130504

AMERICA’S THREE  REGIMES  (PART ONE)

1730-1830, ELITE REPUBLIC

Histories of Futures

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 DIMENSIONS OF POLITICS                                                         DIMENSIONS OF POSTS

Sectors: All                                                                                    Importance: *****

Level: National                                                                              Scope: USA only

Period: Long run                                                                           Process: Power politics

MAIN TOPIC: AMERICAN POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT                 Treatment: Background

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INTRODUCTION

Regime components

Constitutional dualism

Issue dimensions

 

1730-1830, ELITE  REPUBLIC

Supranational

National

Subnational

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SERIES

 

This Post is one in a Series sketching HISTORIES OF FUTURES of American politics. The Series tries to identify processes that have run through most of American political history, continue today, and may well continue into the future.

 

This Post is the first of three on REGIMES in American political history. This Post introduces the concept and America’s first regime, an Elite Republic (1730-1830). The next two Posts will continue with Mass Democracy (1830-1930) and Populist Technocracy (1930-2030).

 

Earlier Posts in this Series outlined the succession of American political GENERATIONS (030316, 100323), historical tensions within American political IDEOLOGY (130330, 130406) and subnational spatial formations (130413 REGIONS, 130420 LOCALITIES).

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SOURCES

 

This Post draws heavily on historian Morton Keller 2007America’s three regimes. New York NY: Oxford University Press, 336 pages. There are many other fine histories of American politics, but Keller’s is particularly analytical in dividing American political development into three different “regimes”: Three different sets of relationships between state and society. Keller is at pains to refute economic-determinist and radically critical interpretations of American political history, emphasizing instead the autonomous role of political culture and the self-correcting nature of American politics. 

 

The Post also draws heavily on research – both qualitative and quantitative – from the relatively new political science subfield of American Political Development.  We particularly emphasize the pathbreaking quantitative work of Keith Poole and his associates. Many of their analyses of congressional rollcall votes are available on Poole’s website www.voteview.com. Poole is certainly neither an economic determinist nor a political radical, but he does emphasize the interaction between economics and politics and he does note economic excesses and political breakdowns.

 

Scholars of American Political Development are beginning to integrate qualitative historical narrative and quantitative empirical analysis. Such a synthesis promises to bring unprecedented interest and depth, clarity and and precision to the analysis of American political development.  

See Keith T. Poole 2008 “The roots of the polarization of modern U.S. politics.”  Also Eversen-Valelly-Wiseman “NOMINATE and American political history: A primer.” Both are unpublished PDFs on Poole’s site under Research: Working papers.   

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                               AMERICA’S  THREE   REGIMES   (PART  ONE)

                                                 1730-1830,  ELITE  REPUBLIC

 

We begin by explaining the concept of “regime,” then turn to America’s first regime: an Elite Republic (1730-1830). Subsequent Posts treat Mass Democracy (1830-1930) and Populist Technocracy (1930-2030). Obviously the dates are approximate, schematized to make them easy to remember.

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Since their origins in the 1700s, America’s politics have always involved some form of representative democracy interacting with some form of capitalist economy and with some mix of diverse peoples and cultures.

 

The external setting has usually been one of relative openness: relative geopolitical security permitting relatively open economic flows of trade and investment and also relatively open sociocultural flows of immigrants and ideas. (With significant exceptions, of course.)

 

The internal setting has usually involved significant cleavages, both economic and cultural: between rapidly shifting economic classes and interests, and between gradually evolving regional alliances (unfortunately usually involving a traditionalist South protecting its right to discriminate against blacks).

 

Nevertheless, each of these continuities has varied and the continuities have combined in different ways. The result has been, in three different periods, a succession of three different “regimes”: overall configurations of supranational, national, and subnational components across the three major sectors: military-political, political-economic, and socio-cultural.       

 

The exact definition and periodization of successive regimes is not crucial. The main point is to become alert to the possibility of SHIFTS between types of regime – past, present, and future. Particularly present and future:  American politics in the early 21^st century is a struggle over whether to build up or tear down the liberal-Democratic regime of the New Deal and Great Society and over how to manage the international order that the USA has largely established.  Knowing that the stakes are so high makes watching American politics more interesting and worthwhile.

 

The various components of each of America’s three political regimes have been somewhat internally consistent with each other. However, by the 2000s, successive regimes have cumulated into the USA’s present combination of old and new elements. How each regime has functioned has been crucially affected by the number of general issue-dimensions formed by the specific issues that parties have raised.

 

READERS  WHO  DO  NOT  WANT  DETAILED  DEFINITIONS  MAY  WISH  TO  SKIP  DOWN  ABOUT A  DOZEN  PARAGRAPHS  TO  “1730-1830,  ELITE REPUBLIC.”

 

Regime components

 

The word REGIME means “a form of rule.” Political science uses the term in many ways. Comparative politics has long used it to mean a characteristic relationship between state and society. That is the main meaning here, though we add the idea ofa characteristic relationship between a nation and its supranational environment. We also add the notion of a characteristic relationship between national arrangements and subnational cleavages.

 

Internally, “regime” includes not only government institutions (“the state”) but also three supplementary components connecting world, state, and society: Organization, Ideology, and Operation. First (hardware), the particular  ORGANIZATIONS connecting formal government to and from economy and society, and to and from the supranational environment. Those organizations are both a bridge and a buffer: enabling and facilitating but also limiting and simplifying interactions. All this in ways that not only perform (hopefully useful) societal functions but that also serve the interests of the organizations doing the bridging and buffering.

 

Second (software), the characteristic IDEOLOGIES permeating the whole global-state-society formation. Usually such “political culture” reinforces the formation but, periodically, may undermine it. Third (processing), the OPERATION of the whole formation, the process of “governance” distinctive to each regime. In the course of American political development, the scope of policy issues that politics has addressed has greatly widened, both internally and externally. Differences in all three of these components – Organization, Ideology, Operation – combine to differentiate regimes, but particularly differences in the organizations linking state and society.

 

Externally, “regime” includes the extent to which a regime – at least in its origins – was an adaptation to a particular configuration of EXTERNAL opportunities and challenges. Originally, in the USA, such adaptation was the main role of the “federal” government: conducting foreign affairs and preventing states from competing with each other economically as though they were independent countries. Those roles have gradually grown over time, helping to define successive regimes. The external side of regime also includes the extent to which a country is able to project into its external environment ways of doing things that reflect its own internal arrangements. As the USA has risen to global prominence, it has helped establish many such “international regimes” (another meaning of the term “regime” in political science).

Internally, “regime” includes the extent to which a regime – again at least in its origins – was an adaptation to a particular configuration of INTERNAL cleavages and alliances. Here, as well known, the particular form of American federalism was an adaptation to incompatibilities between North and South and between large and small states. Those incompatibilities too have changed over time, also helping to define successive regimes. Moreover, the continued “sovereignty” allowed the individual states has informed their relationship, not only with the federal government, but also with their own localities, which have had to struggle for “home rule” under state governments. Particularly in major metropolitan areas, such struggles have helped to define a variety of “urban regimes” (yet another use of “regime” in political science). These urban regimes have both reflected and affected the national regimes of their time.    

 

Internally, in any country, although politics CANNOT be reduced simply to “class struggle,” the main cleavages and alliances include economic classes and interests: their definition, number, diversity, relative intrinsic strength and relative political mobilization. The same is true for ethno-cultural cleavages and alliances. Both economic and cultural aspects may have pronounced spatial expression: region against region or some types of locality against others. The enduring American subnational cleavage has been North versus South, elaborated through their changing alliances with East and West. Again, both that continuity and that change has helped define successive regimes. (Please see the 130413 Post on Regions and the 130420 Post on Localities.)

 

Constitutional “dualism”

 

So far, America’s regimes have remained largely WITHIN the 1787 constitutional framework, making them only REGIME SHIFTS (not all-out regime CHANGE). In effect, each regime has constituted an attempt to adapt the 1787 Constitution to “the times”: attempts to make a basically unworkable constitution work, under circumstances increasingly remote from its origin. Thus all of America’s regimes have supplemented the original constitution with EXTRA-CONSTITUTIONAL supports. That makes current American politics “dualistic” in the sense of combining old and new institutions, as nicely explained by Richard Valelly 2013 American politics: A very short introduction. New York NY: Oxford University Press, 136 pages. I would put the matter as follows:

 

Under the Elite Republic (1730-1830), the main extra-constitutional supplement was the Founders themselves, increasingly organized into ELITE FACTIONS. These informal organizations were of course accompanied by the Founders’ “public-regarding” ideology and their generally gentlemanly way of doing politics.

 

Under Mass Democracy (1830-1930), main the extra-constitutional supplement was MASS PARTIES (and local courts). When mass parties arose in the 1820s they were accompanied by a transformation of political culture from elitist to democratic. Operation by professional politicians was “private regarding.”   

 

Under Populist Technocracy (1930-2030), partyist extra-constitutional supplements have themselves been supplemented by diverse new POPULIST VOICES:  experts and judges, interests and advocates, mass media and opinion polling. Organization, ideology, and operation are all “technocratic” (supposedly neutral).  

 

Basically America’s  three regimes SUCCEEDED  each other, one after another, each relatively internally consistent. But to some extent each regime also PERSISTED into later regimes, making American institutions cumulatively “layered” and, taken as a whole, somewhat inconsistent. Each regime constrained development beyond it, so reformers had to attack and weaken the institutions of the existing regime before they could build a new one. Nevertheless, existing institutions – and the struggle to circumvent and supplant them –  left their imprint on emerging institutions. (See the book that launched “historical institutionalist” analyses of American Political Development: Stephen Skowronek’s 1982  Building a new American state: The expansion of national administrative capacities, 1877-1920. New York NY: Cambridge University Press, 389 pages.)  

 

Issue dimensions

 

As noted, regime organization provides not only BRIDGES facilitating necessary interactions between state and society but also BUFFERS to simplify societal issues for political processing. These simplifications become codified as PARTISAN IDEOLOGIES. As quantitative analysts explain, a decisive influence on American politics has been whether parties have reduced all issues to one left-right dimension, or whether one party has challenged others by introducing a second, independent dimension (as the new Republican party did to Democrats and Whigs by reviving the issue of slavery in the 1850s). The main underlying theme has remained local autonomy versus central control. Arguably that theme underlay both the “functional-economic” and “regional-cultural” dimensions that have waxed and waned across American political history (Poole and associates).

 

The “functional economic” dimension has usually been primary. Basically it has concerned the extent to which the national government should intervene in the economy. Usually that left-right political-economic dimension has been so strong that parties simplified most other issues onto it. When it has been salient, the “regional-cultural” dimension has usually been secondary. Usually it concerned the extent to which the central government should enforce national “modernist-universalist” ideals over regional “traditionalist-localist” customs. Usually both economic and cultural dimensions were present and cross-cutting, allowing some fluidity of political alliances from issue to issue. However, sometimes the regional dimension largely coincided with the economic one, or just disappeared, leaving politics unidimensional and prone to polarization. On one occasion (the 1850s-1860s), the regional dimension overwhelmed the economic dimension. The country fell apart.

 

Regime levels

 

As noted at the outset, the concept of “regime” includes not only a characteristic relationship between the NATIONAL and SUBNATIONAL levels, but also with the SUPRANATIONAL level as well. So for each regime, in addition to national institutions and subnational cleavages, we note the supranational environment:  defense and diplomacy, trade and investment, immigration and identity. American political development has always been strongly shaped by all three of these sectors of its external environment, something to which American political scientists are beginning to turn their attention. Indeed, “external” and “internal” interpenetrate, together defining basic issue cleavages, basic political organization, and basic ideological reflections. Again, accompanying external  “international regimes” and internal “urban regimes” should be regarded as PART of these successive national regime formations.

 

(On the supranational level, see Ira Katzenson and Martin Shefter eds. 2002Shaped by war and trade: International influences on American political development. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 372 pages. That book explicitly treats geopolitical and international-economic processes. It implicitly recognizes the importance of the third, sociocultural sector – primarily immigration –  but doesn’t treat it because the role of immigration in American politics is already well treated in existing literatures. On the interaction of the supranational environment with the party system, see Martin Shefter’s chapter in that volume: “War, trade and U.S. party politics” 113-133, frequently cited below.)

  

We now begin to sketch each of our three regimes in more detail. For convenience, we divide each into subperiods at about their midpoints. 1780, inaugurating the 1730-1830 Elite Republic, stands for the achievement of Independence and the design of a new Republic.  1880, the mid-point of 1830-1930 Mass Democracy, flags the end of Civil War influences and the acceleration of industrialization. 1980, roughly the high point of 1930-2030 Populist Technocracy, marks the exhaustion of liberal state-building and the beginning of concerted efforts by conservatives to shrink Big Government.

 

1730-1830, ELITE REPUBLIC

 

“1730" stands for when Britain had largely finished establishing its main 18^th century domestic political regime at home and had begun consolidating its commercial empire abroad (Keller 18-22). By about 1730, settlers in America had largely adapted their Old World political heritage both to their New World context and to the latest developments back in Britain. By about 1730, settler elites had developed a lively style of politics, but one that was still “deferential” in that elites still expected masses to defer to their leadership. Keller attributes that style to the late colonial period and argues that elements of it continue after Independence into the early Republic.

 

As just noted, this regime subperiodizes at about 1780, the actual WINNING of independence and DESIGN of a new Republic. Strictly speaking, Keller’s first USA regime (our Elite Republic) is only the second half of the 1730-1830 period:  from the 1780s when the USA actually does become a republic through the 1820s by when colonial influences wane. (On the many centuries before 1776, see most recently Daniel K. Richter 2011 Before the Revolution: America's ancient pasts.  Cambridge MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 502 pages.)

 

“1830" stands for about the date by which a new regime emerged: A regime more democratic in its inclusion of most white males, more direct in elections of virtually all public officials, and  based on the mass parties that began to emerge in the 1820s. This is of course the Jacksonian Revolution that shifted both political power and developmental attention from the Atlantic coast inland across the Appalachian mountains to the midWest. America literally turned its back on Europe and set off on an inland trek of its own.

 

SUPRANATIONAL  ENVIRONMENT   1

 

A key characteristic of America’s earliest regime is that, until about 1815, it remained highly dependent on and involved in supranational relations. Colonial America and the early Republic emerged amid global rivalries between competing European empires, often allied with indigenous Native Americans. European settlers in North America were not the center of anything: they were a tiny development on a remote fringe of European empires. The settlers were geopolitically dependent on the course and outcome of the struggles between those empires and within Britain. Moreover, they remained – or at least thought they remained – highly vulnerable to the Native American polities that still occupied all of the interior of North America from the Appalachian mountains in the east to the Pacific ocean in the west. Ironically, British-American victory over French-Indian forces (by 1763) reduced Protestant American need for British protection against the Catholic French and Native Americans (Shefter 114).

 

“Americans” emerged only slowly out of English history and British empire. Between 1730 and 1776, the settlers tried to maintain their status as English subjects enjoying the full rights and privileges of domestic Englishmen. However, as Britain attempted to modernize its management of its new global empire and its new “fiscal-military” domestic state, the settlers in North America increasingly resented being treated as colonies. In particular, Britain’s attempts to recoup some of the costs of the 1754-1763 French and Indian War provoked Americans accustomed to “benign neglect” on the fringes of Britain’s earlier, less demanding empire. Meanwhile, interacting with Britain, gradually an American identity formed. As a result, eventually it was relatively easy for Americans to declare formal Independence.  British logistic difficulties and French military assistance enabled Americans to win that Independence through war (Shefter 114).

 

Throughout the early Republic, geopolitically the USA remained extremely weak. Accordingly it is not surprising that American attitudes toward the ongoing conflict between Britain and France played a large role in defining political cleavages and political rhetoric in the mid-to-late 1790s. However, the division on attitudes toward foreign powers largely coincided with the division on attitudes toward domestic policy. In 1796 as he said farewell to the presidency, Washington was wise to advise the USA to avoid “entangling alliances.” But even that statement was partly partisan, part of the 1796 presidential contest between the emerging economic-nationalist Hamiltonian Federalists and the agrarian-localist Jeffersonian “Republicans.” The Federalist foreign policy platform was to avoid allying with France against Britain. As Keller explains, support or opposition toward Britain or France, even more than reflecting attitudes toward foreign powers, reflected Americans’ different visions of their own domestic problems and opportunities. (Keller 51-53)

 

Unfortunately, as they conducted that domestic argument, some early USA presidents were not skillful at avoiding unnecessary foreign confrontations. As Peter Trubowitz explains, a country’s external Grand Strategy is the result of CHOICE by that country’s national leaders, under the CROSS-PRESSURE of demands from the supranational and subnational levels. In these external-internal terms, Trubowitz explains Washington’s caution (46-54), but he also explains Monroe’s later boldness (79-90).  (See Peter Trubowitz 2011 Politics and strategy: Partisan ambition and American statecraft. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 185 pages.) The geopolitical weakness of the early settlers and early Republic did NOT mean that Americans were not active abroad. They have always been quite active, not only in commerce, but also in selective projections of military power (Robert Kagan 2006 Dangerous nation. New York NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 527 pages.)

 

NATIONAL ORGANIZATION   2

 

The 1787 Constitution was anti-English in rejecting a monarch and a strong executive, but English in promoting predominance of the legislature, and in relying on local courts as a de facto supplement to the de jure national Constitution. In 1787, the Founders thought they were eschewing MONARCHY and establishing a REPUBLIC based on ancient Greek and Roman models: elite self government through deliberation among local property-owners. The Founders did NOT think they had designed a perfect system that would last forever without further adjustment. On the contrary, they knew quite well the compromises that had gone into the 1787 design between various sides. Despite vigorous arguments over the drafting and adoption of the new constitution, at the beginning of the new republic, only about half of the participants (mostly Founders) were clearly aligned with one of two sides (basically, those for and against strong central government).  Only gradually did alignment between two sides become clearer and stronger.

 

On one side were those who wanted a strong central government on the model of the then modern and industrializing British “fiscal-military” state. On the other side were those who preferred that the USA remain the localistic agrarian polity that, in contrast to Britain,  it had largely remained during the colonial period. The first main cleavage within the Founders emerged in 1791 over whether or not to establish a national bank in order to pursue Hamilton’s plan to imitate the advanced British fiscal-military state. (They did establish one, but it was soon abolished to favor state banks.) The general issue of the extent of the national government’s role in the economy has remained the main issue in American politics ever since. The specific issue of whether or not to have a central bank – and, if so, how strong it should be – has also persisted.  

 

In the Elite Republican regime, the main supplementary extra-constitutional arrangement was reliance on elites themselves, the remarkable Founders who designed and implemented the new republican system. That dependence on leaders had both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, the main Founders were remarkably intelligent and patriotic people: they were indeed “wise” and they were indeed committed to the success of their new republican regime. On the other hand, within that general consensus, they soon found themselves disagreeing on specific issues, some of them quite basic. Some Founders soon suspected other Founders of being unpatriotic – of violating fundamental principles of the new Constitution, as each side understood it. So a surprising characteristic of the early Republic was that, when it gained power through elections, each side tried to suppress the other. Moreover, at one point or another, when various sides feared losing on issues they considered essential, they variously threatened military action to defend their interests, declared nullification of federal laws they considered unacceptable, or considered secession from the new Union. It was only gradually that more “live and let live” type “rules of the game” emerged. A watershed was the 1801 first peaceful transition of administration from one party to another, despite how fiercely the 1800 election had been contested.      

 

Eventually the regularization of political competition between two equally legitimate “sides” actually required the decline and disappearance of both the Founders and their regime! The Hamiltonian Federalists had the problem of too strong association with their regional base in New England and its commercial and relatively pro-British interests. Federalists were slow to embrace electoral competition and slow to seek political allies in the interior territories being admitted as new states. The final blow was the Federalists’ opposition to the War of 1812 against the British, which made them seem unpatriotic. The Jeffersonian “Republicans” lasted much longer. Nevertheless they gradually alienated the new interior electorate by the long-running “Virginia dynasty” of presidents from the southern East Coast (1801-1825). Thus the Elite Republican regime lasted only about as long as the Founders themselves, into the 1820s. (Keller 64-65)

 

Some of the “eliteness” of this regime may have somewhat persisted into later American politics, for example, in the fondness of Americans for political “dynasties” such as Roosevelts, Kennedys and Bushes. Much more persistent has been early-republican rhetoric:  slogans against higher government “tyranny” over local governance remain core American political values and political rhetoric. As Keller points out, that rhetoric goes back to the more radical ideologues in the  English civil war between monarchists and republicans in the early 1600s.  Some of the more radical leaders of the American Revolution adopted that radical rhetoric.  However,  most of the Founders – organizing the Revolution, drafting the Constitution, and implementing the early Republic – avoided ideological polarization over general principles in favor of opportunistic compromise of specific interests. (Keller 24, 31-32)

 

SUBNATIONAL CLEAVAGES   3

 

The specific issues between the Founders often reflected the different economies and cultures of different regions, particularly South versus North. The success of both Revolution and Constitution relied on cross-regional alliances that elites carefully constructed by negotiating in private directly with each other. However, the electoral rules established by the 1787 Constitution required that elections be won by a majority (or at least plurality) of the votes. That required mobilizing nearly one half of the electorate against the other half, which required party platforms based on general principles rather than specific interests. Some general principles gradually emerged in the course of the early republic. As noted at the outset, the main underlying theme has been local autonomy versus central control, arguably underlying both “functional” and “regional” dimensions.

 

Poole (“Roots”) illustrates party cleavages in this period by the “ideal” positions of members of the House of Representatives during the 1797-1798 session (Figure 1, page 16). “Nationalist” Federalists are all rather tightly clustered on the right of the major, horizontal left-right dimension dominated by the issue of  “government intervention in the economy.” “Localist” Jeffersonians are all on the left, though somewhat more scattered. The division between the two groups is nearly vertical, indicating that the horizontal left-right economic dimension is the one that mattered most. There is only some differentiation between Representatives on the minor vertical dimension, reflecting regional differences between the Federalists in New England and the Coastal Mid-Atlantic (who wanted high tariffs to protect their manufactures) and the Jeffersonians in the Interior and South (who wanted low tariffs to facilitate exports of their agricultural commodities).

 

The Voteview website has lists of all Members of Congress in all congresses, rank-ordered by their scores on both “functional” and “regional” dimensions. For example, the one for the first Senate shows the twenty-six senators from the thirteen original states. Three senators, one each from Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York, have the highest positive scores (most rightward, most conservative, most “nationalist”) on the main, functional dimension. Two senators, one from Georgia and one from Virginia, have the highest negative scores (most leftward, most “liberal,” most localist). Nevertheless, senators from the same state are sometimes wide apart in the rankings.  Also, some “northerners” are surprisingly far to the “left,” and some “southerners” surprisingly far to the “right.” Evidently the process of aligning into two partisan “sides” was still under way.        

 

Keller calls our Elite Republic “deferential-republican.” Although ordinary citizens might vote, the Founders assumed they would defer to local elites. That was the pattern in the colonial period and, to some extent, through the early 1800s, particularly in the older settlements along the Atlantic coast, east of the Appalachian mountains. However, some citizens did NOT defer, but instead rebelled, particularly from the interior “backwoods” and, later, from west of the Appalachians. This alarmed the Founders, who suddenly saw a need for stronger central government to institutionalize – contain and channel – the mass participation released by the 1776 Revolution.

 

Famously, the Founders preferred that the entire USA political elite belong to no party, or to one grand party, within which everyone agreed on basic principles, however much they might differ over specifics.  Equally famously, the Founders themselves soon disagreed with each other on what they regarded as basic issues and soon began organizing against each other. Keller regards the resulting organizations as halfway between the purely personal elite factions of the earlier colonial period and the mass parties that later emerged under Mass Democracy (“cadre” parties, he calls them).

 

Plurality electoral rules imposed the imperative of two parties. The fact that electoral rules prescribed that all elections occur within territorially defined local districts meant that local elections involved local issues. Even national parties reflected the different interests of different types of localities: sometimes North versus South, sometimes East versus West, sometimes urban versus rural. Aside from electoral rules, the main force transforming American politics away from an Elite Republic was rapid political, economic, and social development. Politically, the USA acquired new territories and admitted new states sooner than the Founders had anticipated. That political incorporation added new issues and new voters. Economically, the USA’s agriculture spread across the Appalachian mountains into the fertile midwest. The new Erie Canal across New York State provided the long-missing transportation access. Particularly along that transport corridor,  the USA began to industrialize. Socially, new immigrants streamed in from Europe. Both old and new immigrants streamed across the Appalachians into the midWest.       

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THE SCHEME OF THIS BLOG

 

DIMENSIONS OF POSTS

 

Importance of Post: ***** Big development. **** Small development. *** Continuing trend.

Scope of  Post:  USA only. USA-PRC. USA-other.

Type of Process:  Elite power struggle. Elite policy politics. Mass participation.

Type of Treatment:  Current commentary. Comprehensive background. Academic analysis.

 

DIMENSIONS OF POLITICS

 

Policy  Sectors:  Security. Economy. Identity

Spatial  Levels:  Supranational. National. Subnational

Temporal  Periods:  Shortrun. Midrun. Longrun

 

STANDARD  TOPIC  TAGS (BIAOQIAN)

 

SECURITY

Defense

Diplomacy

Intelligence

Presidency (national security team)

Homeland security

State coercion: Police & Prisons

Citizen violence: Collective riots & Individual harm

 

ECONOMY

Climate change

Trade & Investment

Fiscal policy

Macroeconomy

Energy & Environment

Business

Employment & Income

 

IDENTITY

Propaganda

Immigration

Ideology

Race & Ethnicity

Gender & Age

Moral regulation

Alternative lifestyles

 

SUPRANATIONAL

Global

United Nations

International regimes

Subglobal regions

Major foreign powers

Neighboring countries

Cross-border regions

 

NATIONAL

Legislative

Executive

Judicial

Parties

Interest groups

Media

Public opinion

 

SUBNATIONAL

Subnational regions

States

Metropolitan regions

Cities

Counties

Communities & Associations

Citizen participation (elections, activism)

 

SHORTRUN (Current dynamics)

This week

Past few weeks

Next few weeks

Past few months

Next few months

Past few years

Next few years

 

MIDRUN (Foreseeable future)

Variables

Cycles

Generations

Regime shift

Transformations

Regime change

Parameters

 

LONGRUN (History, evolution)

American political development

Comparative political development

Longrun economic growth

Longrun social history

Longrun cultural change

Major civilizations

Human evolution