Paul Kleppner – författare

Kleppner's study represents an attempt to move beyond the older voting studies by questioning their underlying assumptions and analyzing the changes that occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century. Rejecting the view that partisan identification is a nearly unchangeable psychological attachment, he argues that twentieth century voters were more likely to respond to short-term factors--fluctuations in the economy, charismatic candidiates, etc.--than their nineteenth century counterparts. This reexamination of long-held theories will provide new insight into assumptions about the links between cultural and ethnic values and party affiliation.

This analysis of the contours and social bases of mass voting behavior in the United States over the course of the third electoral era, from 1853 to 1892, provides a deep and rich understanding of the ways in which ethnoreligious values shaped party combat in the late nineteenth century. It was this uniquely American mode of ""political confessionals"" that underlay the distinctive characteristics of the era's electoral universe.In its exploration of the the political roles of native and immigrant ethnic and religious groups, this study bridges the gap between political and social history. The detailed analysis of ethnoreligious experiences, values, and beliefs is integrated into an explanation of the relationship between group political subcultures and partisan preferences which wil be of interest to political sociologists, political scientists, and also political and social historians.Unlike other works of this genre, this book is not confined to a single description of the voting patterns of a single state, or of a series of states in one geographic region, but cuts across states and regions, while remaining sensitive to the enormously significant ways in which political and historical context conditioned mass political behavior. The author accomplishes this remarkable fusion by weaving the small patterns evident in detailed case studies into a larger overview of the electoral system. The result is a unified conceptual framework that can be used to understand both American political behavior duing an important era and the general preconditions of social-group political consciousness. Challenging in major ways the liberal-rational assumptions that have dominated political history, the book provides the foundation for a synthesis of party tactics, organizational practices, public rhetoric, and elite and mass behaviors.

In April 1983, Harold Washington became the first black mayor of Chicago. His victory came at the end of a rancorous campaign that attracted national media coverage and left Chicago "a city divided against itself." Chicago Divided sensitively reconstructs the developments that led to Chicago's 1983 political season. Investigating the election and its background, Kleppner taps a formidable array of sources-including newspapers, court cases, public opinion polls, and voting returns-to analyze the causes and consequences of Chicago's electoral revolution.