Social Welfare, Social Class, and the U.S. Party System, 1945-2016

• In Event: Parties and American Political Development

Abstract

Social welfare and social class have long been saluted as formative influences on the postwar American party system. Yet that system has evolved from one that was powerfully structured by political regions to one that is instead powerfully restructured by partisan polarization. This paper examines the evolution of welfare concerns and class influences within this latter dynamic, asking:
1) How central were social welfare as a policy and social class as a cleavage to the instantiation of the postwar party system?
2) How did regionalism shape, and what did it contribute to, the degree and role of this centrality?
3) What has happened to the resulting relationship among welfare, class, and partisanship across time? And lastly,
4) Did this relationship change the comparative force of regionalism and polarization, or did that change instead alter the role of social welfare and social class?

Authors

• Regina Wagner, University of Alabama

• Byron E. Shafer, University of Wisconsin