Partisan Regimes in American Politics.working draft 2008

Introduction

A familiar approach to the study of American political development (APD) assigns political party coalitions the primary role in explaining upheaval and stasis over time.Newly dominant parties propel bursts of broad political change and then preside over longer interludes of stability.From a party-centered perspective, significant turning points in American politics include the Democratic-Republican triumph in the election of 1800, the emergence of the Jacksonian Democrats in the 1830s, the Republican victory in 1860 and the resulting Civil War, the Republican landslide in 1896, the Democratic ascendance during the Great Depression that led to the New Deal, and the conservative era ushered in by the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.Each episode features the advent of a strong party coalition and its successful introduction of bold policy innovations.Moreover, in the period of relative stability that follows a partisan upheaval, the dominant party continues to preserve its major policy achievements.The most familiar party-oriented historical model is the realignment synthesis, which has been a cornerstone of American politics scholarship for more than a generation.(Burnham, 1970; Clubb, Flanagan, and Zingale 1980; Sundquist 1983)More recently, a coterie of APD scholars, building upon the realignment approach, has posited the concept of the partisan regime as an alternative framework for understanding the pattern of partisan upheaval followed by extended stability.(Skowronek 1986; Skowronek 1993; Orren and Skowronek 1999; Plotke 1996; Polsky 1997; Polsky 2000; Cook and Polsky 2005; Gillman 2002)Although different in key respects, the two frameworks concur that partisan coalitions have been both the primary vehicle of political change in the United States and a key instrument of political stability.

.Notwithstanding the popularity of party-centered historical analysis, several factors call into doubt its continued utility.On the one hand, the realignment synthesis has been subjected to many critiques and seems indefensible as a general framework for explaining American political development.The partisan regime approach rests upon different premises, but, given its roots in realignment scholarship (and its incorporation of the realignment periodization scheme), it may still be threatened by the challenges to its intellectual ancestor.Further, some empirical cases defy party-based historical ordering.Major policy change has occurred absent the rise of a new dominant partisan coalition and has cut across party lines, notably during the Progressive era; policy upheaval has also disrupted the supposed stability that marks a mature party regime, as during the 1960s.Finally, regime theory on its own terms has been rendered problematic by differences among its proponents and, more fundamentally, by a lack of theoretical clarity.Early formulations of the regime framework, which sometimes left implicit key assumptions, stand in need of revisions that reflect subsequent contributions.

I propose here to respond to the vulnerability of the partisan regime framework by formulating a descriptive theory of American partisan regimes.This theory needs to address the challenge to a regime approach that arises from its association with realignment theory, to account for important historical anomalies, and to mediate the differences among regime-oriented scholars.The most useful way to theorize about partisan regimes, I suggest, is to formulate an ideal type that can be used as a basis for empirical investigation and comparison.In such a heuristic exercise, historical examples serve to illustrate claims rather than offer conclusive proof.

This model has two components.I treat a partisan regime first as an outcome or dependent variable.To make clear how regime formation differs from the phenomenon of electoral realignment, I lay out the processes by which a regime is “constructed.”I use that term deliberately to highlight the role of political agency in regime formation, for it rests upon creative and entrepreneurial political leadership.¹Regimes emerge amid uncertain or fluid moments, widely seen (and intentionally depicted by regime builders) as crises.At these critical junctures, partisan leaders engage in a discursive project, telling stories about American politics that redefine how their audiences perceive their political interests, in an effort to broaden support for the party program.Once the partisan coalition secures control of national policymaking institutions, the regime becomes the independent variable², generating policy, institutional, and political innovations designed to achieve its goals.I will argue that several factors interact to determine how much a regime can accomplish:the sweep and boldness of the regime’s core narrative, the breadth of its primary policy goals, the margin of its control over policymaking institutions, and the degree to which the crisis that led to the advent of the new dominant coalition delegitimizes the previous order and its supporters.A partisan regime aggregates sufficient power to accomplish its primary tasks.But the range of those tasks varies across regimes.Finally, I contend that the upheaval associated with regime transitions is short-lived, and that regimes have a limited impact on national politics once they have fulfilled their initial agenda.Although regime party leaders may seek to extend the regime’s accomplishments, nothing compels them to do so or assures their success.The regime remains significant primarily as a vehicle for preserving policy gains against opposition efforts to reverse them.Once the early heyday of a regime passes, other political forces find ample space to express themselves.Regime theory is poorly suited to explain most political outcomes in the longer periods between the advent of new dominant partisan coalitions.

A Problematic Framework

Scholarship explicitly situated in a partisan regime framework dates back some two decades to an essay by Stephen Skowronek (1986) that connects variations in presidential power to the rise and fall of partisan governing coalitions.He expands on this interpretation in his influential book on the presidency (Skowronek 1993), which also delineates the relationship among the recurrent regime pattern (“political time,” in his phrase), the ongoing constitutional order, and secular trends in American politics. He concludes that the regime pattern has weakened a process he calls the “waning of political time.”Building upon his work, scholars have continued to explore the relationship between the presidency and partisan coalitions (Cook and Polsky, 2005), and have extended the regime approach to other institutions, notably the judiciary (Graber 1993; Gillman 2002; Whittington 2001), to the impact of intra-regime factions on the means a regime will use to pursue its primary objectives (Polsky 2002); and to the role played by policy seekers such as business interests within a regime formation (Polsky 2000.; Shoch, 1998).A central concern of regime scholars has been to understand where partisan regimes fit in American politics at any given moment.From the outset it has been clear that partisan regimes exist along side other institutions, making the relationship between the two a potential source of ongoing political tension (Orren and Skowronek 1999).

As a framework generates new work, it is not surprising that differences would emerge over core concepts and claims.Where Skowronek sees regimes as recurring structures across American political development, David Plotke (1996) instead compares the New Deal order to other governing systems in advanced industrial democracies.This raises the possibility that the New Deal coalition is best understood in the context of American politics as a unique governing formation.By extension, other dominant partisan coalitions likewise should be treated as non-recurring phenomena, revealing for what they may tell us about a particular period but devoid of more general significance.Richard Bensel has crafted rich accounts of how the Republican party pursued its agenda during the Civil War (1990) and then preserved its major policies after Reconstruction (2000) that do not claim to apply to other partisan orders.Moreover, where Skowronek finds that successive regimes have grown weaker over time, others (Cook and Polsky 2005) counter that the instruments by which regimes exercise power have changed to capitalize on shifts in the relative power of governing institutions.If partisan regimes do not reflect the “waning of political time,” however, the framework lacks a theoretical explanation for the apparent variations in the power of partisan regimes across the span of American history.

Beyond the disagreements among regime scholars themselves, other significant problems arise indirectly from the ancestry of the regime framework.The concept of partisan regimes emerged from earlier literature on critical elections and electoral realignments.(Skowronek’s initial identification of partisan regimes corresponds directly to the standard realignment periodization, with the exception of his exclusion of the “System of 1896.”)But the realignment synthesis itself has been placed under close scrutiny by skeptics, notably David Mayhew (2002), and no longer seems tenable as a general framework for interpreting American political development.Among the criticisms of the realignment framework,³ several stand out as being especially pertinent to regime theory as well.First and most obvious, realignment theory seems to offer no explanation for important recent patterns in American mass electoral behavior dating back at least to the late 1960s.Voters have dealigned from political parties (Coleman 1996; Aldrich 1995); periods of political controversy and policy change have not been characterized by shifts to new, stable partisan alignments.If partisan regimes arise only from electoral realignments, then no regime would seem possible in the contemporary era of American politics.Yet despite the absence of any recent electoral realignment, we have witnessed far-reaching changes in public discourse, political institutions, and public policies since the late 1960s.Of particular note, the election of Ronald Reagan ushered in new terms of political discourse and significant shifts in spending, tax, defense, and regulatory policies. (Ginsberg and Shefter 1990, chap. 4; Edsall with Edsall 1992, chap. 8; Ferguson and Rogers 1986, chap. 4)

Second, by connecting episodes of instability in electoral politics to far-reaching changes in governance, the realignment perspective begs the question of why changing social conditions and widening political discontent result in specific policy responses.Scholarship grounded in a rational choice perspective finds that voters are “price takers” who lack the incentives or means to shape new party programs (Aldrich 1995) and suggests the need to look elsewhere to understand how parties come to define their programs.For example, Ferguson (1995) contends that emerging dominant economic interests act as “principals” in defining party programs with politicians operating as their “agents.”Whether one accepts this particular solution to the collective action problem presented by bottom-up realignment models, proponents of a rational choice approach correctly observe that voters have no reason to incur the transaction costs associated with forging a new party coalition that will confront the old order.Partisan regime theory needs to identify actors other than the mass electorate to account for the actual policy directions governing coalitions pursue.Interestingly, one direction the regime framework might pursue was suggested in general terms by some of the later realignment scholars who regarded the electorate as passive and stressed the role of creative party leadership in shaping the policy agenda. (Beck 1979, 132; Clubb, Flanagan, and Zingale 1980, 14)

Third, as critics of the realignment synthesis have observed, major policy changes may not correspond to realignment episodes while such episodes do not necessarily generate broad change.Mayhew (2002) contends that the electoral turmoil of the mid-1890s did not culminate in the kind of policy upheaval that would warrant the term “the System of 1896.”Moreover, elsewhere he suggests that wars have been catalysts for dramatic shifts in policy debates and for policy innovation.In his view, for example, the post-World War II Democratic Fair Deal and Great Society initiatives are better understood as responses to the war itself rather than as a continuation or culmination of the New Deal.(Mayhew 2005)If partisan regimes rise and decline on the realignment timetable, Mayhew’s critique would appear to extend to them as well.The implications are that regimes are not especially powerful engines of policy and political change and that other factors may trigger policy innovation on the same or perhaps a greater scale.

The Partisan Regime as an Ideal Type

A partisan regime may be understood as a political coalition organized under a common party label that challenges core tenets of the established political order, secures effective national governing power, and maintains sufficient power to thwart opposition efforts to undo its principal policy and institutional achievements.Partisan regimes draw together not just politicians but clusters of policy seekers and segments of the electorate, all of whom contribute political resources essential to partisan success.A partisan regime, then, does not correspond directly to V.O. Key’s familiar tripartite model of a political party.(1964; see also Beck and Sorauf 1991)Like Key’s party, a partisan regime incorporates office holders and the party organization, but the regime also encompasses policy seekers such as organized interests, social movements, and policy intellectuals who ally themselves with the party coalition.Further, following Aldrich (1995) and in contrast to Key, I do not treat the mass electorate as part of the regime, save for voters who are affiliated with and mobilized by policy seekers and citizen activists whose participation extends beyond voting in general elections.

To establish a partisan regime in the United States, political actors must overcome formidable challenges.Under the American constitutional system, the exercise of power at the national level requires control over the two leading policy-making institutions, Congress and the presidency.With this control party coalitions can extend their reach to the bureaucracy and, over time, to the federal courts.Because of the different selection mechanisms used to fill national offices, however, nothing assures unified party control of both chambers of Congress and the presidency, a situation that differs from that found in a parliamentary system where control of the legislature brings with it control over the executive.As a further complication, constitutional electoral arrangements – the system of geographically-apportioned congressional seats – make it necessary that coalitions be regionally broad based if they are to attain majority status.Yet the diversity of a continental republic, as Madison vividly observes in Federalist 10, means that common ground will be elusive and limited.It follows that the fewer issues placed on the table, the more likely a governing coalition can be forged and maintained.Core institutional arrangements in the American political system thus give American partisan regimes certain distinctive characteristics:they must regularly confront the problem of securing coincident cross-institutional control, they must incorporate members from different sections or regions, and they must be restricted in their policy scope.

A dominant partisan coalition that can induce broad cross-sectional support for a bold program of policy change, secure control over Congress and the presidency, and define the terms of political discourse so that politics are conducted on its terms would be enormously powerful.Indeed, with such institutional, political, and ideological resources, a regime would be irresistible.But such a claim is essentially tautological – give a political formation disproportionate power resources and it will exercise disproportionate power – and not particularly interesting or useful.Rather, we should treat the perfect partisan regime as an “ideal type” in the Weberian sense:it serves as a standard against which to compare actual historical regimes, all of which fall short of completeness in one or more respects.Partisan regimes, as even a cursory glance at the list in the opening paragraph would suggest, have varied greatly in their success.Some have initiated profound changes that altered many aspects of national political life (but never all aspects), while others recorded far more modest gains and seem to warrant the label “quasi-regime” or “near-regime.”By examining how partisan coalitions have fallen short of the ideal, it becomes possible to identify which properties are of the greatest significance – or, to put it another way, we can clarify the features of a regime that do particular kinds of work for the regime as a whole.

The Regime as Outcome:Ambition, Crisis, Narratives, and Chance

.Efforts to overturn the established order and to strike directly at conventional thinking about state-society relations require boldness not common in politics.Such assaults entail significant risks, for advocates of change may misread the depth of public disenchantment.They also face significant competition:the vulnerability of an aging partisan order invites multiple political challengers.That some political actors will assume the risks and brave the competition in the quest for decisive political gain suggests the entrepreneurial character of regime-building political agency – and also the possibility that it has parallels to moral crusades (Morone, 2003).The crusader’s passionate commitment to a cause may alter or even overwhelm short-run calculations of cost and benefit.

Who might have reason to accept the challenge of confronting a political order and trying to create a replacement?I divide political actors broadly into two groups, politicians and policy seekers, with the latter including conventional interest groups, citizen activists, and social movements.Although policy seekers might have the wherewithal to bear the cost of broad collective action, they have little incentive to do so.Their policy concerns are limited; to bring together the support needed to secure national governing authority requires an enormous investment that can hardly be justified by the return.Even leading economic sectors will receive a limited share of the gain from the triumph of their preferred party.⁴Moreover, a better alternative presents itself, because policy seekers can usually hope to realize their interests by supporting or subsidizing politicians.Given that policy seekers can readily switch their support and still win the gratitude of politicians, this approach is the safer course.⁵

It is more likely that certain politicians (officeholders and officeseekers) will absorb the transaction costs of regime building as a necessary means to fulfill their ambition.Ambition here may assume various forms – a desire to win a higher national office, to gain greater influence within an institution, or to see a bold policy agenda in which a leader believes deeply carried into practice.It is reasonable to assume, in fact, that at every regime founding a mix of these motives will be at work, often evident in the same person.Ronald Reagan, for example, both sought the ultimate political prize, the presidency, and spoke as a passionate ideologue in his defense of a particular free-market vision of America.(Dallek, 1999)Whatever the motives, the decisive point is that some ambitious politicians must conclude that they cannot achieve their goals unless they can construct a potent new governing coalition, and that induces them to accept the heavy costs involved.

Most politicians will shun the risks associated with bringing about the advent of a new partisan regime.Officeholders allied with an established regime party could jeopardize their party standing and the power and rewards their position has yielded them.They probably have an ideological affinity with the governing party, too, making a bold attack on its record unpalatable.The more likely source for regime-creating entrepreneurship is the opposition party.Largely thwarted in their desire to reshape policy because the regime’s defense mechanisms are too strong, opposition politicians have more reason to cast about for strategies that can alter an unfavorable balance of power.

Although ideologues and some political leaders may begin to lay the intellectual and political groundwork for a new regime when the old one is still vigorous, a crisis will spark greater interest among political elites in replacing an established order.“Crisis” is a flexible concept; consider, for example, the differences between the Great Depression that paved the way for the New Deal and the economic stagflation of the 1970s that helped the open the door for the Reagan Republicans.Although the magnitude of crises vary, they share in common a key element:they give rise to the perception (often stoked by interested political actors) that the old order cannot cope with new challenges.Crises also provoke widespread uncertainty.Old policies that once sufficed now appear ineffective; some policy seekers begin to doubt whether standard solutions still serve their interests; and other political actors may question where their true interests lie as the old order breaks down.The degree to which a crisis unhinges established beliefs will vary, and the disruptive effect of crises should not be overstated.Still, the important point is that the uncertainty spawned by a crisis yields openness to new interpretations and new solutions that make the risks of system-transforming entrepreneurship more acceptable.⁶

In their effort to capitalize upon the opportunity that a crisis presents, prospective regime creators engage in a discursive project.To gain control, they must bring together disparate policy seekers and voting blocs in different regions; to govern effectively, they must unite their emergent coalition around a common set of goals.Both tasks will be greatly facilitated by a compelling narrative.Through the telling of stories about the American condition, they make coherent what has become, by the discourse of the old order, unintelligible.Prospective regime builders offer candidate narratives, each proposing a new analysis of the problems facing the nation and pointing toward solutions.These stories draw heavily upon familiar symbols, invoke an idealized version of the past while promising a brighter tomorrow, and identify villains who brought on the current predicament.Symbols help political audiences make sense of new conditions by situating them in a more comprehensible context.(Stone 1997)References to a lost time of innocence, virtue, or prosperity let politician-storytellers connect themselves to a legacy of success that they will restore.And naming culprits lets audiences identify tangible sources of evil, usually associated with the old partisan order, where more abstract explanations fail.On the micropolitical level, partisan narratives may have several effects on their audiences.lain At the very least, these rhetorical devices lower information costs in a climate of widespread uncertainty.Narratives may also have a more constitutive impact:they become the instruments by which entrepreneurial political leaders redefine the interests of some policy seekers and voters.⁷

I refer to narratives in the plural because in the same crisis period competing entrepreneurial politicians advance different stories.The decade before the Civil War may be taken as a case in point.In the aftermath of the Whig election debacle in 1852, a number of opposition parties vied to become the principal challenger to the Democrats by offering different accounts of the core political questions facing the polity.Some contending minority parties stressed ethno-cultural issues including temperance and immigration; others focused on halting the expansion of slavery.(Gienapp 1987)Even within the party that emerged as the primary opposition, the Republicans, partisan leaders told different stories.For Salmon Chase, the framer’s vision of a Constitution hostile to slavery had been subverted by a Slave Power conspiracy and the full authority of the federal government should be directed against slavery where it stood; for William Seward, Southern aristocracy menaced the future of free labor in all regions and so promised an “irrepressible conflict”; Abraham Lincoln borrowed from both and added his own stress on blocking the expansion of slavery so it might wither in place. (Foner 1995)

Although the narrative exercise calls for vision and creativity, politicians face one important constraint.They need to preserve the party base as the foundation for building a larger coalition.Any defections from the party have to be offset before the party can grow; it is less costly to augment existing strength than to alienate, recover, and then add.Moreover, the party has embraced a set of commitments and risks being portrayed as unprincipled and opportunistic if it attempts to shed old supporters, even where these may appear an embarrassment or a liability.It is not surprising, then, that party programs display rhetorical continuity across different regimes.(Gerring 1998)Partisan narrators strive to weave together old partisan commitments and appeals to new potential supporters.

For all the strategic calculations of different would-be regime founders as they seek to establish the superiority of their particular narrative and cultivate the widest base of support, success does not rest in their hands.Rather, unpredictable events determine which actors and which story will prevail.⁸But although the events cannot be foreseen, they do connect powerfully to the politicians’ narrative projects.As entrepreneurial politicians advance their competing accounts of what ails the nation, audiences face a number of plausible stories, none of which is self-evidently truer or more compelling than the others.A narrative gains credibility and impact, though, when an event or series of events that captures public attention seems to reinforce that story’s interpretation of the political world.The event allows a leader, faction, or party (where there is more than one contending opposition party) to proclaim, in effect, “So you see, it’s just as we said!”To put it in the most concise form:events empower stories.

Examples from two regime transitions plainly illustrate this.During the early and mid-1850s the Republican party struggled to establish itself as the primary opposition.William E. Gienapp (1987, chap. 9) demonstrates that the headway made by the Republicans had been limited before early 1856, in part because they could not keep the question of the expansion of slavery consistently before the Northern public.Then, with a key presidential election approaching, public attention was captured by the caning of Senator Charles Sumner by Preston “Bully” Brooks on the floor of the United States Senate and by the sacking of Lawrence, Kansas by pro-slavery settlers.The twin episodes – “Bleeding Sumner” and “Bleeding Kansas” – were exploited by the party and its newspapers as a vivid demonstration that an aggressive Slave Power was preying upon the nation.Jumping ahead to the period just before the 1980 election, Ronald Reagan’s bold conservative critique of the Democrats seemed to be confirmed by a series of events in the last year of the Carter presidency.The seizure of the American embassy in Tehran appeared to be graphic proof that the United States no longer commanded respect abroad; the failure of a special operations mission to rescue the hostages demonstrated the sad decline of American military efficiency; and the rise in inflation and unemployment underscored the failure of New Deal Democratic economic management tools.In Reagan’s hands these events confirmed a story of the failure of American will under Democratic leadership, even as the entrepreneurial energy and moral integrity of the people remained steadfast.

Although narrative resonance depends primarily on circumstances that entrepreneurial politicians do not control, they can improve the odds of success by political action, conventional or otherwise.Republicans in 1856 faced a strong challenge from the American (Know Nothing) party.The parties in fact had significant membership overlap and had been busy subverting each other over the previous two years.When the American party convention met that spring, Republican operatives in attendance worked behind the scenes to introduce anti-slavery platforms that they knew would split the Know Nothings on sectional lines.The successful Republican manipulation resulted in a divided American party that ran a distant third in the fall elections and found itself on the path to oblivion.(Gienapp, chap. 9)Politics may also contribute to the triumph of particular leaders or factions within a party, which in turn gives the victors a chance to make their narrative the party message.For example, Ronald Reagan used superior grassroots organization to beat George Bush, the Republican establishment’s safe and preferred choice, in the 1980 presidential primaries.

Identification of the core factors that contribute to the emergence of a new regime makes it possible to distinguish this process from the older electoral realignment framework.Realignment begins with the notion of mass electoral discontent as the key triggering force that will result in a dramatic shift in party electoral fortunes, giving the successful party a massive advantage in the policy making institutions.As critics have noted, such a framework raises problems of collective action for which it offers no endogenous solution.By contrast, the key factors in the emergence of partisan regimes are entrepreneurial leadership, crises, and narratives.The model does not presume broad change in electoral behavior, though such a current would facilitate effective control of policymaking institutions.Of far greater importance is a shared understanding of the crisis and a coherent plan to meet it that unites all elements of the emerging regime party.The triumph of a particular narrative reflects the confluence of creative leadership, chance, and politics.By comparison with the bottom-up realignment framework, the regime model stresses the role of political elites, but it is not a purely top-down model:regime-building leaders respond to signals from policy-seekers and mobilized citizens.

The Regime as Causal Force:Policy Change and Narrative Hegemony

When a rising partisan coalition that promises far-reaching political and policy change secures effective governing power, the shock waves reverberate through the political system.Regime transitions represent not merely a shift in partisan control but an attempt to refashion core political understandings and key state-society linkages.The transfer of power is accompanied by a heightened sense of anticipation among political actors and political audiences alike.

The anticipation stems in part from the circumstances under which the new governing coalition assumes power.Its elected office holders take control amid a pervasive sense of political crisis, a sense they have helped to reinforce by their alarmist portrait of the American condition.As I noted, all crises are not alike; the political shocks preceding the advent of a new partisan governing coalition vary in magnitude and type.Consider the differences between the secession crisis of 1860-1861 and the issues that the Reagan administration faced in 1981, primarily a sluggish economy afflicted with both high inflation and high unemployment.Sensitivity to the uniqueness of each regime transition situation, however, should not blind us to an important parallel – in each instance the combination of actual political failure, propaganda directed against the old order, and the obvious popular and elite repudiation of its principles leaves the ousted party temporarily prostrate.Moreover, politicians, policy seekers, and mass publics all anticipate bold departures because the old order has been declared fundamentally wanting.

Other factors make major policy departures likely at the outset of a new partisan regime. When an electoral upheaval is associated with a regime transition, large electoral margins in favor of the new regime party may translate into substantial congressional majorities to accompany its control of the White House.The Democrats enjoyed such an advantage at the start of the New Deal in 1933, and used it immediately to push through a wave of legislation in Roosevelt’s famous first hundred days.But an enormous congressional majority is neither necessary nor sufficient for far-reaching policy innovation when a new regime comes to power.On the one side, the Republican regime established in 1981 had formal control of only the presidency and the Senate, seemingly insufficient to secure passage of major policy legislation.Demoralization among the Democrats, though, contributed to major legislative successes (substantial tax cuts, reductions in domestic discretionary spending, and increased military appropriations) in the first months of the Reagan administration.On the other side, the healthy congressional margins enjoyed by the Republicans in the wake of the 1896 elections yielded only modest policy initiatives – the extension and elaboration of tariff policies intended to support Northern sectional interests, reaffirmation of conservative monetary policies, andrepudiation of the populist agenda. (Mayhew 2002; Bensel 2000)

More important than the margin of electoral victory or the size of the congressional majority is the unity of purpose that distinguishes an incoming regime. That unity has both discursive and political sources.When a nascent governing coalition triumphs under a clear narrative, office holders will assume that their mass and elite constituents endorse the goals identified by the story as first-order priorities.The 1896 Republican case again is instructive as a negative example:the party’s triumph did not come under a compelling narrative that pointed to a new direction for national policy.McKinley and his Republican peers stood instead for the preservation of the Republican political economy that dated back to the Civil War, modestly updated to meet the challenges of the emerging industrial and corporate economy.By contrast, the Civil War Republicans, the New Deal Democrats, and the Reagan Republicans all rode into office behind a powerful political story that gave each regime clear direction.Further, on the core questions around which a nascent regime mounts its challenge to the old order, factions within the regime agree something must be done, if not necessarily on how best to do it.They will also concur that action is essential for the nation and the party.That suffices to assure that regime leaders (the president and congressional party leaders) will be able to find common ground on the key issues the party confronts upon assuming power.Regimes act, and they act quickly.

Regime transitions display both radical dislocations – changes that Skowronek (1993) aptly terms “order shattering” – and areas of continuity.Taking advantage of opposition disarray and building upon the governing coalition’s initial high degree of internal agreement, regimes always accomplish the principal tasks their narratives have defined.American partisan regimes in their first years in power have enjoyed remarkable success:each one has secured approval of its first-order policy initiatives, although this did not necessarily solve the crisis that precipitated the new regime.(The obvious historical example a regime that failed to achieve crisis resolution is the New Deal Democratic order, which did not solve the Depression that opened the door for Democratic victory.)At the same time, because of the strategically limited nature of the agreement that ties together regime participants, many institutional orderings in the American political system continue undisturbed through each regime upheaval.(Orren and Skowronek 1994; Orren and Skowronek 2004)Regime logic points to the juxtaposition of rapid change in some realms and stability in others.

Besides limiting the scope of regime action, factional differences within the regime party will have consequences for second-order choices.Such choices include the means or timing for reaching major coalition objectives (Plotke 1996) and personnel choices (that is, who should carry out regime policies).When second-order questions arise, regime ideology does not bind partisan officeholders.Indeed, disputes over implementation may prompt some coalition backers to conclude that they share more in common with the opposition at the tactical level than with certain fellow party members.For example, after secession in 1861, the Republicans affirmed their intention to restore the Union and set slavery on a path to extinction.But they disagreed sharply about the pace at which to attack slavery, what military policy to assume toward Southern property (including slaves), and what political and military qualifications Union military commanders should have.Some of these differences initially placed moderate and conservative Republicans closer to the position that War Democrats adopted in favor of a war to preserve the Constitution than to that of their radical partisan colleagues. (Polsky 2002)

Divisions within a governing party coalition have several implications.First, where internal regime discord arises, national policy making institutions take on renewed importance.The branches of the national government, designed to operate independently and indeed at odds with each other, become the instruments that leading regime actors use as they struggle to shape the course the regime will follow.Should different factions within a regime come to dominate different institutional power centers, the conflict will be resolved according to the resources and prerogatives associated with those institutions.Second, institutional leverage can be neutralized by the need of party leaders, especially the president, to preserve support across the entire party coalition.Officeholders who are insecure about their standing within the party may deem it prudent to exchange some of their institutional authority for enhanced support from other party leaders.Third, because so many choices are not circumscribed by party ideology, specific outcomes under a regime depend heavily upon the individuals who occupy particular offices.A full explanation of political outcomes in a regime framework thus will move from partisan commitment and agenda-setting through institutional and intraparty position to individual choice. (Polsky 2002)

Beyond policy change, regimes achieve other far-reaching results.They transform national politics in several ways.First, they win support from policy seekers who benefit from the new policies and who remember (and are often reminded of) the party that was responsible.Skowronek points out that the regime party may gain a loyal following even when its policies do not work as expected.Moreover, once the crisis passes (though not necessarily because of the regime’s policies), the regime is well-positioned to claim credit.Finally, the regime has the opportunity to build new institutions that will embody its commitments and can gradually remake other institutions.Control over the presidency can be translated over time into a new judiciary (Graber 1993) and public bureaucracies (Shefter 1994; Cook and Polsky 2005) imprinted with the regime’s values.

At the level of public discourse, too, emergent regimes claim striking success.Their triumph shatters political conventions and leaves their foes stunned and divided.Initially, then, a new regime dominates the flow of information to the public, with few countervailing messages.⁹ Regime party leaders exploit their near-monopoly over political communications to determine not just what issues will be debated but the terms around which the issues will be framed.For effective symbols and images, regime entrepreneurs continue to draw upon the narrative they had introduced to help them secure power. So pervasive is the rhetorical construct imposed by an emerging partisan order that Plotke (1996) refers to it as the “new common sense.”As the regime amasses a record of policy accomplishments, moreover, its achievements add to the credibility of the story its leaders tell.Improving conditions, even when not the result of regime policies, help to secure the hegemony of the regime narrative for years, perhaps decades.Stories persist not because they are “better” but because they have been associated with effective policies.

The model outlined here anticipates variations in the effects partisan regimes will have on policy, politics, and discourse, but nothing in the framework suggests a weakening of regime capacity over time.Dominant partisan coalitions may be limited by a number of factors, including a meager narrative foundation, slender governing majorities in Congress, and a relatively narrow scope of internal agreement on first-order priorities.These factors might appear at any historical juncture; they are neither more nor less likely today than in the past.Skowronek (1993) attributes the secular decline in regime capacity to the “institutional thickening” of American political life, which he contends makes it harder for a new regime to dismantle an old order.Governing coalitions, however, can make use of the more numerous and potent tools at the disposal of national institutions, particularly the presidency, to reach first-order goals. (Cook and Polsky 2005)Regime theory points not to the “waning of political time” but its variability.

After the Upheaval:Post-Regime Politics

The whirlwind of policy innovation typical of the first years of a new governing coalition quickly subsides.Once the regime has achieved its primary policy goals, it faces serious obstacles to further broad innovation.Coalition factions may not find common ground on the policy challenges that now arise; policies enacted at the start of the regime may generate consequences that drive apart coalition participants (Bensel 1990); and regime party politicians may find they can better satisfy their ambitions by responding to the particularistic demands of local policy seekers and constituencies at the expense of a national program.The regime narrative now inhibits bold departures – any call for dramatic innovation clashes with the confident assertion by leading regime politicians that the party has not only met the crisis that ushered it into power but also knows best how to address new challenges.An established regime tends to be conservative, even complacent.

As an added check on continuing regime innovation, partisan opposition to a dominant coalition revives with surprising speed.A striking feature of American politics is the capacity of a party that has been routed at the polls to become competitive again.Even parties discredited by political catastrophe pick themselves up and challenge for power within two or three electoral cycles:the Democrats survived their Civil War association with disloyalty to recapture the House in 1874, while the Republicans dispatched to the political wilderness by the New Deal effectively blocked its expansion by forming a conservative bloc with southern Democrats after 1938.As the latter example illustrates, opposition politicians identify and exploit factional fissures within the regime party.Just as important, the regime’s triggering crisis recedes into the past, so that invoking it has diminishing value for regime politicians.The new issues that replace the crisis do not necessarily map onto the discursive terrain established by the regime, either.In this new issue space can be found opportunity for the opposition.

Loss of zeal and diminished capacity for further innovation, however, do not mean the regime cannot defend its achievements.Where the opposition mounts a serious challenge to core regime commitments, the dominant coalition still has the resources to turn back the threat.The New Deal Democrats faced such a situation after they lost control of Congress in the 1946 election and the Republicans proclaimed their intention to undo some of the policy legacy of the prior decade, especially in the area of labor relations.Plotke (1996) makes a good case for seeing the battle over Taft-Hartley, passed over Truman’s veto, as a Democratic victory at the regime level.The Republicans wounded organized labor but the core principles of the Wagner Act survived the conservative-business assault.

Partisan regimes use institutions both to preserve their policy achievements and to continue satisfying various interests within the regime coalition.(Graber 1993)Power-sharing within institutions can help dampen intra-regime conflict among different factions and interests.To take an obvious example, the allocation of committee power within Congress to specific regime faction can allow each to exercise control over the policy domains that matter most to it.The New Deal Democratic coalition stands out as having refined the committee system most fully to preserve harmony between its sectional wings (Bensel 1984, chap. 7).So long as power-sharing institutional arrangements help regime politicians and policy seekers meet their particularistic, short-term objectives, those arrangements will command sufficient support within the regime party to survive even when no larger agenda unites it.(The Democrats ultimately undid the section-based committee system in the late 1960s and early 1970s when northern Democrats decided it was an impediment to their policy goals and political ambitions.)

Since Congress may fall into the hands of the opposition at some point, partisan regimes also look to institutions beyond Congress to sustain regime gains.During the initial policy upheaval that marks a regime transition, the new dominant party creates and restructures government agencies to carry out its policies and staffs them with public employees sympathetic to the regime.(Shefter 1994)Especially in the modern era, in which federal civil servants have gained significant protections against dismissal, the federal bureaucracy can be an important bastion of regime strength, seen by the regime party and the opposition alike as part of the regime itself..Finally, regimes recognize that they can entrench themselves within the judicial branch to weather temporary electoral setbacks.Gillman (2002) demonstrates that the Republicans after the Civil War did so on at least two occasions.

After the initial impetus behind the regime is spent and the opposition has recovered, politics assumes a form that might best be termed “post-regime.”Other labels, such as “stable regime” or “regime decay,” are misleading in that they suggest the regime is still the driving force behind many political and policy outcomes.By contrast, I maintain the regime operates primarily as a limiting factor, effectively a boundary condition that keeps certain issues off the table.But most outcomes in this phase can be explained without reference to the partisan regime.Post-regime politics leaves many openings for entrepreneurial leaders and policy seekers to pursue new issues and forge different kinds of coalitions.Politicians associated with the regime party may tap its rhetoric and seek to build on established regime alliances; the party remains a means to reduce the transaction costs of policymaking.At the same time, though, regime party politicians are not compelled to operate within the coalition, and some might decide better results can be achieved or their ambitions be satisfied more readily by eschewing regime ties.Meanwhile, opposition politicians may exploit opportunities to peel away regime constituencies whose interests have been left unfulfilled by the initial wave of regime policy change.

The notion of post-regime politics also reflects the loss of effective control that every regime has experienced.Opposition forces not only recover; they win elections and recapture control of one or more branches of the national government, though usually for shorter intervals.In terms of institutional control, the regime party can scarcely be called dominant in such situations.Its continuing influence manifests itself at the level of political discourse, where the opposition still avoids direct confrontation with central regime commitments, and in certain institutions that are buffered from short-term swings in institutional control, such as the judiciary.Thus the brief interval of Democratic control that began with the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 did not undo the effort that began with Ronald Reagan to remake the federal judiciary along conservative lines.For that matter, Clinton’s famous line in his 1995 State of the Union Address, “The era of big government is over,” attests to the continuing power of Reagan Republican ideology.

Although the post-regime period does not preclude sweeping policy innovation, it is unlikely.Recall the factors that facilitated policy upheaval and innovation under a new regime:a crisis with which the old order cannot cope; the accompanying uncertainty that unsettles interests; a compelling narrative; unified support in the emerging partisan coalition for first-order priorities; and the delegitimizing and disorganizing of the opposition.All are unlikely to be present in post-regime politics at the same time.I have noted the lack of agreement within the established regime party on other issues and the revival of the opposition.To these we can add other impediments to broad-scale reform.With the return to more stable conditions, interests assume a more fixed form; as a rule, political actors can alter them only at the margins.The regime narrative typically continues to loom over political debate.

One historical exception is the Progressive movement of the early twentieth century.In this instance, the Republican regime came to power in 1896 behind a weak story that inspired a modest policy agenda and hardly seemed to address the widening disarray of the urban-industrial order.Progressive reformers, journalists, and politicians displaced the regime narrative with a new story about the inadequacy of old institutions for coping with new challenges that ranged from urban poverty to corporate monopolies.Since the Progressive agenda would split either party, Progressives opted to piece together support across party lines, making use of the emerging universe of organized, extra-partisan policy seekers (interest groups) who were prepared to operate outside party structures.(Tichenor and Harris 2002-2003, 595ff.)The Progressive alliances sufficed to secure a number of significant reform measures, though they lacked a foundation in the party system that could sustain the reform coalition.

Regime parties themselves have sometimes been re-energized to produce a second burst of broad reform activity, but these have been the consequence of particular circumstances and causes rather than the result of properties inherent in regimes themselves.The Great Society of the mid-1960s represents one example of regime second-wave policy renewal.Behind the impetus of the civil rights movement and an influx of liberal Democrats representatives and senators from northern states, the Democratic party adopted major civil rights, anti-poverty, and social welfare measures.(Carmines and Stimson 1989)Although Democrats including Lyndon Johnson described the measures as a culmination of the New Deal, their rhetoric stretched the truth; as Mayhew (2005) points out, the issues of the 1960s originated in the postwar era rather than the 1930s.Democrats paid a heavy price for acting to fulfill their new commitments, too, as the civil rights legislation helped shatter the party’s southern wing.Regime theory does not predict such episodes and is poorly suited to explain them.

Post-regime politics may continue indefinitely.The confluence of circumstances that gives rise to a new regime does not occur on a regular schedule.Although the succession of partisan regimes across American history may be described as a recurrent pattern (Skowronek 1993), it is not, strictly speaking, cyclical.A true cyclical process would contain a self-renewing mechanism.That is not the case for partisan regimes:nothing in the regime developmental process necessarily triggers the rise of another dominant partisan coalition.Rather, we can assume that the factors that contribute to regime formation will recur – that is, crises will arise to which the political system responds poorly (with the old regime party likely held responsible because it is most often in power), entrepreneurial politicians will see an opportunity to satisfy their various ambitions by overturning the old order and with their party as the suitable vehicle, these politicians will promote narratives to draw together a coalition in favor of bold reform, and that chance and politics will combine to give one narrative an opening to remake American politics.Whether these factors come together thirty or fifty years apart is beyond the capacity of the theory to predict.

Conclusion

Partisan regime theory is a powerful tool for understanding American political development, provided that the theory’s limitations are respected.The regime framework best accounts for a number of episodes of broad scale political change in American history that centered upon partisan transitions.Unlike realignment theory, its intellectual forerunner, the partisan regime framework attributes these episodes of sweeping policy and political upheaval not to major shifts in voting behavior but to factors largely ignored by the realignment model.Of particular importance to the rise of partisan regimes are the creative leadership of entrepreneurial partisan leaders, the disruptive effects of crises on how policy seekers and citizens understand their interests, the stories partisan leaders tell as devices for identifying first-order goals and delegitimizing the opposition, and the impact of events in validating these stories.Regime building is a risky and costly enterprise that makes sense only under certain circumstances, but the returns to successful partisan leaders are enormous.Besides explaining the burst of rapid change that sweeps across national politics with the advent of a new dominant party coalition, the regime framework accounts for the persistence certain themes in political discourse and durability of the core policies and institutions a regime introduces.The theory does not serve well to explain most political and policy outcomes after the initial wave of innovation.To understand post-regime politics we should look elsewhere.

By describing the ideal type of a partisan regime, I have established a basis for exploring the strengths and weaknesses of particular regimes.In reality, specific historical regimes will approximate the ideal in certain respects while falling short in others.These variations can illuminate the relative importance of the different components that constitute a partisan governing coalition.One comparison illustrates the analytical potential of this approach.The post-1896 Republican regime enjoyed greater control over governing institutions than did the Reagan Republican regime, yet the latter achieved far more dramatic policy change and exercised a continuing sway over political discourse that far exceeded the former.Although space precludes a systematic comparison between the two, one clear advantage of the Reagan Republican coalition was its more compelling narrative foundation.This suggests that the discursive element of partisan regimes may be the single most important element in explaining the variations in their effects, but such an assertion must be considered highly tentative at this point.

The regime framework draws upon a number of analytical approaches that have influenced recent research in American politics and APD, rejecting the view that scholars must choose between them.Reflecting the attention to discourse and narrative that has been an important stream in both policy literature (Stone 1997) and historical research (Smith 1992), regime theory reserves a central role for political narratives in shaping interests and forging coalitions under certain conditions.Historical institutionalist analyses have directed our attention to the interplay between ideas and institutions, how institutional attributes interact to shape outcomes, the importance of actors’ institutional positions in determining policy choices, and the friction among institutions with different origins that are layered atop each other.(Lieberman 2002; Orren and Skowronek, 2004)All of these effects of institutions can be seen in partisan regimes policy outcomes and in regime strategies to preserve their gains. Finally, from rational choice and social choice scholarship, the regime framework derives its emphasis on political ambition, entrepreneurship, transaction costs and problems of collective action.(Aldrich 1995)s24That the framework can span the distance between the microfoundations of politics and systemic political, policy, and discursive developments is one of its significant advantages .

Much work remains to be done.The theory of American partisan regimes appears to suggest broad but indeterminate processes of regime formation.Although the theory anticipates that ambitious leaders will tell stories, it does not offer much guidance on the content of those stories or on whether there are limits to how far narratives can go that are imposed by broader constraining forces in American politics or political culture.Regime theory asserts that partisan entrepreneurs bid for the support of policy seekers, but does not clarify whether some policy seekers occupy a “privileged position.”To what degree is the quest for support constrained by structural economic position?Has this changed over time?Does the need for legitimacy of a party that is challenging the established order preclude policy commitments to mass social movements?The quest for definitive propositions on these and other issues rests upon inductive reasoning and so leads us back to the close study of historical cases.

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Notes