Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: The Democratic order as a political project
- 1 When does politics change?
- 2 Creating political orders: the logic of the Democratic experience
- 3 Democratic opportunities in the crises of the 1930s
- 4 Passing the Wagner Act and building a new Democratic state
- 5 Party and movements in the Democratic upsurge, 1935–7
- 6 Progressive liberalism as pragmatic common sense
- 7 Surprising years: electing Truman and sustaining the Democratic order, 1947–9
- 8 Passing Taft-Hartley: what the losers won (and what the winners lost)
- 9 New political fronts? growth and civil rights in the 1940s
- 10 Democratic anti-Communism and the Cold War
- 11 From Truman to Kennedy: the reach and limits of Democratic power
- 12 Was the Democratic order democratic?
- Index
1 - When does politics change?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: The Democratic order as a political project
- 1 When does politics change?
- 2 Creating political orders: the logic of the Democratic experience
- 3 Democratic opportunities in the crises of the 1930s
- 4 Passing the Wagner Act and building a new Democratic state
- 5 Party and movements in the Democratic upsurge, 1935–7
- 6 Progressive liberalism as pragmatic common sense
- 7 Surprising years: electing Truman and sustaining the Democratic order, 1947–9
- 8 Passing Taft-Hartley: what the losers won (and what the winners lost)
- 9 New political fronts? growth and civil rights in the 1940s
- 10 Democratic anti-Communism and the Cold War
- 11 From Truman to Kennedy: the reach and limits of Democratic power
- 12 Was the Democratic order democratic?
- Index
Summary
Is there any gain in dividing American political development into phases? If so, how should lines be drawn? Does the resulting framework illuminate political conflicts in the 1930s and 1940s?
American political development has occurred in a series of distinct political orders. The Democratic order defined one major period, marked by a greatly increased role for the federal government in economic regulation and social provision, and by a substantial growth of presidential power. There was a wide expansion of opportunities for political and social action among groups who were politically marginal or excluded from the preceding regimes, from labor in the 1930s to the civil rights movement three decades later.
The Democratic order was liberal in its commitments to individual rights and to representative political institutions. But its liberalism, full of progressive and democratic themes, differed considerably from the main discourses of the preceding political order. “Progressive” meant modernizing reforms, with national coordination of programmatic and administrative efforts. “Democratic” meant broadening the range of groups and individuals actively engaged with politics, and extending basic forms of social and economic security. Combining progressive and democratic themes within a liberal framework was powerful and dynamic.
The preceding claims about the Democratic order rely on concepts of political order and period.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Building a Democratic Political OrderReshaping American Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s, pp. 11 - 46Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996