**This class will be taught on Zoom**
In the 1970s, two political scientists, Walter Dean Burnham and William Nisbet Chambers, presented an understanding US political history based on two concepts: critical elections (major realignments in voting behavior producing a new national majority) and party systems (long term periods of stability in voting behavior, the dominant political party, party rhetoric, and federal policy). This approach is still relevant for understanding politics in the period 1832- 1968. In this course, I'll briefly summarize US federal politics from Washington's second administration through the administration of Lyndon Johnson (1968), and then speculate about how politics since then don't fit the previous patterns.
Week by Week Outline
Week 1: Introduction to critical elections and party systems; the origin of US political parties in the administration of George Washington; the reinvention of political parties in the 1830s and the characteristics of the 2nd party system; the critical realignment that produced the election of Lincoln in 1860; the characteristics of the 3rd party sytem (1860-1896).
Week 2: Reminder about realignments and party systems; the 4th party system (1896-1932); the realignment that produced the election of Roosevelt in 1932; the 5th party system (1932-1968); voting behavior and parties since 1968--the "Reagan revolution"; changes in federal regulation and taxation; new patterns of partisan identification in the early 21st century.
