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Morris P. Fiorina

Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics (Volume 11) (The Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture Series) Paperback – November 15, 2011

by Morris P. Fiorina (Author), Samuel J. Abrams (Contributor)

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Red states, blue states . . . are we no longer the United States? Morris P. Fiorina here examines today’s party system to reassess arguments about party polarization while offering a cogent overview of the American electorate.

Building on the arguments of Fiorina’s acclaimed Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, this book explains how contemporary politics differs from that of previous eras and considers what might be done to overcome the unproductive politics of recent decades. Drawing on polling results and other data, Fiorina examines the disconnect between an unrepresentative “political class” and the citizenry it purports to represent, showing how politicians have become more polarized while voters remain moderate; how politicians’ rhetoric and activities reflect hot-button issues that are not public priorities; and how politicians’ dogmatic, divisive, and uncivil style of “debate” contrasts with the more civil discourse of ordinary Americans, who tend to be more polite and open to compromise than their leaders.

Disconnect depicts politicians out of touch with the larger public, distorting issues and information to appeal to narrow interest groups. It can help readers better understand the political divide between leaders and the American public—and help steer a course for change.

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date

November 15, 2011
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.64 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

0806142286
ISBN-13

978-0806142289
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“An important contribution to a lively public and scholarly debate about the extent, sources, and consequences of polarization in contemporary American politics.”—Political Science Quarterly

“First-rate political science. . . . Fiorina has once again defined research for another generation of political scientists. Highly recommended.”—Choice

About the Author

Morris P. Fiorina is the Wendt Family Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Samuel J. Abrams is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard University and a Fellow at the Hamilton Center for Political Economy, New York University.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Oklahoma Press; First edition (November 15, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0806142286
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0806142289
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.64 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,824,568 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,481 in Political Parties (Books)
- #2,804 in Democracy (Books)
- #10,725 in U.S. Political Science

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Kerrie A. McCormick

Great book

Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2015

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As a bit of a centrist, I have long felt marginalized in the current political arena. I no longer feel alone.

2 people found this helpful

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Lys Winters

Easy Read

Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2013

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I had to get this for my Grad class and it is a very good read and easy. I like it!!!!!

2 people found this helpful

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L. Drutman

Anybody Home?

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2011

For those who view themselves as political moderates, these are troubling times. Despite the renewed calls to bipartisanship and civility, the reality is that the two parties in Congress are very far apart from each other and continue to show every sign of being far more eager to engage in partisan flame-throwing than in bipartisan problem-solving.

And yet: how did things get to be this way? And what about the supposedly moderate public: how and why do they stand for this? To understand these questions, a good place to start is Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics, by Morris P. Fiorina, a professor of Political Science at Stanford University.

Disconnect is essentially a book in two parts. The first is an extensive compendium of data in support of the claim that there is indeed a widening disconnect between a largely moderate voting public and an ideological polarized political class. The second part is the story of how that disconnect came about.

Just how moderate the public actually is turns out to be a matter of some debate in political science circles. An alternate view - and useful foil for discussing Fiorina's book - is Alan Abramowitz's The Disappearing Center (which I reviewed here), which makes the case the current polarization reflects the fact that Americans have sorted into two distinct ideological camps, and that politicians are polarized because the public is polarized (and representative democracy is therefore alive and well.)

Fiorina sees it differently: "The orientation [of the public] is more pragmatic," he writes. "Far more people position themselves on the issues on a case-by-case basis rather than deduce their specific positions from some abstract principle....Those who ostensibly represent the American public take positions that collectively do not provide an accurate representation of the public."

Part of the disagreement results from different data employed. Whereas Abramowitz focuses mostly on ideological self-identification and a few hot-button issues, Fiorina incorporates a broader range of issue polling, and finds that Democrats and Republicans are not nearly as far apart on most of the major issues as is commonly believed - on 40 Pew survey items, Democrats and Republicans differ only by an average of 14 points.

Moreover, they are not even moving apart that rapidly. In 1987, the average difference across the same 40 issues was 10 percent, meaning that in 20 years, there has only been an average change of four percentage points. Nor has it been consistently in opposite directions. Rather, Fiorina writes: "One sees a nonideological public moving rightward on some issues, leftward on others, and not moving much at all on still others."

On some issues, Americans prefer more government intervention, on others less. But most of all, "Americans accept conflicting core beliefs and values." Political views are often ambivalent and conditional, open to revision and re-consideration, as opposed to absolute and fixed. For example, four in five Americans are not sure whether life begins at conception or birth.

Americans, on the other hand, are much more divided in their assessments of political figures. George W. Bush, as we know, was the most polarizing figure in American political history. But Fiorina argues that the reviews of Bush are polarizing not because the public is polarized generally, but because Bush was an extreme partisan.

Fiorina also differs from Abramowitz in the definition of the political class. Whereas Abramowitz sees more people reporting trying to convince others to vote one way or another as a sign of more engaged political class, Fiorina notes that the percentage of Americans who work for a party or attend meetings and rallies is still the same as it was in 1952: 10 percent.

However, those 10 percent are quite different today than they were in 1952. This is one of the big stories of Disconnect. In an era gone by, politics was a clubby game, more concerned with material motivations than ideology. Politics was about compromise and bargaining, about taking care of business. It was no place for purists.

But without getting too nostalgic for the smoky and often corrupt backroom politics of a bygone era, Fiorina notes that all this openness and transparency changed the nature of politics. "The great irony," Fiorina writes, "is that after this explosion of openness and transfer of power to the people, turnout in elections fell and trust in government plummeted."

Without party machines to turn out votes and with new sprawling suburban districts to cover, candidates turned instead to special interests and ideological believers who were willing to volunteer and give money because they felt so strongly. A new political class that cared more about being right than actually winning took over the party mechanisms, creating the perfect breeding ground for ideological candidates.

Several demographic changes also led to political sorting. African-Americans migrated to the North and as a result became a more important political constituency. Civil Rights reforms alienated Southern Democrats, freeing the Democrats of their conservative wing and making their caucus more liberal. New Southern Republicans, plus the rise of the conservative Sunbelt, shifted the Republican center of gravity, as did the political awakening of evangelicals.

Meanwhile, as politics became more partisan, it also became nastier. Because the activists who increasingly control the party now feel more is at stake, they became more aggressive - a feedback loop that has left much wreckage in its wake.

Fiorina, like Abramowitz, offers little by way of reform. Instead, Disconnect concludes by laying the blame on deep structural forces that must somehow change on their own:
"The usual institutional reforms are unlikely to do much to lessen the polarization of contemporary American politics. That polarization has deep roots in a variety of social changes that have increased the homogeneity of each party, widened the differences between the two parties, and encouraged politicians to construct electoral coalitions out of group building blocks that are less encompassing and less representative of the broader public than was the case for most of American history."

The optimistic note, however, is that by Fiorina's reading, the American public remains quite moderate, despite the partisan warfare that has been dominating Washington. Without at least a moderate public, it is very hard to build a moderate politics.

25 people found this helpful

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Todd Phillips

Outstanding information, difficult to read

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2010

Morris Fiorina does an absolutely stellar job researching and presenting the reasons why America is polarized and why so many people feel alienated by politics. It is full of history, facts and figures, graphs, and current examples from politics today. The only problem is his writing style is very academic and difficult to read. It took me a surprisingly long time to finish what is not a lenghy book. Nevertheless, I'm thankful he wrote it and look forward to more from him.

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