Patronage, Logrolls, and “Polarization”: Congressional Parties of the Gilded Age, 1876–1896

Abstract

According to the quantitative indicators scholars use to measure political polarization, the Gilded Age stands out for some of the most party-polarized Congresses of all time. By contrast, historians of the era depict the two major parties as presenting few programmatic alternatives to one another. I argue that a large share of the party-line votes in the Congress of this period are poorly suited to the standard conceptualization as “polarization,” meaning wide divergence on an ideological continuum structuring alternative views on national policy. Specifically, the era's continuous battles over the distribution of particularized benefits, patronage, and control of political office make little sense conceived as stemming from individual members' preferences on an underlying ideological dimension. They are better understood as fights between two long coalitions competing for power and distributive gains. In short, the Gilded Age illustrates that political parties are fully capable of waging ferocious warfare over spoils and office, even despite a relative lack of sharp party differences over national policy.

Consensus and Conflict: A Content Analysis of American Party Platforms, 1840–1896

“…The tariff and internal improvements especially reflected ideological concerns but related to distributive policies or particularized interests more prominently. As a result, the cause for the debate between the parties on these issues were at times starker than others (Lee 2016). On perhaps the most controversial economic issue of the Gilded Age, the standards debate, however, the parties converge for most of the period.…”

“…On perhaps the most controversial economic issue of the Gilded Age, the standards debate, however, the parties converge for most of the period. It appears that neither party seemed to articulate an explicit stance on the matter until the 1890s due to the regional splits within both parties over the money question (Lee 2016; Ritter 1997).…”

“…For example, party leaders of the latter nineteenth century viewed their state party platforms as binding and tried to introduce and advance legislation based on those issues in the state legislatures and on the national level (Bensel 2000: 110–11). While the congressional roll-call votes on an issue like the tariff may reflect competing sectional concerns within each of the parties (Lee 2016), the state and national platforms from corresponding years may depict complementary or competing patterns. Platforms of the post-Reconstruction period, for example, reveal Democrats and Republicans staking out opposing positions on the protective tariff—in opposition to and support of, respectively.…”

“…Yet, this narrative of stark polarization, at least as it pertains to post-Reconstruction America, might be overly simplistic and “not a reliable indicator of the ideological distance between the two parties on national issues” (Lee 2016: 11). In an examination of congressional roll-call votes from 1876 to 1896, Lee (2016) finds few issues on which the two parties are truly polarized. While the parties may have been “highly partisan,” they were not polarized in terms of offering “clear, strongly divergent positions on national policy questions” (10).…”

How Intense Policy Demanders Shape Postreform Politics: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act

“…3. While DW-NOMINATE scores are a defensible and widely used measure of legislator ideology, Lee (2016) has recently suggested that NOMINATE taps into party and ideology simultaneously and may yield a measure of ideology extremity even for members who are simply "party regulars." This cautions against interpreting the relationship between NOMINATE scores and bill introductions as a test of how ideological extremity alone affects bill sponsorship behavior.…”