The End of the Republican Era: No. 5 (Julian J.Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture S.) - Hardcover

Inhaltsangabe

In "The End of the Republican Era", Theodore J. Lowi targets political ideology as the problem of central importance in contemporary politics. Lowi identifies four current ideologies: Old (free-market) Liberalism, New (New Deal or statist) Liberalism, Old (patrician or Burkean) Conservatism, and New (Populist or Bible) Conservatism. The role of ideology in American politics has been neglected by political scientists and historians in favour of a realist approach, which looks at group, partisan and constituency interests to explain elections and policies. In this book, however, Lowi describes ideology as an equal and sometimes superior force in electoral and policy outcomes. The account of each of the four traditions is in large part a success story in the affairs of American democracy; but each is also a tragedy, because each possesses the seeds of its own collapse. The book's title is built on two deliberate ambiguities. "End" refers to the anticipated demise of the Republican coalition, because, Lowi argues, all ideological traditions and the coalitions they form are self-defeating - eventually. "End" also refers to objectives, because rationalised objectives define the ideologies and explain both their success and their collapse. In upper case, "Republican" refers to the Republican party, whose intellectual and policy influence has far exceeded the minority position the party has held in the national electorate since virtually 1930. In lower case, "republican" refers to the coalition of Old Liberalism with conservatism, which, according to Lowi, was made possible by a profound negation of democratic politics and of the institutions of representative government. "The End of the Republican Era" can be considered a story of suspense as well as adventure, because the author is unable to determine how the race between Republican and republican will end - and he postulates that the end of the American republic itself is at stake.

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