The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era - Couverture rigide

Rosenfeld, Sam

 
9780226407258: The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era
Couverture rigide
ISBN 10 : 022640725X ISBN 13 : 9780226407258
Editeur : University of Chicago Press, 2017

Synopsis

Even in this most partisan and dysfunctional of eras, we can all agree on one thing: Washington is broken. Politicians take increasingly inflexible and extreme positions, leading to gridlock, partisan warfare, and the sense that our seats of government are nothing but cesspools of hypocrisy, childishness, and waste. The shocking reality, though, is that modern polarization was a deliberate project carried out by Democratic and Republican activists.

In The Polarizers, Sam Rosenfeld details why bipartisanship was seen as a problem in the postwar period and how polarization was then cast as the solution. Republicans and Democrats feared that they were becoming too similar, and that a mushy consensus imperiled their agendas and even American democracy itself. Thus began a deliberate move to match ideology with party label--with the toxic results we now endure. Rosenfeld reveals the specific politicians, intellectuals, and operatives who worked together to heighten partisan discord, showing that our system today is not (solely) a product of gradual structural shifts but of deliberate actions motivated by specific agendas. Rosenfeld reveals that the story of Washington's transformation is both significantly institutional and driven by grassroots influences on both the left and the right.

The Polarizers brilliantly challenges and overturns our conventional narrative about partisanship, but perhaps most importantly, it points us toward a new consensus: if we deliberately created today's dysfunctional environment, we can deliberately change it.

Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

À propos de l?auteur

Sam Rosenfeld is assistant professor of political science at Colgate University.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
University of Chicago Press
Date d'édition
2017
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
022640725X
ISBN 13 
9780226407258
Reliure
Relié
Nombre de pages
336
Coordonnées du fabricant
non disponible
Personne responsable
non disponible