Author Meets Critics: Neil O'Brian's "The Roots of Polarization"

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

Gay rights, women’s issues, immigration, gun control and abortion politics all burst onto the political scene in the 1970s and 1980s, scrambling the parties and polarizing the electorate. O’Brian argues contemporary polarization on “culture war” issues like abortion and gun control in the 1970s-1980s was shaped by the racial realignment of the 1960s. Using a breadth of public opinion dating to the 1930s, O’Brian shows that attitudes on civil rights were already linked with a range of other cultural attitudes, such as on abortion or gun control, decades before the parties split on these issues and much earlier than previous scholarship realized. When the national parties polarized on civil rights in the 1960s, politicians and nascent interest groups, jockeying for power in the changing party system, seized on these pre-existing connections to build the parties’ contemporary coalitions. This argument breaks from an existing scholarship which primarily understands party platforms as contingent choices made by politicians and interest groups; O’Brian argues contemporary the contemporary partisan divides are rooted in the mass public. Together, these findings offer a new frame for understanding how the 1964 racial realignment still shapes the party system today. This panel brings together distinguished scholars of parties, race, and polarization to critically evaluate this important book and to discuss directions for future work building on its insights.

Sub Unit

• Division 35: Political Organizations and Parties

Chair

• Eric Schickler University of California, Berkeley

Presenters

• Vincent L. Hutchings University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

• Christopher Warshaw George Washington University

• Christina Wolbrecht University of Notre Dame

• Neil O'Brian University of Oregon