The political party system in the United States has periodically undergone major realignments at various critical junctures in the country's history. The Civil War boosted the Republican Party's fortunes and catapulted it into majority status at the national level, a status that was further solidified during the Populist realignment in the 1890s. Starting in the 1930s, however, Roosevelt's New Deal reversed the parties' fortunes, bringing the Democratic Party back to national power, and this realignment was further modified by the "culture wars" beginning in the mid-1960s. Each of these realignments occasioned shifts in the electorate's support for the major parties, and they were superimposed on each other in a way that did not negate entirely the consequences of the preceding realignments. The story of realignment is further complicated by the variations that occurred within individual states whose own particular political legacies, circumstances, and personalities resulted in modulations and modifications of the patterns playing out at the national level.

In this book, Renee Lamis investigates how Pennsylvania experienced this series of realignments, with special attention to the period since 1960. She uses a wealth of data from a wide variety of sources to produce an analysis that allows her to trace the evolution of electoral behavior in the Keystone State in a narrative that is accessible to a broad range of readers. Her account helps explain why Senator Arlen Specter was reelected whereas Senator Rick Santorum was not, and why Pennsylvania Republicans have been highly successful in major statewide elections in an era when Democratic presidential standard-bearers have regularly carried the state. Overall, her book constitutes a gold mine of information and interpretation for political junkies as well as scholars who want to know more about how national-level politics plays out within individual states.

As a result of the 1994 midterm election, the Republicans took control of both houses of Congress and divided government returned to Washington. Now, as the budget battles of 1995 clearly demonstrate, conflict between the parties is sending the government back to gridlock. In this sequel to Beyond Gridlock?--a study published at the beginning of the Clinton administration, when government was in the hands of one political party--the contributors address this dilemma. They begin by evaluating the effectiveness of the U.S. governmental system during the first two years of the Clinton administration, when both branches were controlled by a single party. They then move to a wider debate about the state of affairs in the American political system: what are the consequences of the Republican takeover of Congress, and will fundamental changes be required to make our system work effectively? Looking to the future, they outline the prospects for governance in the months and years to come. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Howard H. Baker, Jr., Harold R. Bruno, Jr., Becky Cain, Lloyd N. Cutler, Thomas J. Downey, Kenneth M. Duberstein, Bill Frenzel, Charles O. Jones, Thomas E. Mann, Patricia McGinnis, Milton D. Morris, Kevin P. Phillips, Robert D. Reischauer, Donald L. Robinson, Robin Toner, and Vin Weber. Copublished with the Committee on the Constitutional System

For only the second time in close to a quarter century, the U.S. executive and legislative branches are in the hands of the same political party. Will this end governmental gridlock? Or will we discover that the problems of our political system run deeper than party labels?

The contributors to this book examine the prospects for unified government during the Clinton presidency and, looking to the future, discuss possibilities for structural reform --in the political parties, in campaigning, in the Congress, and through amendments to the Constitution. The book draws on papers and comments presented at a "Government in Gridlock" conference cosponsored by Brookings and the Committee on the Constitutional System shortly after the inauguration of President Clinton.

The contributors --present and former members of Congress and officials of the executive branch, Washington journalists, public opinion analysts, and political scientists --are Howard Baker, James MacGregor Burns, Lloyd Cutler, Thomas Downey, Ken Duberstein, David Gergen, Celinda Lake, Rep. Jim Leach, Thomas Mann, Andrea Mitchell, Tom Oliphant, Howard Paster, Jody Powell, Cokie Roberts, Donald Robinson, Warren Rudman, Barbara Sinclair, Hedrick Smith, and Steven Smith.

Since the original edition of Dynamics of the Party System was published in 1973, American politics have continued on a tumultuous course. In the vacuum left by the decline of the Democratic and Republican parties, single-interest groups have risen and flourished. Protest movements on the left and the New Right at the opposite pole have challenged and divided the major parties, and the Reagan Revolution--in reversing a fifty-year trend toward governmental expansion--may turn out to have revolutionized the party system too. In this edition, as in the first, current political trends and events are placed in a historical and theoretical context. Focusing upon three major realignments of the past--those of the 1850s, the 1890s, and the 1930s--Sundquist traces the processes by which basic transformations of the country's two-party system occur. From the historical case studies, he fashions a theory as to the why and how of party realignment, then applies it to current and recent developments, through the first two years of the Reagan presidency and the midterm election of 1982. The theoretical sections of the first edition are refined in this one, the historical sections are revised to take account of recent scholarship, and the chapters dealing with the postwar period are almost wholly rewritten. The conclusion of the original work is, in general, confirmed: the existing party system is likely to be strengthened as public attention is again riveted on domestic economic issues, and the headlong trend of recent decades toward political independence and party disintegration reversed, at least for a time.

"Solid ground for optimism as well as cause for foreboding." So James L. Sundquist views the outcome of the struggle by the Congress in the 1970s to recapture powers and responsibilities that in preceding decades it had surrendered to a burgeoning presidency. The resurgence of the Congress began in 1973, in its historic constitutional clash with President Nixon. For half a century before that time, the Congress had acquiesced in its own decline vis-?-vis the presidency, or had even initiated it, by building the presidential office as the center of leadership and coordination in the U.S. government and organizing itself not to initiate and lead but to react and follow. But the angry confrontation with President Nixon in the winter of 1972-73 galvanized the Congress to seek to regain what it considered its proper place in the constitutional scheme. Within a short period, it had created a new congressional budget process, prohibited impoundment of appropriated funds, enacted the War Powers Resolution, intensified oversight of the executive, extended the legislative veto over a wide range of executive actions, and vastly expanded its staff resources. The Decline and Resurgence of Congress, after reviewing relations between president and Congress over two centuries, traces the long series of congressional decisions that created the modern presidency and relates these to certain weaknesses that the Congress recognized in itself. It then recounts the events that marked the years of resurgence and evaluates the results. Finally, it analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the new Congress and appraises its potential for leadership and coordination.