Inclusion, Exclusion, and Executive Power in the Movement-Party Era

• In Event: The Presidency, Democratic Mobilization, and the State

Abstract

Studies of U.S. democratic backsliding have proliferated since the Trump presidency, yet the American polity long has been an incomplete democracy that denies membership and belonging to key portions of its population. Focusing on contemporary struggles over democratic inclusion, exclusion, and identity, this paper explores how these conflicts have been profoundly shaped in recent decades by an uneasy yet kinetic relationship between social movements, parties, and presidents. To better understand these crucial interactions, we will investigate two significant developments that dramatically recast the dynamics of democratic expansion or contraction in American politics: a deep partisan divide driven by movement activists, combined with a significant expansion of executive power and the administrative state. We plan to consider how the “hollowing out” of party organizations (weakened by changes in campaign finance, a new fragmented media, and party reforms) has influenced the emergence of rival movement parties, and with them, epic battles to shape domestic and foreign policy through control of the presidency and the administrative state. Drawing on both archival research and in-depth interviews, our paper will capture how modern presidents and major parties have alternately collided and collaborated with organized labor, the long Civil Rights movement, the New Christian Right, gun rights activists, LGTQ rights campaigns, new nativist and immigrant rights movements, the struggle for Black Lives, and Alt-Right and MAGA extremists. We expect our research on the fusion of movements, parties, and presidents in the contemporary era has profoundly recast enduring battles over democratic membership and belonging in U.S. politics. A paradox of current partisan polarization is that it bedevils steady, productive governance, but also reflects a standoff between democratizing and anti-democratic movements as the former gained hard-won political traction.

Authors

• Sidney M. Milkis, University of Virginia

• Daniel Tichenor, University of Oregon