Abstract
The recent U.S. presidential election of Donald J. Trump has left many mystified. Convinced that Americans share a homogeneous ideology, a large segment of the voting public cannot fathom the political success of such a polarizing figure. In Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America, James Campbell contends that the polarized views of Americans have not necessarily become amplified recently, but instead the gradual realignment of the political parties has made the divide much more evident over time.
Up and through the period of reconstruction, “The heterogeneous compositions of the parties, with many liberals in the Republican Party and many conservatives in the Democratic Party, essentially obscured and muted the extent of political differences in the electorate” (p. 4). Campbell employs historical data to explain how and why polarization has become more visible between the parties.
Beginning in the mid-1960s, Campbell asserts, a counterculture emerged. Left traumatized by the events of the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s (e.g., civil rights conflicts, the Vietnam War, riots, assassinations, presidential scandals), the nation became much more politically divided. Although it appears that the initial ideological divide began with party leaders, Campbell argues that the American public was becoming polarized prior to the party realignment.
Ideal reading for the social science student interested in gaining a comprehensive understanding of the polarizing aspects of American politics, Polarized is a thorough and accessible evaluation of direct and indirect evidence and analysis of theories of polarization.