Polarized : Making Sense of a Divided America / James E. Campbell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Campbell, James E., 1952- author.

Contributor:

Campbell, J. E. (James E.)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Divided government--United States.

Divided government.

Party affiliation--United States.

Party affiliation.

Polarization (Social sciences)--United States.

Polarization (Social sciences).

Political culture--United States.

Political culture.

Political participation--United States.

Political participation.

Political parties--United States.

Political parties.

Right and left (Political science)--United States.

Right and left (Political science).

Physical Description:

1 online resource : 9 b/w illus., 23 tables

Edition:

2nd ed.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Many continue to believe that the United States is a nation of political moderates. In fact, it is a nation divided. It has been so for some time and has grown more so. This book provides a new and historically grounded perspective on the polarization of America, systematically documenting how and why it happened.Polarized presents commonsense benchmarks to measure polarization, draws data from a wide range of historical sources, and carefully assesses the quality of the evidence. Through an innovative and insightful use of circumstantial evidence, it provides a much-needed reality check to claims about polarization. This rigorous yet engaging and accessible book examines how polarization displaced pluralism and how this affected American democracy and civil society.Polarized challenges the widely held belief that polarization is the product of party and media elites, revealing instead how the American public in the 1960s set in motion the increase of polarization. American politics became highly polarized from the bottom up, not the top down, and this began much earlier than often thought. The Democrats and the Republicans are now ideologically distant from each other and about equally distant from the political center. Polarized also explains why the parties are polarized at all, despite their battle for the decisive median voter. No subject is more central to understanding American politics than political polarization, and no other book offers a more in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the subject than this one.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

FIGURES AND TABLES

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One. Preparing the Foundation

Chapter 1. Knowns and Unknowns

Chapter 2. History and Theories

Part Two. The Polarized Electorate

Chapter 3. Ideology and Polarization

Chapter 4. Issues and Polarization

Chapter 5. Circumstantial Evidence

Part Three. The Polarized Parties

Chapter 6. Why Are the Parties More Polarized?

Chapter 7. One- Sided Party Polarization?

Chapter 8. Why Are the Parties Polarized at All?

Chapter 9. Polarization and Democracy

Afterword

Appendix A. Five Ideological Series

Appendix B. Regression Analyses of Ideological Orientations

Notes

References

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781400889273

1400889278

OCLC:

1023497331