A Choice, Not an Echo: Polarization and the Transformation of the American Party System
94 Howe St. Apt. 1
New Haven, CT 06511
Lizabeth Cohen
My project explores the origins and construction of ideologically distinct, programmatic political parties in the postwar United States. I trace the elite activism, interest-group sorting, and organization building within both the Democratic and Republican parties that, by the end of the twentieth century, had produced a new and still-continuing era of strong, polarized partisanship in American politics. I also offer an intellectual history of scholarly and journalistic ideas about partisanship and the party system during the postwar decades. My intention is to restore parties as institutions to the forefront of an analysis of postwar political history in the United States.
Teaching Fellow:
American Food: A Global History (Professor Joyce Chaplin), 2012
Sophomore Tutorial: Historical Analysis (Professor Mark Kishlansky), 2010
The U.S. in the 1960s (Professor Lisa McGirr), 2009
Publications:
“Fed by Reform: Congressional Politics, Partisan Change, and the Food Stamp Program, 1961-1981.” Journal of Policy History 22.4 (2010): 474-507.
“The Constitution of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery,” introduction and annotations. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. Ed. James G. Basker. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005. 79-103.
Conference papers:
“Parties Without Principles: The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government in a Bipartisan Era,” at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans, LA, August 2012 (invited)
“The Age of Party Reform: Issues, Activists, and the Search for Responsible Partisanship in the 1970s,” at the Policy History Conference, Richmond, VA, June 2012
“Parties in the Age of Fracture: The 1970s Origins of Modern Polarization,” at the Boston University Graduate Student American Political History Conference, March 2012
Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation Moody Grant (2012)
Charles Warren Center Term-Time Dissertation Research Grant (2011)
Harry S. Truman Library Institute Research Grant (2010)
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation Research Travel Grant (2010)
Center for American Political Studies Dissertation Research Fellowship (2010)