Predicting the Present: Realigning Elections & Redistributive Policies

Tubbesing brings together two vigorous contemporary modes of analyzing American politics. Policy analysis (Lowi et al.) is brought to party realignment theory (Burnham et al.) to permit formulation of a view concerning realigning elections and the likely shape of our political parties and perhaps our policies. Party realignments in the past involved demands for redistributive policies, but actually were met largely by compromise and thus subsequent crises. The periodic character of past critical elections may not be true of the present period, for expectations of the (strong) presidency are now great, and groups hurt by the president's policies may switch to his opponent, so that the balance between parties is markedly unstable. In place of periodic durable realignments, Tubbesing sees a series of intense elections with substantial switches-a consequence of our having a more integrated decisional structure in the new presidency.