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9780226834566

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"""This impressive book addresses an important question largely overlooked in the extensive literature on party sorting: why did the bundling of seemingly unrelated issues take the form that it did? O'Brian marshals a wide array of evidence to make a compelling case that the explanation is both surprising and simple: race was the issue that bound them all. In making that case The Roots of Polarization mounts a serious challenge to the common view that political change is usually top-down rather than bottom-up.""--Morris Fiorina author of ""Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics"""

"""'Acid, amnesty, and abortion.' That 1972 campaign smear doubled as prophecy, with culture war issues taking center stage in American politics in the ensuing decades. But why? In this synthetic, original, incisive, and far-reaching book, O'Brien challenges accounts focusing on political entrepreneurs and instead points to the central role of divisions over race. Far from replacing race-based divisions, today's cultural wars are an outgrowth of them.""--Daniel Hopkins University of Pennsylvania ""This impressive book addresses an important question largely overlooked in the extensive literature on party sorting: why did the bundling of seemingly unrelated issues take the form that it did? O'Brian marshals a wide array of evidence to make a compelling case that the explanation is both surprising and simple: race was the issue that bound them all. In making that case The Roots of Polarization mounts a serious challenge to the common view that political change is usually top-down rather than bottom-up.""--Morris Fiorina author of ""Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics"""

"“This impressive book addresses an important question largely overlooked in the extensive literature on party sorting: why did the bundling of seemingly unrelated issues take the form that it did? O’Brian marshals a wide array of evidence to make a compelling case that the explanation is both surprising and simple: race was the issue that bound them all. In making that case The Roots of Polarization mounts a serious challenge to the common view that political change is usually top-down rather than bottom-up.” -- Morris Fiorina | author of ""Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics"" ""'Acid, amnesty, and abortion.' That 1972 campaign smear doubled as prophecy, with culture war issues taking center stage in American politics in the ensuing decades. But why? In this synthetic, original, incisive, and far-reaching book, O'Brien challenges accounts focusing on political entrepreneurs and instead points to the central role of divisions over race. Far from replacing race-based divisions, today's cultural wars are an outgrowth of them."" -- Daniel Hopkins | University of Pennsylvania"

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Neil A. O’Brian is assistant professor of political science at the University of Oregon.

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