Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America
- ISBN-10
- 0691180865
- ISBN-13
- 9780691180861
- Category
- Political Science
- Pages
- 336
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2018-03-27
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Author
- James E. Campbell
Description
Many continue to believe that the United States is a nation of political moderates. In fact, it is a nation divided. It has been so for some time and has grown more so. This book provides a new and historically grounded perspective on the polarization of America, systematically documenting how and why it happened. Polarized presents commonsense benchmarks to measure polarization, draws data from a wide range of historical sources, and carefully assesses the quality of the evidence. Through an innovative and insightful use of circumstantial evidence, it provides a much-needed reality check to claims about polarization. This rigorous yet engaging and accessible book examines how polarization displaced pluralism and how this affected American democracy and civil society. Polarized challenges the widely held belief that polarization is the product of party and media elites, revealing instead how the American public in the 1960s set in motion the increase of polarization. American politics became highly polarized from the bottom up, not the top down, and this began much earlier than often thought. The Democrats and the Republicans are now ideologically distant from each other and about equally distant from the political center. Polarized also explains why the parties are polarized at all, despite their battle for the decisive median voter. No subject is more central to understanding American politics than political polarization, and no other book offers a more in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the subject than this one.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2016-02-22
- 144 pages
- Ebook
- Rowman & Littlefield
Similar books
-
Why We're Polarized
By Ezra KleinAnd he traces the feedback loops between polarized political identities and polarized political institutions that are driving our system toward crisis. “Well worth reading” (New York magazine), this is an “eye-opening” (O, The Oprah ...
-
Polarization: What Everyone Needs to Know®
By Nolan McCartyA concise overview of a complex and crucial topic in US politics, this book is for anyone wanting to understand how to repair the cracks in our system.
-
Polarized Light: For Scientists and Engineers
By Beth Schaefer, Edward CollettPolarized Light: For Scientists and Engineers
-
Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches
By Keith T. Poole, Howard Rosenthal, Nolan McCartyAn analysis of how the increasing polarization of American politics has been accompanied and accelerated by greater income inequality, rising immigration, and other social and economic changes.
-
Polarized Light in Animal Vision: Polarization Patterns in Nature
By Gábor Horváth, Dezsö Varju17.9 Response of Night-Flying Insects to Linearly Polarized Light Light traps are important tools in investigations of insect phenology and flight activity as well as in comparative studies, particularly in the case of insect species of ...
-
Red and Blue Nation?: Consequences and Correction of America's Polarized Politics
By Pietro S. Nivola, David W. BradyBuilding upon the findings of the first volume of Red and Blue Nation? (Brookings, 2006), which explored the extent of political polarization and its potential causes, this new volume delves into the consequences of the gulf between "red ...
-
Political Choice in a Polarized America: How Elite Polarization Shapes Mass Behavior
By Joshua N. ZingherWhat I claim in Political Choice in a Polarized America is that individuals have core beliefs about what the government should or should not do and these attitudes explain a great deal about what party a person identifies with and votes for ...
-
The Art of Communication in a Polarized World
By Kyle ConwayTranslated by Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson. New York: New Press, 1996. Bryzgel, Amy. “Chopped Earlobes and the Long History of Political Shock Art in Russia.” The Conversation, December 15, 2014. https://theconversation.
-
Polarized Families, Polarized Parties: Contesting Values and Economics in American Politics
By Gwendoline M. AlphonsoDrawing on extensive data from congressional committee hearings, political party platforms, legislation sponsorship, and demographic data from the Progressive, post-World War II, and late twentieth-century periods in the United States, ...
-
Red and Blue Nation?: Characteristics and Causes of America's Polarized Politics
By Pietro S. Nivola, David W. BradyAre they truly wreaking havoc upon the social fabric? Has America become a house divided? This important new book, Red and Blue Nation?, gets to the bottom of this perplexing issue.