multi-Party Politics and the Constitution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Beer, S., Britain Against Itself (New York: Norton, 1982)Google Scholar; his more favourable Modern British Politics (London: Faber, 1965)Google Scholar was bravely reissued at the same time. See also the deliberately more descriptive Drucker, H. M., ed., Multi-Party Britain (London: Macmillan, 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 Crewe, I., ‘The Electorate: Partisan Dealignment Ten Years On’, in West European Politics, VI (1983), 183–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also in that issue, J. Curtice on the 1983 election and D. T. Denver on the SDP-Liberal Alliance.

50 Clarke, P. F., Lancashire and the New Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blewett, N., The Peers, the Parties and the People: The General Elections of 1910 (London: Macmillan, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for realignment, e.g. pp. 40–2, Chapter 1 note 13, Chapter 2 note 52.

51 McKibbin, R., The Evolution of the Labour Party 1910–1924 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974).Google Scholar He calls his post-war chapter ‘The end of the party of progress’.

52 Wald, K. D., Crosses on the Ballot (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar The same influences, he argues, operated later and less strongly against Anglican schools, so that working-class conservatism survived better.

53 Wald, K. D., ‘Realignment Theory and British Party Development: A Critique’, Political Studies, XXX (1982), 207–20, pp. 219–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 Burnham, , Critical Elections, p. 176.Google Scholar In ‘The Eclipse’ (p. 8). while denying realignment status to 1980. he accepts that Reagan achieved more sweeping changes than previous leaders unaided by acute crisis or exceptional majorities in Congress.

55 Wald, , ‘Realignment Theory’, p. 220.Google Scholar Burnham made much the same point: Critical Elections, pp. 169 and 181–3Google Scholar; and in Chambers, and Burnham, , The American Party Systems, p. 289.Google Scholar Key himself hints at this in his original article: ‘A Theory of Critical Elections’, pp. 17–18.Google Scholar

56 Wald, , ‘Realignment Theory’, p. 218.Google Scholar By no means all his compatriots agree: high-intensity elections which depress turnout by discouraging supporters of the disadvantaged party are specifically included by McMichael and Trilling (Campbell, and Trilling, , eds, Realignment, p. 47Google Scholar). The 1886 and 1906 elections in Britain, which Wald disqualifies, are examples. Phillips, , The Emerging Republican Majority, p. 100, agrees with Wald.Google Scholar

57 Crewe, I., ‘Prospects for Party Realignment: An Anglo-American Comparison’, Comparative Politics (1980), especially pp. 394–7.Google Scholar

58 Wald, , ‘Realignment Theory’, pp. 209–11.Google Scholar

59 Kelley, , Interpreting Elections, pp. 176–82 and 218–19Google Scholar; Williams, and Reilly, , ‘The 1980 U.S. Election and After’, pp. 374–6Google Scholar; Abramson, et al. , Change and Continuity, Chapter 5Google Scholar; cf. Pomper, , Voters' Choice, pp. 27–8.Google Scholar For Britain, Crewe, , ‘The Electorate’, p. 194.Google Scholar

60 However, while this is true in the United Kingdom over the country as a whole, the reverse is the case at the constituency level where each side has consolidated its grip on its own strongholds: Crewe, , ‘The Electorate’ pp. 206–8 and 212.Google Scholar