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Offering a fresh take on the origins of electoral populism,
The Making of the Populist Movement provides an in-depth look at how the decisions that defined the political and economic geography of the American West during the late 19th century contributed to the rise of one of the most significant third-party movements in American political history. Combining traditional forms of historical inquiry with network analysis and statistics, Adam Slez contributes to our understanding of political action by explicitly linking the evolution of the political field to the transformation of physical space through concerted action on the part of elites.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- I The Expansion of State and Market
- 2 Divide and Conquer
- 3 Making Markets
- II The Response
- 4 Getting Organized
- 5 Getting Thwarted
- 6 Getting Partisan
- III Legacies and Lessons
- 7 Conclusion
- References
- Index
About the author
Adam Slez is Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia, where he joined the faculty in 2013. His previous work has appeared in the American Sociological Review, Sociological Methods and Research, Socius, and the International Journal of Comparative Sociology.
Summary
When it comes to explaining the origins of electoral populism in the United States, we often look to the characteristics and conditions of voters, overlooking the reasons why populist candidates emerge in the first place.
In The Making of the Populist Movement, Adam Slez argues that the rise of electoral populism in the American West was a strategic response to a political environment in which the configuration of positions was literally locked in place, precluding the success of new contenders or otherwise marginal competitors. Combining traditional forms of historical inquiry with innovations in network analysis and spatial statistics, he shows how the expansion of state and market drove the push for market regulation in southern Dakota, where an insurgent farmers' movement looked to third-party alternatives as a means of affecting change. In the context of western settlement, the struggle for political power was synonymous with the struggle for position in an emerging urban hierarchy. As inequities in the spatial distribution of resources became more pronounced, appeals to agrarian populism became a powerful political tool with which to wage partisan war.
Offering a fresh take on the origins of electoral populism in the United States, The Making of the Populist Movement contributes to our understanding of political action by explicitly linking the evolution of the political field to the transformation of physical space through concerted action on the part of elites.
Additional text
In The Making of the Populist Movement, Adam Slez provides a fresh analysis of a critical moment in American politics. Focused on South Dakota, a hotspot of populist organizing in the 1890s, Slez carefully reconstructs the development of a market for grain and a political field centered on office-holding. The result is a compelling analysis of populism as the flip side of the politics of party elites." -Elisabeth S. Clemens, author of Civic Gifts: Voluntarism and the Making of the American Nation-State
