Daniel Galvin: Ronald Reagan’s Resilient Regime
[Daniel Galvin is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. His primary areas of research and teaching are the American presidency, political parties, and American political development. He is co-editor of Rethinking Political Institutions: The Art of the State. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University.]
... Why is Ronald Reagan still so relevant, and why should we care? Yale University political scientist Stephen Skowronek explains in his ground-breaking book The Politics Presidents Make that Ronald Reagan was a “reconstructive” leader who repudiated the New Deal liberal regime and built a new conservative regime in its place. Like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR before him, Reagan found himself at a propitious moment in history; he recognized that the governing party was undergoing a crisis of legitimacy and rapidly losing its political authority. Like his reconstructive forbearers, Reagan was able to exploit the unraveling liberal consensus and establish new commitments of ideology and interest around which Republicans — and most Americans — could rally.
The four pillars of the new regime were: minimal taxes, minimal regulation, strong Christian values, and a strong defense. The new coalition joined together conservatives of all stripes: economic conservatives, social conservatives, and neoconservatives. It joined together ordinary Americans of all stripes, too: Evangelicals and Wall Street investors, blue-collar workers and small business owners. In 1984, Reagan won 49 states and turned the South red for a generation and counting. In my own work, I have found that Reagan also helped to build new organizational capacities in his party in order to provide a durable and potent foundation of support for the newly expanded coalition.
Reconstructive presidents don’t necessarily change everything about American government and politics — Reagan certainly didn’t — but they do redirect the currents of political authority and legitimacy coursing through the political landscape. When reconstructive presidents repudiate the failed regimes of the past and offer innovative alternatives, they shift the terms of debate; they grant legitimacy to new political agendas and policy solutions.
Reconstructing political authority, they blaze a path forward and force future political actors to define themselves in terms of that initial reconstruction. The reconstructive president resets the terms of national discourse in a way that makes his presidency — and the new politics he creates — the new reference point for future political contests.
The essence of what Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR did to American politics was to recast political commitments – they reset the clock on “political time,” as Skowronek calls it – and altered basic assumptions about who should do what, and for what purposes. They shifted the premises of political action by redefining meaning in American politics.
Reagan did all of these things, and left his three successors in the White House to grapple with what he left behind. In many ways, George W. Bush’s presidency is best seen in this light.
Over the next year and a half, the GOP candidates will almost certainly continue their quests to define themselves in terms of the still-resilient regime built by Ronald Reagan — each will try to claim the political authority to speak on behalf of those commitments.
So what does this mean for those of us who can’t help but keep an eye on the horse race? Well, I’ll be waiting to see who starts speaking Reagan Republicanism with the greatest fluency.
Read entire article at Britannica Blog
... Why is Ronald Reagan still so relevant, and why should we care? Yale University political scientist Stephen Skowronek explains in his ground-breaking book The Politics Presidents Make that Ronald Reagan was a “reconstructive” leader who repudiated the New Deal liberal regime and built a new conservative regime in its place. Like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR before him, Reagan found himself at a propitious moment in history; he recognized that the governing party was undergoing a crisis of legitimacy and rapidly losing its political authority. Like his reconstructive forbearers, Reagan was able to exploit the unraveling liberal consensus and establish new commitments of ideology and interest around which Republicans — and most Americans — could rally.
The four pillars of the new regime were: minimal taxes, minimal regulation, strong Christian values, and a strong defense. The new coalition joined together conservatives of all stripes: economic conservatives, social conservatives, and neoconservatives. It joined together ordinary Americans of all stripes, too: Evangelicals and Wall Street investors, blue-collar workers and small business owners. In 1984, Reagan won 49 states and turned the South red for a generation and counting. In my own work, I have found that Reagan also helped to build new organizational capacities in his party in order to provide a durable and potent foundation of support for the newly expanded coalition.
Reconstructive presidents don’t necessarily change everything about American government and politics — Reagan certainly didn’t — but they do redirect the currents of political authority and legitimacy coursing through the political landscape. When reconstructive presidents repudiate the failed regimes of the past and offer innovative alternatives, they shift the terms of debate; they grant legitimacy to new political agendas and policy solutions.
Reconstructing political authority, they blaze a path forward and force future political actors to define themselves in terms of that initial reconstruction. The reconstructive president resets the terms of national discourse in a way that makes his presidency — and the new politics he creates — the new reference point for future political contests.
The essence of what Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR did to American politics was to recast political commitments – they reset the clock on “political time,” as Skowronek calls it – and altered basic assumptions about who should do what, and for what purposes. They shifted the premises of political action by redefining meaning in American politics.
Reagan did all of these things, and left his three successors in the White House to grapple with what he left behind. In many ways, George W. Bush’s presidency is best seen in this light.
Over the next year and a half, the GOP candidates will almost certainly continue their quests to define themselves in terms of the still-resilient regime built by Ronald Reagan — each will try to claim the political authority to speak on behalf of those commitments.
So what does this mean for those of us who can’t help but keep an eye on the horse race? Well, I’ll be waiting to see who starts speaking Reagan Republicanism with the greatest fluency.