Swings in politics

...Eventually, however, the left mobilizes a sufficient constitutency to win elections and carry out part of its program...

...The leftward drift may turn out to have been a historical phenomenon peculiar to the late nineteenth and the first two-thirds of the twentieth century rather than a trend inherent in the politics of democracy based on universal suffrage in class-divided societies...

...q 102 • DISSENT...

...So long as two or more parties compete electorally, the electorate after a long period of rule by one of them is disposed to perceive the other, which will have adapted its policies to the prevailing mood, as having become an entirely credible alternative...

...It is in any case obviously premature to believe that history has ended where the processes of political democracy are concerned...

...Opinion polls in the United States show twice as many people identifying themselves as "conservative" as "liberal," although the number of self-proclaimed "moderates" is even larger...

...After Reagan's second victory, I enlarged upon the revisions of my theory (Dissent, Spring 1985), which now seemed even more plausible in its pessimism about the prospects of the left...

...The rhythm theory might therefore hold under conditions differing markedly from those prevailing when it was initially formulated—conditions that could prove more threatening to the stability of constitutional democracy...

...The change from a proportional to a singlemember majority electoral system is likely to create a sharper left/right division of the Italian electorate...

...In the 1980s and early 1990s, the electoral successes of the right suggested that leftward drift may have come to an end...

...Both Lipset and Schlesinger thought I had attached too much significance to Reagan's election and reaffirmed their original views, predicting that the Democrats, armed with a new reformist program, would be restored to power by the end of the eighties (Schlesinger) and that increasing unemployment would shortly redound to their electoral advantage (Lipset...

...197-217...

...When the generation born in the immediate postwar decades reaches retirement age, all industrial nations will face acute difficulties in maintaining existing welfare entitlements, and left/right divisions between the parties may well be intensified...

...This was even more true of the congressional Republicans led by Newt Gingrich after the Democrats lost control of Congress in 1994...

...The first Republican-controlled Congress in half a century mounted a fierce legislative attack on the welfare state reforms of the New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society of the 1960s...

...100 • DISSENT Notebook Clearly, Western democratic societies have not ceased to be class-divided: indeed, they have experienced increases in economic inequality since the end of their sustained period of postwar economic growth...

...nomic interests in a conservative direction...

...Strong protests against efforts by conservative administrations to cut back on the welfare state have occurred in Canada and Germany in addition to sparking the revival of the left parties in the United States, Britain, and France...

...Insofar as women, a slight majority of the electorate, are a relatively deprived and discontented group, the widening gender gap in voting indicates the persistence of a reservoir of potential voters available for mobilization by the left party...

...One might conclude that the alternation of left and right parties in office still holds, but not the leftward drift previously postulated as an effect of the working of the rhythm over time...

...After Reagan's first victory, in 1980, I speculated in Dissent (Fall 1981) that perhaps each period in which a left reformist administration realized some of its policies might result in the reduction of its potential constituency, the reforms having appeased the discontented groups that had previously backed the left...

...The relatively left parties that have returned to office do not advocate radical changes or even ambitious expansions of existing welfare states...

...My theory had attempted to synthesize their views: Schlesinger's and his father's that there were regular liberal/conservative "tides" in American politics, and Lipset's that the politics of democracies were subject to a "democratic class struggle" between the working and lower classes and the richer, more powerful classes...

...It would be premature, however, to conclude that these developments confirm the persistence of the left/right spiral trend...

...In addition to rendering them more susceptible to the traditional noneconomic patriotic, moral, and ethnicracial appeals that are the stock-in-trade of the right, more of them would have been elevated into the middle class, and moderated their eco*My fullest statement of the theory is in my book Power: Its Forms, Bases, and Uses (Harper & Row, 1979...

...Yet from the vantage point of the late 1990s, the theory looks more credible than it did as recently as 1994...

...This is particularly likely in the United States, where the so-called "baby boomers" are greatest in FALL • 1997 • 101 Notebook number and the conservative anti-tax and antigovernment orientation of the Republican Party became even more pronounced in the 1980s and 1990s...

...Still, there are strong grounds for believing in the original theory...

...The American labor movement under new AFL-CIO leadership has adopted a more aggressive policy both in organizing unorganized workers and in supporting Democratic candidates for political office...

...Moreover, unlike previous right-wing administrations, the Thatcher and Reagan administrations assailed the reforms instituted by the left...

...In Italy, the end of communism has ended the pattern of government by largely center-right coalitions and led to the electoral victory of a center-left coalition that includes reformed communists...

...Transaction Publishers, 1995), chapter 8, pp...

...The recent favorable prospects of parties of the moderate left do not even contradict the view that the reservoir of discontented voters on which the left has traditionally relied has been depleted by past economic growth and the achievement of welfare states...

...It has been said that Clinton is to Reagan-Bush what Nixon was to Johnson-Kennedy, Nixon having continued the reforming impulses of the Great Society in such areas as affirmative action and environmental protection just as Clinton has accepted the fiscal austerity and trimming of the welfare state favored by Republicans...

...Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Seymour Martin Lipset were invited by the editors of Dissent to comment on my argument (Dissent, Winter 1982...

...Nearly twenty-five years ago I published in Dissent (Winter 1974) a theory of a left/right rhythm in democratic politics—a rhythm that over time produces a leftward drift because conservative administrations on returning to power tend not to reverse the reforms enacted by their left-wing predecessors.* Left parties are initially at a disadvantage that I called "mobilization lag" because their potential supporters from the lower classes are less politically aware and thus less likely either to vote at all or to vote for a party that speaks for their class interests...

...It is far from evident that problems such as increased income inequality, loss of high-paying jobs, reduced trade-union power, and fiscal pressure on welfare entitlements will be overcome in the near future...

...When I first presented this theory at a Dissent editorial board meeting, Robert Heilbroner described it by the metaphor of an automobile jack: the alternation of left and right parties in office resembled a cyclical up-anddown motion within an ever-upward linear progression corresponding to what I had called "leftward drift...

...In Britain, the Labour Party, after eighteen years out of office, defeated the Tories in a landslide unparalleled since the early nineteenth century...

...The same dynamic that produced a leftward drift will also preserve a rightward turn after right-wing parties have instituted policies of an anti-egalitarian nature...

...Tony Blair won his landslide in Britain after transforming his party into "New Labour," winning repeal of its commitment to full socialism and pledging not to undo the changes in the direction of privatization and limitations on the power of the trade unions achieved by Margaret Thatcher...

...The left was returned to office decisively in the most recent French election...

...In Europe, the Maastricht Treaty imposes restrictions on social programs and budget deficits to the same effect...

...The solid victories of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Britain caused me to have second thoughts...

...Nor, especially in the United States, has there been increased lower-class turnout and greater support for the left party...

...It is often forgotten that our experience with political democracy under conditions of universal suffrage is limited to less than a century, so history may still surprise us as to how it works...

...If high rates of economic growth have in the past been a solvent of class and left/right political conflicts—"a rising tide lifts all boats"—and have rendered high taxation for redistributive welfare measures relatively painless, the end of these conditions may very well lead to an intensification of conflict...

...In the United States, Britain, and France, dominance by the more conservative of the two major parties has ended...

...However, the reaction under conditions of lower economic growth against the high costs imposed by the welfare state, which require relatively high rates of taxation, has not been confined to Britain and the United States...

...University of Chicago Press, 1988...

...The Democrats have won two successive presidential elections despite losing control over Congress...