Secular Realignment Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The concept of realignment has been very prominent in the study of American electoral politics over the past fifty years. There are multiple definitions of realignment, exhibiting a good deal of variation. However, most agree that realignment involves fundamental and large-scale changes in the party system, usually including changes to both the primary line (or lines) of cleavage and to party coalitions.

By far the most important figure in thinking about realignment is V. O. Key Jr., and it would not be inappropriate to claim that the near obsession with the idea of realignment within the subfield of American electoral politics over the past half-century can be traced to Key’s writings on the subject. Indeed, scholarly interest in the concept of realignment has spread far beyond the American context to the study of systems other than the United States. In his writings, Key offered two very different types of realignment. The first type, outlined in his seminal 1955 article, is critical realignment. Critical realignment is large-scale change that happens abruptly in one or two election cycles. The results produced by this massive change then persist for a number of years in a state of relative stability. In Key’s words, critical realignments produce change that is “sharp and durable.”

Key’s idea of critical realignment has shaped the study of American politics like few other ideas. Indeed, as Everett Carll Ladd and Charles Hadley state, “It truly is a case of Key sneezing and political science catching a cold.” However, Key significantly modified his thinking on the concept of realignment shortly after his original piece. In 1959, he offered another type of realignment, one that was much different than its critical cousin. This other type, of course, is secular realignment.

Like critical realignment, secular realignment results in change in the party system. But how change comes about is very different. Two elements are central to understanding the concept of secular realignment—time and group partisanship. At its most basic level, secular realignment is the gradual shifting in the patterns of partisan support by certain groups of voters over the course of a number of election cycles. It is useful to quote Key at length:

A secular shift in party attachment may be regarded as a movement of the members of a population category from party to party that extends over several presidential elections and appears to be independent of the peculiar factors influencing the vote at individual elections. The category of persons . . . becomes either more or less homogenous in its partisan attachment. A variety of factors operates over time either to solidify the group or erode the ties that unite it politically. (199)

For many years, scholars focused heavily on critical realignment, while secular realignment was largely ignored. Indeed, many works that are now regarded as classics in the study of American politics—Burnham (1970), Campbell et al. (1960), Schattschneider (1960), and Sundquist (1983), to name but a few—elevated the idea of critical realignment to default status as the way to understand and explain political change in the American context. But, before long, critics were punching holes in the explanation of change offered by critical realignment, and exposing numerous weakness in the theory overall—Carmines and Stimson (1989), Fiorina (1981), Ladd (1991), and Ladd with Hadley (1975). Indeed, David Mayhew’s trenchant critique (2002) calls into question the very utility of the critical realignment concept.

The idea of secular realignment, on the other hand, has fared much better in recent years. As scholars are increasingly pointing out, American politics since the 1950s seems to fit the framework of secular realignment pretty well. As John Petrocik (1981) notes, understanding election outcomes in the United States means understanding the voting patterns of various social groups, and in most cases those patterns develop and evolve over time. Despite their assertions to the contrary, the issue evolution model that Edward Carmines and James Stimson use to explain how the issues of race fundamentally altered American politics beginning in the 1960s closely resembles Key’s secular realignment. The same can be said of how cultural issues have affected the American political landscape over the same period.

Most would agree that the United States has not witnessed a critical realignment for quite some time. Yet it is inescapable that group partisan loyalties have changed, new issues have moved to the forefront of American political debate, and the American party system has changed. Key’s concept of secular realignment—where “processes operate inexorably, and almost imperceptibly, election after election, to form new party alignments and to build new party groupings”— offers one reasonable mechanism for understanding America’s recent political past.

Bibliography:

Brewer, Mark D., and Jeffrey M. Stonecash. Split: Class and Cultural Divides in American Politics. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2007.
Burnham,Walter Dean. Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics. New York: Norton, 1970.
Cambell, Angus, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes. The American Voter. New York:Wiley, 1960.
Carmines, Edward G., and James A. Stimson. Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989.
Fiorina, Morris P. Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981.
Key, V. O., Jr. “Secular Realignment and the Party System.” Journal of Politics 21 (May 1959): 198–210.
“A Theory of Critical Elections.” Journal of Politics 17 (February 1955): 3–18.
Ladd, Everett Carll, Jr. “Like Waiting for Godot: The Uselessness of ‘Realignment’ for Understanding Change in Contemporary American Politics.” In The End of Realignment? edited by Byron E. Shafer, 24–36. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
Ladd, Everett Carll, Jr., with Charles D. Hadley. Transformations of the American Party System. New York: Norton, 1975.
Layman, Geoffrey. The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
Mayhew, David R. Electoral Realignments: A Critique of an American Genre. New Haven, Conn.:Yale University Press, 2002.
Petrocik, John R. Party Coalitions: Realignments and the Decline of the New Deal Party System. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Rosenof,Theodore. Realignment: The Theory That Changed the Way We Think about American Politics. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003.
Schattschneider, E. E. The Semisovereign People. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1960.
Stonecash, Jeffrey M. Political Parties Matter: Realignment and the Return of Partisan Voting. Boulder, Colo: Lynne Rienner, 2006.
Sundquist, James L. Dynamics of the Party System, rev. ed. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1983.

This example Secular Realignment Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.