Cedric De Leon

Crisis!

When Political Parties Lose the Consent to Rule

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Cedric de Leon is Director of the Labor Center and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of The Origins of Right to Work (2015) and Party and Society (2014) and co-editor of Building Blocs: How Parties Organize Society (Stanford, 2015). Prior to becoming an academic, he was by turns an organizer and local union president in the American labor movement.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 232
• Erscheinungstermin: 29. Oktober 2019
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 238mm x 160mm x 20mm
• Gewicht: 523g
• ISBN-13: 9781503603554
• ISBN-10: 1503603555
• Artikelnr.: 55195608

Autorenporträt

Cedric de Leon is Director of the Labor Center and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of The Origins of Right to Work (2015) and Party and Society (2014) and co-editor of Building Blocs: How Parties Organize Society (Stanford, 2015). Prior to becoming an academic, he was by turns an organizer and local union president in the American labor movement.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
1The Crisis Sequence
chapter abstract
What explains the timing of political crises? Specifically, given the
long-standing clash between pro- and antislavery interests since the
American Revolution, why did the American Civil War begin in 1861 and not
before? And why, despite long-standing trends in globalization, economic
inequality, and immigration, is the Far Right coming to power only now?
This chapter outlines the shared logic of both political crises, namely,
that their timing depended on the sequence of partisan reactions and
counterreactions following a challenge to the mainstream party system.
2The Appeal of Manifest Destiny.
chapter abstract
The antebellum or Jacksonian two-party system was designed to avoid the
politicization of slavery. But beginning in 1844, a new generation of
Democrats advanced a legislative agenda based on Manifest Destiny, the
notion that Americans were preordained by God to colonize the present-day
continental United States and beyond. These so-called Young America
Democrats hoped to oust their party elders by promising landless white
voters a life of economic independence out West. Manifest Destiny, however,
threatened to undo the party system and the slaveholding republic, because
it raised the question of whether slavery would be permitted in the new
territories.
3The Tug of Unionism.
chapter abstract
The resulting colonization of what was then still northern Mexico touched
off a bitter debate over whether slavery could be established there. White
voters who had been seduced by the promise of Manifest Destiny thus
remained in landless limbo, while the party system split into numerous
factions. This chapter explains how the Whig Party exploited the political
turmoil by offering a presidential candidate and a compromise that would
preserve the Union. The Whigs rode the message of unionism back to power,
roundly defeating the Democrats and reabsorbing the pro- and antislavery
factions back into the mainstream party system.
4The End of the Slaveholding Republic.
chapter abstract
This chapter suggests that the Whigs' reabsorption strategy backfired
badly. The victory of unionism had the unintended effect of ending
factional strife in the Democratic Party. Once back in power, the reunified
Democrats doubled down on the politics of territorial expansion and passed
the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which reignited the debate over slavery by
allowing voters to decide whether territories, even in the North, would be
free or slave. The Democratic resurgence and the Kansas-Nebraska Act led to
two competing Whig counterreactions that tore the Union apart and led
directly to the Civil War.
5The Contradictions of the New Deal.
chapter abstract
In contrast to antebellum Democrats, Depression-era Democrats were able to
contain the challenge posed by militant trade unions and third parties like
the Farmer-Labor and Communist parties. Though the New Deal is often seen
as the golden age of social democratic politics in the United States, this
chapter argues that the Democrats used collective bargaining laws and
social programs to divide and then reabsorb renegade workers into
mainstream institutional politics. This was the class contradiction
underpinning the New Deal, but the New Deal also contained important racial
contradictions, for it reserved many of its benefits for white Americans.
When the Democrats later promised to close these racial loopholes through
civil rights legislation, the Republicans rose to power by promising to
maintain whites' privileged access to New Deal programs and by undermining
the power of the state to intervene in the market.
6The Miseducation of Barack Obama.
chapter abstract
In the midst of the Great Recession, Barack Obama's insurgent campaign for
the Democratic presidential nomination promised a New New Deal. The
postracial neoliberal establishment of both parties did not take this
challenge to their power lightly, however. They moved swiftly to reabsorb
the president into mainstream politics. From the left, Clinton Democrats
infiltrated the Obama administration from inside the White House. From the
right, the Republican congressional leadership sought to harness the
grassroots energy of the Tea Party to block the Obama agenda. By 2010, the
Obama administration had embraced the status quo.
7The Election of Donald Trump.
chapter abstract
This chapter suggests that the establishment's reabsorption strategy
backfired. The Obama administration's neoliberal turn ensured that social
inequalities grew and festered, leading to three left-wing insurgencies:
Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and the Bernie Sanders campaign. On
the right, the introduction of the Tea Party into the halls of power
encouraged the proliferation and intransigence of the Far Right, most
famously of the "birthers" and Donald Trump himself. The resulting
factionalization of the GOP ensured that no one conservative candidate
could defeat Donald Trump's campaign for the Republican nomination.
Subsequently, young voters, union members, and black voters who were
alienated from the Democratic establishment either defected from the
Democratic Party in the 2016 presidential campaign or stayed home on
election day. This perfect storm led to the election of Donald Trump.
8The Paths out of Crisis.
chapter abstract
This chapter explores the potential paths out of our present crisis. There
is evidence to suggest that the United States is on a path of Caesarism, or
rule by an authoritarian charismatic figure. There is also evidence that
neoliberals within the Republican Party may succeed in containing Donald
Trump's seemingly antineoliberal agenda. Less clear is a progressive path.
The chapter ends with an alternative agenda based on the concept of
economic democracy. Economic democracy is an intersectional vision of
solidarity, in which the struggle for economic justice is inseparable from
the fight for racial and gender equity.