Platforms and Partners: The Civil Rights Realignment Reconsidered

Studies in American Political Development, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 1-31, Spring 2008

31 Pages Posted: 7 Sep 2011 Last revised: 4 Oct 2014

See all articles by Brian D. Feinstein

Brian D. Feinstein

University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School

Eric Schickler

University of California, Berkeley

Date Written: 2008

Abstract

Few transformations have been more significant in American politics in recent decades than the Democratic Party’s embrace of racial liberalism and Republicans’ adoption of a more conservative stance towards civil rights related policies. We hypothesize that pressure to embrace a liberal position on civil rights was much stronger among northern Democrats and their coalitional partners than among northern Republicans and their affiliated groups by the mid-1940s, as the Democrats became firmly identified as the party of economic liberalism and labor unions. To test this hypothesis and develop a more fine-grained understanding of the dynamics of party positioning on civil rights, we collect and analyze a new data source: state political party platforms published between 1920 and 1968. These unique data suggest that Democrats had generally become the more liberal party on civil rights by the mid-to-late 1940s across a wide range of states. Our findings - which contradict Carmines and Stimson’s prevailing issue evolution model of partisan change - suggest that there were strong coalitional and ideological pressures that led the Democrats to embrace racial liberalism. This finding not only leads to a revised perspective on the civil rights revolution, but also to new insights into the dynamics of partisan realignment more generally.

Keywords: realignment, partisan realignment, civil rights, parties, political parties, platforms, issue evolution

Suggested Citation

Feinstein, Brian D. and Schickler, Eric, Platforms and Partners: The Civil Rights Realignment Reconsidered (2008). Studies in American Political Development, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 1-31, Spring 2008, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1923223

Brian D. Feinstein (Contact Author)

University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School ( email )

3641 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6365
United States

Eric Schickler

University of California, Berkeley ( email )

310 Barrows Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
128
Abstract Views
1,456
Rank
400,044
PlumX Metrics