Partisans and Partners: The Politics of the Post-Keynesian Society

by Josh Pacewicz

Overview

There’s no question that Americans are bitterly divided by politics. But in Partisans and Partners, Josh Pacewicz finds that our traditional understanding of red/blue, right/left, urban/rural division is too simplistic.

Wheels-down in Iowa—that most important of primary states—Pacewicz looks to two cities, one traditionally Democratic, the other traditionally Republican, and finds that younger voters are rejecting older-timers’ strict political affiliations. A paradox is emerging—as the dividing lines between America’s political parties have sharpened, Americans are at the same time growing distrustful of traditional party politics in favor of becoming apolitical or embracing outside-the-beltway candidates. Pacewicz sees this change coming not from politicians and voters, but from the fundamental reorganization of the community institutions in which political parties have traditionally been rooted. Weaving together major themes in American political history—including globalization, the decline of organized labor, loss of locally owned industries, uneven economic development, and the emergence of grassroots populist movements—Partisans and Partners is a timely and comprehensive analysis of American politics as it happens on the ground.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226402697
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	11/18/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Josh Pacewicz is assistant professor of sociology and urban studies at Brown University.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Introduction: Partisans and Partners 1

Part I Keynesianism

1 The Old Families 31

2 The Lions of Labor 58

3 Politics Embedded in Community Governance: The Community Leadership Party 80

Part II Neoliberalism

4 The Political Construction of Partnership 111

5 Prairieville's Business Community in Transition 141

6 The Ben Denison Campaign: How Partners Failed to Colonize Politics 166

Part III Neoliberalism (Continued): Politics Disembedded From Community Governance

7 The Activist Party 195

8 What Regular People Think 226

9 How Obama Won the Heartland (Thrice) 249

Conclusion: The Politics of the Post-Keynesian Society 277

Acknowledgments 303

Methodological Appendix 309

Notes 331

Bibliography 361

Index 375

Editorial Reviews

When it comes to putting big projects together, there’s generally much greater cooperation these days at the local level than there was a generation or two ago. Maybe that’s one reason why American politics has become so polarized. That may sound like a leap in logic, but sociologist Josh Pacewicz lays out an intriguing case in his book Partisans and Partners.

Governing

This superb study of the transformations of local political power in the United States over the past forty years doubles as a beautiful, tender, and evocative portrait of two whole ways of life, and triples as a set of answers to the most burning political questions of the day. Local politicians, party members, scholars of politics and culture, nonprofit managers, voters: everyone should read this book! By bringing poetry, science, and history to bear on our country—and world’s—most urgent political and social questions, Partisans and Partners ought to become a classic.

University of Southern California Nina Eliasoph

"Investigates how politicians and political parties have become more divided and partisan, as opposed to American voters, presenting the case that community institutions have been fundamentally reorganized since 1970s- and ’80s-era federal reforms ended protective regulations and cut off federal transfers."

Journal of Economic Literature

Co-Winner, Theory Prize, Theory Section, American Sociological Association (2018)

Theory Prize

This book highlights community development and partisan politics. . . .Detailed with lots of interesting quotes from actual citizen-voters.

Middle West Review

A great work of public sociology. . . .Pacewicz’s book is a theoretically-informed, analytically rigorous and empirically rich account of the dynamics and problems of contemporary American democracy. It is a precious work of a real social science, critically bringing together the outcomes of different disciplinary perspectives into a broader theoretical picture with direct public implications.

Sociologica

A tale of two cities, and through them, of the tidal shifts of American politics in the last forty years. Based on years of painstaking field work as well as on archival and documentary analysis, the book develops a whole new approach to theorizing American political life. This will be one of the definitive American political ethnographies, right up there with Robert Dahl’s Who Governs?”

University of Chicago Andrew Abbott