Partisan Regimes in American Politics

Abstract

Some scholars of American political development have used the phrase "partisan regimes" to refer to an important recurring pattern in American politics: a short, tumultuous period of partisan upheaval and political and policy change followed by extended stability. This article develops the concept of a partisan regime as an ideal type that can help scholars not only explain variations among historical cases, but identify the different elements that contribute to the rise of regimes and understand what these potent coalitions do once they secure power. The ideal type points to entrepreneurial leadership, political crises, and partisan narratives as the key contributors to the emergence of new governing orders. Furthermore, once a partisan regime achieves control, it only temporarily disrupts and remakes national policy, politics, and political debate. After achieving its core priorities, the regime primarily operates to preserve its gains. The concept of a partisan regime therefore offers only a limited explanation for many policy changes that occur during the long periods between regime upheavals. Polity (2012) 44, 51-80.

A Federal Army, Not a Federalist One: Regime Building in the Jeffersonian Era

“…Focusing on the New Deal, David Plotke has called attention to the power of a nascent regime to delegitimize its partisan opposition, driving it to the margin of political discourse. 8 Similarly, Orren and Skowronek note, we must consider how a new regime solidifi es its power, beyond merely breaking with the immediate past. 7 He argues that regimes "must secure cross-institutional control, they must incorporate members from diff erent sections or regions, and they must restrict their policy scope. "…”

“…46 Regime concerns that are lower priority may oft en be dealt with through administrative procedures rather than a full-scale legislative program. No president, regardless of political opportunity, can focus his full attention on every question.…”

The Evolution of Roosevelt's Rhetorical Legacy: Presidential Rhetoric about Rights in Domestic and Foreign Affairs, 1933‐2011

“…However, it is also true that some once‐popular constitutional understandings have, over time, fallen out of favor; and that understandings once viewed as bizarre have become mainstream; and that these developments are in significant part due to political contests involving presidents, members of Congress, and social movements, as well as the judiciary (Post and Siegel ). Advocates of a particular constitutional understanding cannot simply assume that a favored construction will remain part of the constitutional “common sense”; if a construction endures in the popular culture, it is due in no small part to the ongoing rhetorical and political efforts of its proponents to maintain “narrative hegemony” against alternative constructions (Polsky ).…”

Measuring Partisan Regimes: Elites Tell Us Who Their Reconstructives Are

“…Skowronek argues that these presidents have excelled in “systematically weakening, perhaps even destroying outright, the infrastructure of the old order, [and] clearing the political and institutional ground upon which something fundamentally new can take hold” (175). In so doing, they help found what Polsky () has termed new partisan regimes…”

“…If an ex‐president is selected by subsequent partisans, then his accomplishments (which may include allegedly miraculous political‐institutional changes) can be praised and eventually mythologized as a reform era that the American people should seek to return to. To clarify the causality in this story, and following again Polsky (), electoral warrants thus function as both dependent and independent variables (for another discussion of this dynamic, see Pierson ). Electoral warrants are initially dependent variables.…”