The Roots of Polarization : From the Racial Realignment to the Culture Wars.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Brian, Neil A.

Series:

Chicago Studies in American Politics Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Abortion--Political aspects--United States.

Abortion.

Culture conflict--Political aspects--United States.

Culture conflict.

Polarization (Social sciences)--United States.

Polarization (Social sciences).

Public opinion--Political aspects--United States.

Public opinion.

United States--Politics and government--20th century.

United States.

United States--Emigration and immigration--Political aspects.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (236 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2024.

Summary:

A deeply researched account of how battles over civil rights in the 1960s shaped today’s partisan culture wars. In the late twentieth century, gay rights, immigration, gun control, and abortion debates all burst onto the political scene, scrambling the parties and polarizing the electorate. Neil A. O’Brian traces the origins of today’s political divide on these issues to the 1960s when Democrats and Republicans split over civil rights. It was this partisan polarization over race, he argues, that subsequently shaped partisan fault lines on other culture war issues that persist to this day. Using public opinion data dating to the 1930s, O’Brian shows that attitudes about civil rights were already linked with a range of other culture war beliefs decades before the parties split on these issues—and much earlier than previous scholarship realized. Challenging a common understanding of partisan polarization as an elite-led phenomenon, The Roots of Polarization argues politicians and interest groups, jockeying for power in the changing party system, seized on these preexisting connections in the mass public to build the parties’ contemporary coalitions.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Theory: Racial Realignment and Contemporary Party Sorting

Chapter 3. Issue Connections in the Mass Public

Chapter 4. Cross-Pressured Voters

Chapter 5. Vote Choice and Shifting Coalitions

Chapter 6. An Alternative Outcome: The Development of Abortion’s Partisan Divide

Chapter 7. The Partisan Divide on Immigration

Chapter 8. Beyond the United States

Chapter 9. Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Appendix

Notes

References

Index Generated by AI.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Part of the metadata in this record was created by AI, based on the text of the resource.

ISBN:

9780226834559

0226834557

OCLC:

1452590724