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It is no small task to provide an account of voting rights in both the First and Second Reconstructions. It is hard to think of many with the combined expertise in both fields who could have pulled it off as well as J. Morgan Kousser has inColorblind Injustice(1999).Kousser has long been a historiananda social scientist. In his earlier work , such asThe Shaping of Southern Politics(1974), Kousser was clearly one of the leading proponents and artful innovators in the use of quantitative methods in historical analysis: he did not merely import old ideas from quantitative social scientists. Now, inColorblind Injustice, we see Kousser again combining his thorough and deft historian's touch with insights from social scientific approaches.The key explanatory theme inColorblind Injustice, I believe, is captured in two terse sentences: "Culture is fragile. Institutions are tough" (366). From these premises come Kousser's central ideas about how to explain the progress and retrogression of minority voting rights and why we should care so much about the set of Supreme Court rulings beginning withShaw v.Renoin 1993.

In this, the first major treatment of party identification in twenty years, three political scientists assert that identification with political parties still powerfully determines how citizens look at politics and cast their ballots. Challenging prevailing views, they build a case for the continuing theoretical and political significance of partisan identities.The authors maintain that individuals form partisan attachments early in adulthood and that these political identities, much like religious identities, tend to persist or change only slowly over time. Scandals, recessions, and landslide elections do not greatly affect party identification; large shifts in party attachments occur only when the social imagery of a party changes, as when African Americans became part of the Democratic Party in the South after the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Drawing on a wealth of data analysis using individual-level and aggregate survey data from the United States and abroad, this study offers a new perspective on party identification that will set the terms of discussion for years to come

Intro -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: In the Dark All Eggheads Are Gray -- PART I : CONFUSING THE ISSUE -- 1 The University Is Popular Culture, But It Doesn't Know It Yet -- 2 The Problem Problem and Other Oddities of Academic Discourse -- 3 The Mixed-Message Curriculum -- PART II: INTELLECTUALISM AND ITS DISCONTENT -- 4 Two Cheers for the Argument Culture -- 5 Paralysis by Analysis? -- PART III: COMMUNICATIVE DISORDERS -- 6 Unlearning to Write -- 7 Scholars and Sound Bites: The Myth of Academic Difficulty -- 8 Why Johnny Can't Argue -- 9 Outing Criticism -- 10 The Application Guessing Game with Andrew Hoberek -- PART IV: TEACHING THE CLUB -- 11 Hidden Intellectualism -- 12 A Word for Words and a Vote for Quotes -- 13 Wrestling with the Devil -- 14 Deborah Meier's Progressive Traditionalism -- Epilogue: How to Write an Argument-What Students and Teachers Really Need to Know -- Notes -- Index.

For many years, Democrats have waited patiently to preside over good times. No Koreas, Vietnams, or Irans. No stagflation. Just nice, tranquil prosperity—the sort of happy circumstances that make not only for short-run electoral success, but also for the recruitment of tried-and-true Democrats. Since the early 1980s, the Democratic Party has been short on Democrats. In the 1970s, Democrats comprised roughly two-thirds of all party identifiers; at the close of the century, that figure stood at approximately 57%.At long last, the Democrats seem to have their chance. By every measure, the economy has been booming. In particular, consumer confidence, which MacKuen, Erikson, and Stimson (1989) have hailed as one of the driving forces behind partisan realignment, has soared. During Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America," the Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment stood at 95. Clinton's mornings have been even rosier, given the 100+ scores that have been posted every quarter since the spring of 1997 (see http://www.fcnbd.com/cor/fccm/Research-Fixed/usdata/sentiment/sentiment.htm). Indeed, the Index of Consumer Sentiment has regularly achieved the highest levels ever recorded since 1953.Another driving force behind partisan realignment, presidential popularity, has also soared. Say what you will about President Clinton's travails in office; his Gallup Poll approval ratings have always been respectable. No Nixon-, Carter-, or Bush-like scores in the 30s for him. Indeed, Bill Clinton has at times achieved Kennedyesque scores in the 60s, and his average rating easily surpasses that of Ronald Reagan.

MacKuen, Erikson, and Stimson (1989, 1992) argue that the aggregate distribution of party identification, or macropartisanship, shifts significantly over short periods in response to changes in presidential popularity and consumer sentiment. Their results are based on a subset of Gallup surveys available from 1953 to 1988 and only those CBS/New York Timessurveys conducted during the Reagan administration. We replicate this analysis using a more extensive inventory of Gallup and CBS/New York Timesdata and find considerably less evidence of partisan fluctuation. The amount of partisan change caused by short-term movements in consumer sentiment and presidential popularity is found to be two to three times smaller than initially reported by MacKuen et al. (1989). Our results indicate that macropartisanship adjusts to short-term shocks in a limited and gradual fashion, consistent with traditional views of partisan realignment.