Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T15:13:25.719Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Micropolitics in Macro Perspective: The Political History of Walter Dean Burnham

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Extract

It has now been over twenty years since The American Political Science Review published “The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe” by Walter Dean Burnham (1965). This remarkably rich work is at once a study of historical variations in citizen electoral behavior, of the partisan realignment of 1896 and the realignment process in general, and of the connections between voter behavior and the patterns of American politics and public policy. It also raises fundamental epistemological issues about the relationship of micro-level and macro-level phenomena in politics—especially the inherent limitations of single-shot public opinion surveys or of a focus on a single political period in understanding the full range of possibilities for citizen involvement in a democratic political order. Unlike many scholarly works which rise meteor-like to prominence then rapidly vanish, “Changing Shape” remains at least as influential today as it was twenty years ago.

Type
Walter Dean Burnham and the Dynamics of American Politics
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1986 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramson, R. and Aldrich, J. (1982) “The decline of electoral participation in America.” The American Political Science Review 76: 94108Google Scholar
Beck, P. A. (1985) “Choice, context, and consequence: beaten and unbeaten paths toward a science of electoral behavior,” in Weisberg, Herbert (ed.) Political Science: The Science of Politics. New York: Agathon Press.Google Scholar
Burnham, W. D.(1965) “The changing shape of the American political universe.” The American Political Science Review 59: 728.Google Scholar
Burnham, W.D. (1970) Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Burnham, W. D. (1974) “Theory and voting research: some reflections on Converse’s ‘change in the American electorate.’The American Political Science Review 68: 10021023.Google Scholar
Burnham, W. D. (1981) “The system of 1896: an analysis,” in Kleppner, Paul et al. The Evolution of American Electoral Systems. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press: 147202.Google Scholar
Campbell, A. (1966) “A classification of the presidential elections,” in Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E. (eds.) Elections and the Political Order. New York: Wiley and Sons: 6377.Google Scholar
Campbell, A., Converse, P. E., Miller, W. E., and Stokes, D. E. (1960) The American Voter. New York: Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
Chambers, W. N. and Burnham, W. D. (1967) The American Party Systems. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Converse, P. E. (1972) “Change in the American electorate,” in Campbell, Angus and Converse, Phillip E. (eds.) The Human Meaning of Social Change. New York: Russell Sage Foundation: 263337.Google Scholar
Converse, P. E. (1974) “Comment on Burnham’s ‘theory and voting research.’The American Political Science Review 68: 10241027.Google Scholar
Fiorina, M. (1981) Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hartz, L. (1955) The Liberal Tradition in America. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.Google Scholar
Jensen, R. (1971) The Winning of the Midwest. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kelley, S., Ayres, R. E., and Bowen, W. G. (1967) “Registration and voting: putting first things first.” The American Political Science Review 51: 359379.Google Scholar
Key, V. O. Jr. (1949) Southern Politics in State and Nation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Key, V. O. Jr.(1955) “A theory of critical elections.” The Journal of Politics 17: 318.Google Scholar
Key, V. O. Jr.(1956) American State Politics: An Introduction. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Key, V. O. Jr.(1959) “Secular realignment and the party system.” The Journal of Politics 21: 198210.Google Scholar
Kinder, D. R. and Kiewiet, D. R. (1981) “Sociotropic politics: the American case.” British Journal of Political Science 11: 129161.Google Scholar
Kleppner, P. (1970) The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Kleppner, P. (1979) The Third Electoral System, 1853-1892. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Kleppner, P.(1982) Who Voted? New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Powell, G. B. Jr. (1980) “Voting turnout in thirty democracies: partisan, legal, and socio-economic influences,” in Rose, Richard (ed.) Electoral Participation. Beverly Hills, California: Sage Publishers: 534.Google Scholar
Robey, J. S. (1982) “Reputations vs. citations: who are the top scholars in political science?PS 15: 199200.Google Scholar
Rostow, W. W. (1978) The World Economy: History and Prospect. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Rusk, J. G. (1968) “The effect of the Australian ballot reform on split ticket voting: 1876-1908.”The American Political Science Review 64:12201238.Google Scholar
Rusk, J. G. (1974) “Comment: the American electoral universe: speculation and evidence.” The American Political Science Review 68: 10281049.Google Scholar
Schattschneider, E. E. (1960) The Semi-Sovereign People. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.Google Scholar
Social Science Citation Index, 1969-1984.Google Scholar
Verba, S., Nie, N. H., and Kim, J. O. (1978) Participation and Political Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, W. (1885) Congressional Government. New York: Meridian Books, 1956 Edition.Google Scholar
Wolfinger, R. E. and Rosenstone, S. J., (1980) Who Votes? New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar