Buried in the 1984 thread. Wanted to give attribution to Aardvark. A good summary of the book is here:
www.vox.com
This except is the heart of it:
More specifically, Huntington has identified 14 characteristics of these periods. Nine describe the general mood:
This 1981 book eerily predicted today’s distrustful and angry political mood
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www.vox.com
This except is the heart of it:
More specifically, Huntington has identified 14 characteristics of these periods. Nine describe the general mood:
- “Discontent was widespread; authority, hierarchy, specialization, and expertise were widely questioned or rejected.”
- “Political ideas were taken seriously and played an important role in the controversies of the time.”
- “Traditional American values of liberty, individualism, equality, popular control of government, and the openness of government were stressed in public discussion.”
- “Moral indignation over the IvI gap was widespread.”
- “Politics was characterized by agitation, excitement, commotion, even upheaval — far beyond the usual routine of interest-group conflict.”
- “Hostility toward power (the antipower ethic) was intense, with the central issue of politics often being defined as ‘liberty versus power.’”
- “The exposure or muckraking of the IvI gap was a central feature of politics.”
- “Movements flourished devoted to specific reforms or ‘causes’ (women, minorities, criminal justice, temperance, peace).”
- “New media forms appeared, significantly increasing the influence of the media in politics.”
- “Political participation expanded, often assuming new forms and often expressed through hitherto unusual channels.”
- “The principal political cleavages of the period tended to cut across economic class lines, with some combination of middle- and working-class groups promoting change.”
- “Major reforms were attempted in political institutions in order to limit power and reshape institutions in terms of American ideals (some of which were successful and some of which were lasting).”
- “A basic realignment occurred in the relations between social forces and political institutions, often including but not limited to the political party system.”
- “The prevailing ethos promoting reform in the name of traditional ideals was, in a sense, both forward-looking and backward-looking, progressive and conservative.”
) As I noted in my first post on this book, it's really an amazing but relativelyl forgotten piece of political science and political history that can help one understand both (i) how our current, seemingly abnormal, times fit into the big picture (and may even have an undercurrent of normalcy to them), and (ii) why the Aardvark Outlook(tm) is almost always long term.
