Neoliberal Reforms, the Decline of Local Organizations, and the GOP's Rise in Rural America

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Comparative Conservatism (Table 2)

Abstract

The rural-urban divide can feel like a primordial fault line in American politics. Indeed, in 2024, Trump carried rural America by a 20% margin. The emergence of this divide, however, is recent. As late as 1992, rural areas were just 2% more likely to vote Republican than their urban counterparts. What explains this electoral alignment between rural American and the Republican Party? This is the central question of my paper. To answer it, I draw on archival and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a heavily Republican, rural town in Kansas. My tentative argument is that, starting in the 1980s, the economic decline of rural areas, spurred by neoliberal economic reforms, also hollowed out local organizational networks, which previously had served as important moderators on residents’ partisanship. For instance, federated civic clubs, once central to Riverville’s community life, had provided important connections between residents and national parties. As these organizations declined in size and influence, it left a vacuum filled by conservative national media organizations that now operated as key channels of political information.

Author

• Henry Fletcher, Brown University