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² On energy, see Uslaner, Eric M., Shale Barrel Politics (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1989).Google Scholar On the budget, see White, Joseph and Wildavsky, Aaron, ‘Public Authority and the Public Interest: What the 1980s Budget Battles Tell Us about the American State’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 1 (1989), 7–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the pork barrel, see, inter alia, Blustein, Paul, ‘US budget increasingly free of pork-barrel spending’, Washington Post, 21 03 1988, A1, A7.Google Scholar On agriculture, see Schneider, Keith, ‘The farm economy is fine and can expect more aid’, New York Times, 4 02 1990, p. E4.Google Scholar On Walker, see Hook, Janet, ‘End-of-Session Vote Spree Inflames Tempers’, Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report (8 10 1988), 2787–8Google Scholar; and Kuntz, Phil, ‘Anti-Drug Plan: Surviving the Legislative Wringer’, Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report (17 12 1988), 3516–21.Google Scholar

³ See Lowi, Theodore J., The End of Liberalism, revised edn (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979).Google Scholar

⁴ Matthews, Donald R.US Senators and Their World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960)Google Scholar: Rohde, David W., Ornstein, Norman J. and Peabody, Robert L., ‘Political Change and Legislative Norms in the US Senate,’ in Parker, Glenn R., ed., Studies of Congress (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1985), pp. 147–88Google Scholar; Smith, Steven S., Call to Order (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1989)Google Scholar; Sinclair, Barbara, The Transformation of the US Senate (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; and Uslaner, Eric M., ‘What Sustains Congressional Norms?’ (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 1990).Google Scholar

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⁸ Floor politics in the Senate may be deemed relatively anarchic, with its almost non-existent rules and its heavy reliance on unanimous consent. See Krehbiel, Keith, ‘Unanimous Consent Agreements: Going Along in the Senate’, Journal of Politics, 48 (1986), 541–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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¹¹ Asher, Herbert B., ‘The Learning of Legislative Norms’, American Political Science Review, 67 (1973), 499–513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar There is also the problem of preference revelation: one can never be sure that any exchange involves something of value to both sides.

¹² Sinclair, , The Transformation of the US Senate, pp. 94, 111–29Google Scholar; and Smith, , Cali to Order, 139–44.Google Scholar

¹³ Martin, Joe, My First Fifty Years in Politics, as told to Robert Donovan (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), p. 9.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Plattner, Andy, ‘Republicans Walk Out in Protest After House Seats McCloskey’, Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report (5 05 1985), 821–5Google Scholar; Davis, Joseph A., ‘Energy and Commerce Republicans Stay on “Strike”’, Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report (9 03 1985), p. 461Google Scholar: Dewar, Helen, ‘Senate civility frays under workload’, Washington Post, 11 08 1986, pp. A1, A4Google Scholar; and Fuerbringer, Jonathan, ‘Temper, temper, temper’, New York Times, 11 02 1986, p. A26.Google Scholar On Dole's generally icy relationship with Byrd compared with the late Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen's affinity for former Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, see Burdett Loomis, ‘Minority Party Leadership in the US Senate: The Dirksen and Dole Eras’ (presented at the Conference on ‘Back to the Future: The United States Congress in the Twentieth Century’, Carl Albert Congressional Research Center, University of Oklahoma, April 1990).

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¹⁸ Pitney, John J. Jr, ‘The Conservative Opportunity Society’ (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, San Francisco, 1988).Google Scholar

¹⁹ Huitt, Ralph K., ‘The Outsider in the Senate: An Alternative Role’, American Political Science Review, 55 (1961), 566–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ehrenhalt, Alan, ‘In the Senate of the '80s, Team Spirit Has Given Way to the Rule of Individuals,’ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report (4 09 1982), 2181Google Scholar; and Peterson, Bill, ‘Study says senators do less with more’, Washington Post, 25 12 1985, p. A13.Google Scholar

²⁰ Quoted in Ehrenhalt, , ‘In the Senate of the '80s’, p. 2176.Google Scholar

²¹ Barnes, Bart, ‘Former Iowa Rep. H. R. Gross dies at 88’, Washington Post, 24 09 1987, p. D6Google Scholar; Hunter, Marjorie, ‘“There is a dark cloud hanging over this chamber”’, New York Times, 3 05 1985, p. B6.Google Scholar

²² Loomis, Burdett, The New American Politician (New York: Basic Books, 1988), p. 48.Google Scholar As might be expected, support for the norms of seniority and legislative apprenticeship were considerably lower, while institutional loyalty was virtually non-existent (Asher, , ‘The Learning of Legislative Norms’, pp. 503, 508).Google Scholar

²³ For a discussion of these reforms, see Rieselbach, Leroy N., Congressional Reform (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1986).Google Scholar

²⁴ For a statement of this position, see Smith, , Call to Order.Google Scholar See also Sinclair, , The Transformation of the US Senate, pp. 64–8.Google Scholar

²⁵ Ehrenhalt, , ‘In the Senate of the '80s’Google Scholar; Smith, Steven S. and Deering, Christopher J., Committees in Congress (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Smith, , Call to Order, chap. 5.Google Scholar

²⁶ Wilkerson, Isabel, ‘A new breed of legislator: too modern to be clubby’, New York Times, 25 02 1986, pp. Bl, B4Google Scholar; Press, Canadian, ‘Grow up, MP tells colleagues’, Montreal Gazelle, 5 06 1986, p. 1Google Scholar; Walters, Dan, ‘A different atmosphere’, Sacramento Bee, 10 09 1986Google Scholar; Haberman, Clyde, ‘Straight talk brings down Japanese House’, New York Times, 14 02 1986, p. A6Google Scholar; and Peterson, Bill, ‘City Council rules insults out of order – sometimes’, Washington Post, 11 11 1988, p. A3.Google Scholar On the Supreme Court, note the opinions of Justices Antonin Scalia and Harry Blackmun in the Missouri abortion case decided in July 1989. Scalia stated in his concurrence: ‘Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor's assertion that a “fundamental rule of judicial restraint” requires us to avoid reconsidering Roe cannot be taken seriously.’ Blackmun's dissent was even sharper: ‘Never in my memory has a plurality announced a judgment of this Court that so foments disregard for the law and for our outstanding decisions. Nor in my memory has a plurality gone about its business in such a deceptive fashion.’ See New York Times, ‘Excerpts from Court Decision on the Regulation of Abortion’, 4 07 1989, pp. 12–13.Google Scholar In an earlier dissent over a civil rights case, Blackmun was only slightly less acerbic: ‘I can find no justification for the bare majority's apparent eagerness to consider rewriting well-established law.’ See Taylor, Stuart Jr, ‘Court, 5–4, votes to restudy rights in minority suits’, New York Times, 4 04 1988, pp. A1, A24.Google Scholar For another comparison, between 20 and 31 per cent of legislators in Belgium, Italy and Switzerland believe that it is at least ‘acceptable’ behaviour to criticize a colleague's sincerity publicly. See Loewenberg, Gerhard and Mann, Thomas C., ‘Individual and Structural Influences on the Perceptions of Legislative Norms in Three European Parliaments’, American Journal of Political Science, 32 (1988), 155–77, especially p. 160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar There are no over-time data to indicate whether collegiality has declined in these countries, but the data do point to an ominous tendency.

²⁷ We often presume that structural reforms ‘cause’ changes in outcomes when there are larger societal forces that are behind both. For a similar account in another context (party nomination reforms), see Reiter, Howard L., Selecting the President (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1985).Google Scholar

²⁸ Smith does recognize the impact of external forces (see Call to Order, p. 92Google Scholar), but he nevertheless seems to give priority to structural factors.

²⁹ For an argument that institutions are indeed exogenous, see Gamm, Gerald and Shepsle, Kenneth, ‘Emergence of Legislative Institutions: Standing Committees in the House and Senate, 1810–1825’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, 14 (1989), 39–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁰ Oreskes, Michael, ‘The television politicians rise in Congress, too’, New York Times, 18 06 1989, p. E4Google Scholar: Loomis, , The New American Politician, pp. 87–8Google Scholar; Fenno, Richard F. Jr, ‘The Senate Through the Looking Glass: The Debate over Television’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, 14 (1989), 313–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ehrenhalt, Alan, ‘Media, Power Shifts Dominate O'Neill's House’, Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 13 09 1986, 2131–8.Google Scholar

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³³ Ehrenhalt, Alan, ‘Technology, Strategy Bring New Campaign Era’, Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report (13 09 1985), 2131–8Google Scholar; Ornstein, Norman J., Mann, Thomas E., Malbin, Michael J., Schick, Allen and Bibby, John F., comps., Vital Statistics on the Congress, 1984–85 Edition (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1984), pp. 58–9, 82–3Google Scholar; Hess, Stephen, The Ultimate Insiders (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1986)Google Scholar; and Sinclair, , The Trans formation of the US Senate, pp. 64–8.Google Scholar

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³⁵ Ranney, Austin, Channels of Power (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 144.Google Scholar

³⁶ Television advertising is prohibited in Japanese election campaigns.

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³⁸ ‘Confidence in US Supreme Court, Congress up sharply’, Gallup Report (07 1985), pp. 2–9.Google Scholar

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⁴⁰ Toman, Barbara, ‘Will the telly turn Britain's feisty MPs into milquetoast?’ Wall Street Journal, 21 11 1989Google Scholar; and Frankel, Glenn, ‘Cameras come to Commons,’ Washington Post, 22 11 1989, p. D3.Google Scholar Alastair Hetherington, Kay Weaver and Michael Ryle believe that television may have led Members of Parliament to become somewhat more polite, but its principal effect has been to show the public why the Commons is often rowdy. See their Cameras in the Commons (London: Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government, 1990), p. 13.Google Scholar

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⁴² Loomis, , The New American Politician, p. 28.Google Scholar To be fair, Loomis does argue in depth as to how these new members differed from the predecessors, citing (albeit briefly) such events as Watergate and the war in Vietnam.

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⁴⁵ Foley, Michael, The New Senate (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Sinclair, , The Transformation of the US SenateGoogle Scholar, chap. 3; Clubb, Jerome M., Flanigan, William H. and Zingale, Nancy H., Partisan Realignment (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1980)Google Scholar; Canon, , ‘Political Amateurism in the United States Congress’, p. 69Google Scholar; and Brady, David W., Critical Elections and Congressional Policy-Making (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 39.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Canon, , ‘Political Amateurism in the United States Congress’.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Even these contests were distinctive, since a large number of Republican Senators first elected in 1980 after holding no previous office were displaced by Democratic challengers who had substantially stronger credentials.

⁴⁸ Lurie, Alison, ‘Does politeness lead to virtue?’Google Scholar (review of Martin, Judith, Common Courtesy), New York Times Book Review, 10 11 1985, p. 13Google Scholar; Barron, James, ‘40 legislatures act to readjust liability rules’, New York Times, 14 07 1986, pp. A1, A15Google Scholar; and Noble, Kenneth P., ‘Labor Dept. data show a revival of major strikes’, New York Times, 21 09 1986, P.A31.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Hardin, Russell, ‘Trusting Persons, Trusting Institutions’ (University of Chicago, mimeo, 1990).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Lipset, Seymour Martin and Schneider, William, The Confidence Gap (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

⁵¹ The question is simply, ‘Do you think most people can be trusted?’ Differences in question wording make longitudinal analysis with other wording tricky. This question was asked in 1948, 1952, 1953, twice in 1954, 1957, 1963, 1966 and 1983. A polynomial GLS estimation yielded: Time = 64.48 + 1.12 × Time −0.037 × Time², R² = 0.57, rho = 0.335. The respective t-values are 13.20, 1.535 and −2.029. The turning point was found by taking the derivative of trust with respect to time, setting it equal to zero and solving.

⁵² Mayhew, David R., Party Loyalty Among Congressmen (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵³ On energy, see Uslaner, , Shale Barrel PoliticsGoogle Scholar; on other issues in Congress, see Sinclair, Barbara, Congressional Realignment (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982).Google Scholar On voters' ties to parties, see Wattenberg, Martin P., The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952–1984 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

⁵⁴ See Lowi, , The Enti of LiberalismGoogle Scholar; and Lowi, , ‘The Welfare State: Ethical Foundations and Constitutional Remedies,’ Political Science Quarterly, 101 (1986), 197–220, especially at p. 216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁵ On the American environmental movement, see Vogel, David, National Styles of Regulation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; on the women's movement, see Mansbridge, Jane, Why We Lost the ERA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Reinhold, Robert, ‘Amarillo, up 36%, tops Texas cities in crime rate’, New York Times, 25 08 1986, p. A11Google Scholar; Reinhold, , ‘Oil's collapse leads to rise in arson’, New York Times, 4 08 1986, p. A8Google Scholar; Robbins, William, ‘Farm belt suicides reflect greater hardship and deepening despondency’, New York Times, 14 02 1986, p. A11Google Scholar; and Malcolm, Andrew, ‘LaRouche Illinois drive focused on rural areas’, New York Times, 31 03 1986, p. A12.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Siconfoli, Michael, ‘Many US producers of raw materials find low prices disastrous’, Wall Street Journal, 16 08 1986, pp. 1, 15.Google Scholar For a more extended discussion, see Uslaner, Eric M., ‘The Decline of Comity in Congress’ (paper presented at the 1987 annual meetings of the American Politics Group of the Political Studies Association, London, and the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago).Google Scholar

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⁵⁹ Rohde, David, ‘Something's Happening Here, What It Is Ain't Exactly Clear’, in Fiorina, Morris P. and Rohde, David W., eds, Home Style and Washington Work (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989) pp. 137–63Google Scholar; and Wallenberg, Martin P., ‘The Reagan Polarization Phenomenon and the Continuing Downward Slide in Presidential Candidate Popularity,’ American Politics Quarterly, 14 (1986), 219–45.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Some contentious issues with coalitions crossing party lines, such as natural gas deregulation, did not lie dormant in the Reagan era. See Uslaner, , Shale Barrel Politics, chap. 5.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Smith, , Call to Order, p. 147.Google Scholar

⁶² Quoted in Haynes, George H., The Senate of the United States, Vol. 2 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1960), p. 1068.Google Scholar Originally published in 1938.

⁶³ Incidents not otherwise cited were gathered from compilations by the Historians of the House of Representatives (Raymond Smock) and of the Senate (Richard Baker). These compilations also form the basis for Table 1. See US House of Representatives Office for the Bicentennial, Aggressive and Violent ActsGoogle Scholar (Washington: n. d.) and Senate Historical Office, Breaches of Comity in the Senate Chamber (29 07 1988).Google Scholar

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⁶⁵ Adams, Henry, The Education of Henry Adams (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1918), p. 45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁶ The instruments of war were more varied in the highly partisan era of the late 1890s and the first decade of the twentieth century including an inkwell and a volume of the US Statutes, as well as the famed pitchfork of ‘Pitchfork Ben’ Tillman aimed at his own colleague from South Carolina. John McLaurin. See Cohen, William S., Roll Call (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981). pp. 103–4.Google Scholar Such events are infrequent in more recent times, with exceptions such as the wrestling match between Senators Strom Thurmond (SC), then still a Democrat, and Ralph Yarborough (D, Tex.) and an incident in which Rep. Henry Gonzalez (D, Tex.) at age 70 punched a man in a restaurant in San Antonio for allegedly calling him a communist. See UPI, ‘Rep. Gonzalez punches man in restaurant,’ Washington Post, 6 12 1986, p. A12.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ This account draws upon Gienapp, William E., The Origins of the Republican Party (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar: Donald, David, Charles Simmer and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967)Google Scholar; and Potter, David M., The Impending Crisis, completed and edited by Fehrenbacher, Donald E. (New York: Harper and Row, 1976).Google Scholar The quotations from the Sumner speech below are taken from Donald, , Charles Sunmer and the Coming of the Civil War, pp. 286 and 287Google Scholar, and from Potter, , The Impending Crisis, p. 209.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Potter, , The Impending Crisis, p. 221Google Scholar; and Senate Historical Office, Breaches of Comity in the Senate Chamber (29 06 1988).Google Scholar The incident involved Tillman and McLaurin (see fn. 65 above).

⁶⁹ Potter, , The Impending Crisis, p. 67.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Yarwood, Dean L., ‘Norm Observance and Legislative Integration: The US Senate in 1850 and 1860’, Social Science Quarterly, 51 (1970), 57–69.Google Scholar The relative size of groups of co-operators and defectors is the determining element in the norm enforcement models of Axelrod and Frank. See Axelrod, Robert, ‘An Evolutionary Approach to Norms’, American Political Science Review, 80 (1986), 1095–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Frank, Robert H., Passions Within Reason (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988).Google Scholar

⁷¹ Galloway, George B., History of the House of Representatives (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1962), p. 46Google Scholar; and Polsby, Nelson W., ‘The Institutionalization of the US House of Representatives’, American Political Science Review, 62 (1988), 144–68, especially at p. 164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷² Nichols, Roy Franklin, The Disruption of American Democracy (New York: Collier, 1962 (1st edn. 1948)), p. 20.Google Scholar See also Wiebe, Robert H., The Opening of American Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), pp. 328–9.Google Scholar

⁷³ Morison, Samuel Eliot, The Oxford History of the American People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 574Google Scholar; and Wiebe, , The Opening of American Society, p. 323.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Schattschneider, E. E., The Semisovereign People (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960).Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Nichols, , The Disruption of American Democracy, p. 21Google Scholar; Potter, , The Impending Crisis, p. 329Google Scholar; and Kleppner, Paul, The Third Electoral System (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), p. 66.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Silbey, Joel H., The Partisan Imperative: The Dynamics of American Politics Before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 71, 78Google Scholar, cf. Silbey, , ‘The Surge of Republican Power: Partisan Antipathy, American Social Conflict, and the Coming of Civil War’, in Maizlish, Stephen E. and Kushma, John J., eds, Essays on American Antebellum Politics, 1840–1860 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1982), pp. 199–229.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Wiebe, , The Opening of American Society, p. 324Google Scholar; and McCormick, , The Parly Period and Public Policy, p. 216.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ McCormick, , The Party Period and Public Policy, p. 164Google Scholar; Gienapp, , ‘Politics Seem to Enter into Everything: Political Culture in the North, 1840–1860’Google Scholar, in Maizlish, and Kushma, , eds, Essays on American Antebellum Politics, 1840–1860, pp. 15–69, esp. p. 48Google Scholar; and Nichols, , The Disruption of American Democracy, pp. 20, 253.Google Scholar This is the majority viewpoint among historians. For a very different perspective, arguing that parties were vibrant, very cohesive, strongly ideological and marked by a cohesive social network that extended across every level of government (down to volunteer fire departments), see Silbey, , The Partisan Imperative.Google Scholar Silbey presents a strong party system at every level, including legislative voting in Congress, party programs and consistent voting across elections by citizens.

⁷⁹ Potter, , The Impending Crisis, p. 77Google Scholar; Donald, , Lincoln Reconsidered, 2nd edn (New York: Vintage, 1956), p. 228Google Scholar; and Wiebe, , The Opening of American Society, p. 349–51.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ This section draws heavily, both with and without citations, upon McCormick, , The Party Period and Public Policy, pp. 201–16.Google Scholar

⁸¹ McCormick, , The Party Period and Public Policy, p. 210.Google Scholar

⁸² See Weingast, Barry, ‘A Rational Choice Approach to Congressional Norms’, American Journal of Political Science, 23 (1979), 245–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸³ McCormick, , The Party System and Public Policy, pp. 209, 211, 207.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Brady, , Critical Elections and Congressional Policy-Making, p. 39.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Ginsberg, Benjamin, ‘Critical Elections and the Substance of Party Conflict’, American Journal of Political Science, 16 (1972), 603–25Google Scholar; Brady, , Critical Elections and Congressional Policy-Making, p. 45Google Scholar; and Bogue, , The Congressman's Civil War, p. 16.Google Scholar See the results of an unpublished study by Alexander, Thomas B., ‘The Dimensions of Voter Partisan Consistency in Presidential Elections from 1840 to 1860’ (presented as part of the Walter Prescott Webb Lecture Series, University of Texas – Arlington, 1981Google Scholar; cited in Silbey, , The Partisan imperative, p. 93).Google Scholar The Study concludes that about 90 per cent of voters stayed with the same party from one presidential election to the next from 1836 to 1860. More generally, Polsby, (‘The Institutionalization of the US House of Representatives’, p. 168)Google Scholar finds little in common between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The latter is norm-driven, the former was not. To be sure, the nastiness that occurred after Polsby wrote is of a different order of magnitude than one finds in the contemporary Congress, but norm disruption hardly requires what he called an ‘era of guns and dogs, canings and fisticuffs’.

⁸⁶ Silbey, , The Partisan Imperative, pp. 99–100.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Cf. Silbey, , The Partisan Imperative, pp. 39–40Google Scholar with Rohde, ‘Something's Happening Here’.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Alternatively, one could argue that the current woes began with the McCarthy era of the late 1940s and early 1950s. However passionate the arguments were over communism, they did not constitute a mass movement as did the civil rights crusade.

⁸⁹ Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stimson do argue that there has been a major shift in American politics based upon race, but they deny that this has been a realignment as we have traditionally discussed it. See their Issue Evolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).Google Scholar If they are correct, the transformation would be unique simply because it has not dominated public discourse. It is far from clear, however, that anything like a realignment has occurred.

⁹⁰ The era preceding the 1896 realignment is marked (see Table 1) by a slight blip in the number of breaches of comity. More critically, it was a period of large-scale obstructionism within Congress. See Strahan, Randall, ‘Reed and Rostenkowski: Congressional Leadership in Institutional Time’ (paper presented at the Conference on ‘Back to the Future: The United States Congress in the Twenty-First Century’, Carl Albert Congressional Research Center, University of Oklahoma, 1990).Google Scholar The decade preceding this realignment had an all-time high number of contested elections; see Polsby, , ‘The Institutionalization of the US House of Representatives’, p. 164.Google Scholar I have not yet investigated this era in any depth. On the other hand, the period leading up to the 1930s realignment does not appear to be quite so contentious, most likely because the political transformation was so massive and so swift (see the text below). There were relatively few contested elections in the decade preceding this realignment.

⁹¹ For an explicit comparison, albeit a not very balanced one, see Krieger, Joel, Reagan, Thatcher and the Politics of Decline (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).Google Scholar A better treatment of Thatcher's norm-busting is Hall, Peter, Governing the Economy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 126–32.Google Scholar On norms in the British system, see Searing, Donald, ‘Rules of the Game in Britain: Can Politicians Be Trusted?’ American Political Science Review, 76 (1982), 239–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In the House of Commons, standing orders to punish members for violations of order were employed nineteen times between 1945 and 1979, but fourteen times between 1979 and 1983 and eight times between June 1983 and February 1985. See Judge, David, ‘Disorder in the House of Commons’, Public Law (1985), 368–76 (especially p. 370)Google Scholar, for an analysis of Britain that parallels mine for the United States.

⁹² Lewis, Paul, ‘As Protest Turns Ugly, Cherchez le Provacateur’, New York Times, 12 12 1986, p. A4.Google Scholar

⁹³ See Inglehart, Ronald, The Silent Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; and Kitschelt, Herbert P., ‘Structures and Sequences of Nuclear Energy Policy-Making’, in Epping-Andersen, Gosta and Friedlander, Roger, eds, Political Power and Social Theory (New York: JAI Press, 1982), pp. 271–308.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ For the utility of a cultural thesis, see Uslaner, , Shale Barrel PoliticsGoogle Scholar, especially chap. 7. While I do not think that institutional accounts will take us very far, I do not dismiss any role for institutions. After all, in the contemporary American context, the extent (higher) and direction (less partisan) of rancour in the Senate differs from that in the House. Overall, however, this is a matter of degree rather than of kind.