Suchergebnisse

This book compares the failed First Reconstruction (after the Civil War) to the relatively successful Second Reconstruction, which encompasses the Civil Rights movement after World War II.

If the election of Donald Trump has proven anything indisputably, it is that the notion of America as a "postracial" society in the aftermath of the Obama presidency is a canard. Yet how should we understand the specific pattern of race's persistent salience in US politics? In Deep Roots, Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, and Maya Sen argue that it is the long legacy of chattel slavery that continues to shape politics in the US South in distinctive fashion. Comparing regions that were once marked by slavery with those that were not, the authors develop the concept of "behavioral path dependence" to describe the production and reproduction of a political culture marked by intergenerational racial prejudice. They argue that this legacy continues to shape US politics today in a fashion that is both understandable and predictable with the tools of empirical political science. We asked several scholars with expertise on politics and race, US political development, and political behavior to address this controversial argument.

How did the no-party, extremely-low-turnout, fragmented political system that V.O. Key, Jr. described in his 1949 book Southern Politics get transformed into the Republican-dominant, average-turnout, highly-organized political structure that propelled Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich into the House Speakership in 1995? After a long series of analytical narratives that focused on racial explanations for the shifts in white voting behavior, several of the most recent works have emphasized class and economic development. I suggest that both explanations are misleading because they treat race, class, and party as stable phenomena, when it is the changes in these phenomena and in their interactions that ought to be the focus of explanations for the reshaping of southern politics. A comprehensive successor to Key's masterwork will have to blend religion and ideology (which have also undergone dramatic changes in the six decades of southern history since Key wrote) with race and class, and it will have to describe and explain changes in governance, as well.

How did the no-party, extremely-low-turnout, fragmented political system that V.O. Key, Jr. described in his 1949 book Southern Politics get transformed into the Republican-dominant, average-turnout, highly-organized political structure that propelled Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich into the House Speakership in 1995? After a long series of analytical narratives that focused on racial explanations for the shifts in white voting behavior, several of the most recent works have emphasized class and economic development, I suggest that both explanations are misleading because they treat race, class, and party as stable phenomena, when it is the changes in these phenomena and in their interactions that ought to be the focus of explanations for the reshaping of southern politics. A comprehensive successor to Key's masterwork will have to blend religion and ideology (which have also undergone dramatic changes in the six decades of southern history since Key wrote) with race and class, and it will have to describe and explain changes in governance, as well. Adapted from the source document.