Party Polarisation in the United States
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2041905818796569 |
| Author | Emily Charnock |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
4 POLITICAL INSIGHT • SEPTEMBER 2018
‘There’s not a dime’s worth
of dierence between the
Democrat and Republican
Parties.’ So announced Alabama
governor George Wallace 50 years ago, as he
made an third-party bid for the presidency.
His statement is a far cry from the current
situation in the United States, where the
major political parties seem poles apart
on almost every issue. Indeed, the rise of
President Donald Trump has seen signicant
turmoil in the US, both inside Washington,
D.C. and across the country, with
Republicans and Democrats resembling
warring camps, unable to agree on much
of anything. It is tempting to attribute this
‘polarisation’, as political scientists label it, to
the divisive presidency of Trump himself. Yet
polarisation in the United States has a much
longer history, with origins reaching back to
the mid-20th century and even beyond.
Wallace was not alone in characterising
the two major parties as essentially similar
in their orientation and outlook half a
century ago. Traditionally, both parties had
lacked uniform policy convictions. In a vast
country with an institutionally divided and
decentralised system of government, local
issues tended to dominate over national
ones. Catch-all national parties were held
together more by patronage – the provision
of government jobs and perquisites for
party supporters – than any particular
policy programmes. Accordingly, national
party institutions like the Democratic or
Republican National Committees could
Party Polarisation in
the United States
Party divisions in the United States have worsened under President
Donald Trump, but ‘polarisation’ has a long history in American
politics. Emily J. Charnock explores how America came to be so
divided, and whether it is likely to remain so.
not easily enforce a ‘party line’. So great
was the concern that the parties did not
really stand for anything, that in 1950 the
American Political Science Association
(APSA) produced a famous report, oering
recommendations that might make the
parties more ‘responsible’ – that is, able
to oer voters clear and distinctive policy
programmes that would be implemented if
they gained full control of the government,
more in line with a parliamentary model.
Southern strategy
Much of the programmatic haziness,
however, was an artefact of regional
alignments in American politics, particularly
the party allegiance of the Southern
states. The South was then Democratic
territory, known as the ‘Solid South’ for the
reliability with which it delivered its votes to
Democratic presidential candidates (and for
only electing Democrats to other oces).
This intense party loyalty was a legacy of
the Civil War, since the Republicans – the
PI September 2018.indd 4 27/07/2018 15:12
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