Contesting Democracy: Substance and Structure in American Political History, 1775-2000.

Edited by Byron E. Shafer and Anthony J. Badger. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, c. 2001. Pp. xii, 271. Paper, $16.95, ISBN 0-7006-1139-8; cloth, $35.00, ISBN 0-7006-1138-X.)

This collection grows out of a debate over what some have called a crisis in political history. In his introduction Cambridge University historian Anthony J. Badger recalls a session at the 1995 meeting of the Organization of American Historians at which members expressed concern about the marginalization of political history, overspecialization, and the apparent loss of a "compelling national narrative" (p. 1). In response, Badger and his co-editor, Oxford University political scientist Byron E. Shafer, organized a series of public lectures from which these essays emerged. Their ambitious goal, in Shafer's words, was to produce "a comprehensive American political history, with a broad sweep and a determined synthesizing effort" (p. xi).

In the opening essay Ronald P. Formisano traces how the southern periphery's control of national politics served to limit state-building, especially after 1819. David Waldstreicher, in the only contribution to draw significantly on the new cultural history, argues that "[n]ationalization and racialization laid the ground beneath the mediating activities of parties, set the context for the emergence of new parties, and provided core meanings for the battles between them" (p. 40).

In four essays on nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century politics, Joel H. Silbey, Michael F. Holt, Peter H. Argersinger, and Richard Jensen offer variations on their earlier work on party systems. Silbey begins with a triumphalist account of "extraordinary material growth and transformation" in the years after 1820, years during which, in a perhaps telling use of the passive voice, "the Indians were removed" and "Texas, Oregon, and California were acquired" (p. 65). Echoing his earlier work on the centrality of political parties, Silbey argues that the party system "effectively restrained the disruptive possibilities of the onrushing sectional tension" (p. 83). Indeed, even the advent of civil war did not fully disrupt the prevailing system. "Conflict was, if anything, reinvigorated, and politics in all its dimensions flourished within the structure of a party system bent out of shape but not broken ..." (pp. 84-85). In the essay that follows, Holt challenges the idea advanced by Silbey and Richard L. McCormick that the entire period from the mid-1830s until the mid-1880s "should be understood as a single, distinctive whole" (p. 96). "McCormick, Silbey, and the others are undoubtedly correct that political parties channeled the political behavior of most people" during the period, Holt concludes. "But they are wrong to suggest that either the supposed dominance of distributive public policies or the intense party loyalty that allegedly drove political life in these years gave politics a static or predictable dimension" (pp. 105-6). Argersinger directs our attention to the critical role played by the American system of representation, especially the single-member district and the winner-take-all plurality vote, and Jensen seeks to graft the themes of "democracy, republicanism, and efficiency" onto the rise and fall of the fourth party system. Jensen says little about democracy, however, while republicanism slides over into ethnocultural "purification" (p. 15l) and efficiency into modernization, none of which are very precisely defined.

The final three essays, by Badger, Shafer, and James T. Patterson, all trace in one way or another the rise and fall of "the New Deal order." Badger emphasizes the limitations on the New Deal realignment imposed by powerful conservative forces and the resulting emergence of a limited-growth liberalism. Patterson weaves together a complex narrative that includes the limited achievements of the New Deal, the impact of World War II, and the emergence of a new politics produced by the rise of interest groups and the decomposition of political parties. The most important characteristic of the recent past, he concludes, is the emergence of a powerful "rights consciousness" reflected in increased litigation, federal regulation, and the further expansion of an "administrative state" (p. 218). In the final essay Shafer stresses the changing social base of American politics created by postwar affluence and the accompanying shift in the U.S. economy from manufacturing to service. The defining characteristic of the most recent era, he concludes, is the emergence of "two opposing majorities" (p. 239), one organized around the "redistributional issues" associated with the New Deal and the Great Society (p. 230), the other around the "cultural-national" concerns mobilized by conservatives (p. 240). The success or failure of the national parties has been determined by the relative salience of one or the other set of issues.

Contesting Democracy is a very good collection of essays, as one would expect given the fact that its contributors include many of the most prominent scholars in American political history. However, it falls short of the ambitious goals announced by its editors. With only a few exceptions, the essays fail to fully integrate the work of social historians on race and gender, and with only one exception, the essays ignore the new cultural history. Nor, again with exceptions, do the essays fully capture recent work on public policy, state formation, law, and political economy. The resulting history is thus neither comprehensive nor inclusive; nor, finally, does it offer a compelling new national narrative.

ROBERT GRIFFITH 

American University