MODERNIST AND TRADITIONALIST ISSUE GROUPS IN THE AMERICAN PARTY SYSTEM: AN EXAMINATION OF THE REALIGNING POTENTIAL OF CULTURAL ISSUES IN CHANGING CLEAVAGE STRUCTURES (INTEREST GROUPS, POLITICAL PARTIES, SOCIAL ISSUES, REALIGNMENT)

LISA GAYE LANGENBACH, Purdue University

Abstract

Since the 1960's, American society has witnessed dramatic social changes, resulting largely from the demands of newly mobilized groups pushing for racial and sexual equality. Their demands for unprecedented cultural changes reflect a world view we call "modernism." Groups who opposed the range of social changes achieved and proposed by the modernist groups mobilized to maintain or re-establish the traditional social structure. We call this worldview "traditionalism." As distinguished from typical materially motivated interest groups, these new issue groups represent moral concerns, and have resulted in the development of a "politics of morality." Modernist groups entered the Democratic party and traditional groups entered the Republican party due in large part to the reformed nominating convention procedures begun in the early 1970's. This research discusses how these reform measures opened the parties and led to increased political access for previously powerless groups. We then focus on the development and ideological stance of those groups, and examine their demands on the political system, with special emphasis on their role in the political parties. We examine how these groups' elites have joined and/or replaced the previously existing party elites, detailing the changes in the party system, and determining that a new morally based political cleavage is developing in the two major parties. We conclude that this new cleavage is quite salient to a large number of voters and that it may indeed portend a realignment of the two existing parties.

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

Political science

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