The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case

Benson, Lee

doi:10.1515/9781400867264

Cited by 46 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…When social theorists do attempt to broaden their evidentiary base by incorporating nineteenth-century history into the debate, they are confronted with a vast and conflicting historiographical literature. The class basis of early American politics was championed by historians throughout the first half of the twentieth century (Beard 1913(Beard , 1915Beard and Beard 1921;Schlesinger 1945) before becoming unfashionable at mid-century as historians began to emphasize an underlying liberal consensus across American political life (Benson 1961;Hartz 1955;Hofstadter 1948). Later historians would emphasize the primacy of ideology over economic explanations for major events in American history (Bailyn 1967;McCoy 1980;Wood 2009).…”

Section: Sociological Accounts Of Class and Political Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finding equivalent numbers of economic elites at the tops of both parties, these historians dismiss the class basis of the parties (McCormick 1966;Pessen 1969). Quantitative historians have looked at bivariate correlations between the distribution of votes in counties and the demographic characteristics of those counties (Benson 1961;Formisano 1983: 280-83;Sellers 1991). This latter approach remains influential, though it suffers from omitted variable bias and the ecological inference fallacy (Robinson 1950).…”

Section: Sociological Accounts Of Class and Political Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…During this period, pluralist models of politics were developed (Dahl 1961;Key 1949;Truman 1951). However, from the 1960s onward historians worked to tear down the self-serving façade of Jacksonian rhetoric by arguing that Democratic voters and politicians were just as elite as those of the Whigs (Benson 1961;Pessen 1969) and Republicans (Wiebe 1967). These works influenced not only social scientific accounts of nineteenth-century America (e.g., Perrow 2002) but also the direction of social scientific understandings of party politics.…”

Section: Sociological Accounts Of Class and Political Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Irish Catholics were the most important ethnic minority group in nineteenthcentury Massachusetts, and they demonstrated a marked affinity for the Democratic Party (Benson 1961;Ignatiev 1995). The Irish Catholic cleavage is not expected to manifest itself in the legislature until the Third Party Systemnor is the Irish Catholic cleavage expected to explain away the affiliation of artisans and labor with the Democrats.…”

Section: Noneconomic Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Emergence of Class Politics in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts

Gershenson

2020

Soc. sci. hist.

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How do economic and social position structure partisan affiliation? While neo-Durkheimian treatments of class and political behavior suggest the potential for extreme variability in the social bases of partisan affiliation, data limitations have largely restricted quantitative studies of this relationship to the postwar era. This temporal limitation restricts variation in observable social structure, thus limiting the ability of analysts to assess theoretical explanations. To address this gap, I introduce novel data on occupation and ethnicity for more than 20,000 Massachusetts state legislators in the nineteenth century. This allows me to find the “best fit” model for the social bases of party affiliation in four distinct periods in Massachusetts’ political history. I show that the Massachusetts political system transitioned from a system of occupational cleavages to proto-class cleavages between the First Party System (1795–1826) and Second Party System (1835–54). The Civil War and Reconstruction Era (1855–77) was characterized by the emergence of an ethnic cleavage, but near-modern class divisions emerged as the strongest predictors of legislators’ party affiliations for the remainder of the Third Party System (1878–93). Combined with historiographical accounts of the nineteenth century, these analyses suggest that the emergence of class politics requires intermediary organizations such as unions and professional associations, the liberalization of economic laws and regulation, and the increasingly unequal distribution of productive property.

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Section: Sociological Accounts Of Class and Political Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sociological Accounts Of Class and Political Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sociological Accounts Of Class and Political Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Noneconomic Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Emergence of Class Politics in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts

Gershenson

2020

Soc. sci. hist.

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“…47 Jackson's campaign for the 1828 election began in 1824, and its theme was corruption. Seavoy (1982), and Benson (1961) for the political uses of bank chartering in New York.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Concept of Systematic Corruption in American History

Wallis¹

2006

Corruption and Reform

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Campaigning by Human Branding: Associating with American Presidents

Collins

2020

Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci.

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Human branding has become an essential issue in political marketing. It is exemplified in the election of American Presidents. This paper examines the American experience to suggest a typology of human branding that may apply in both presidential and other political systems. It examines examples of presidential human brands from George Washington on but, given significant changes to electoral procedures, concentrates on first-time successful presidential candidates since 1901. The fourfold typology offers an interrelated set of ideal types that will augment the analysis of human branding. It is applied to presidents when they take up office rather than after serving. The typology draws on the source of primary brand association and relation to the core political system of each politician.

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The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case

Cited by 46 publications

References 0 publications

The Emergence of Class Politics in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts

The Emergence of Class Politics in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts

The Concept of Systematic Corruption in American History

Campaigning by Human Branding: Associating with American Presidents

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