Divergent Democracy

"The United States has the most programmatic party system in the world: it has, that is, parties that compete with each other on the basis of differing policy positions. While this may seem obvious today, in our world where Republicans and Democrats seem to hold opposite opinions on every conceivable policy, this was not always the case. When the parties began competing with each other in 1856, they ran on a system of clientelism (the provision of material of support or jobs in exchange for political support). While this change has largely been conflated with rising polarization, Krimmel aims in this book to untangle programmaticism from polarization and shed new light on major changes in American democracy. In this book, Krimmel charts the evolution of programmaticism over time and--using a sophisticated, multi-method approach--builds a new measure to study and track this. She shows that programmaticism in American parties has risen and fallen and risen again--most recently ascending in 1960 and now at a level never before seen. She traces this change to the demise of local machine politics, the rise of national politics, and crucially to the civil rights movement which initiated a shift away from clientelistic practices in the American South"--