Berg -- Realigning Elections -- 3/3/2004
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3. Economic forces. The growth of international commerce has placed increasing com-
petitive pressure on US corporations, while the end of the Cold War has decreased the need for
capital to conciliate workers with high wages and social benefits, to conciliate racial and ethnic
minorities with anti-discrimination programs, or to conciliate the millions of Americans who
want a clean environment with strong anti-pollution regulations. The result has been growing
economic inequality within the United States (as well as between the United States and residents
of the less developed countries). As the Democratic party has followed a “third way” strategy,
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the labor and environmental movements have begun to question their support for that party.
4. Minor parties. The rise of minor parties in the 1990s.
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The 2000 election can be seen
either as a decline in minor parties, reflected in the collapse of the Reform party, or as the con-
solidation by the Greens as the major alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. The Greens
continued to grow after the election,
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suggesting that the latter may be the case.
5. Policy change. This one is too soon to tell. If 2000 was the completion of a realignment
to the Republicans, we can expect the basic policy direction of the Bush administration to con-
tinue into the near future. If a realignment is still to come, other possibilities open up.
Conclusion
Theodore Rosenof observes that realignment theory was not intended to predict elections,
but to improve our understanding of elections that have already happened; a critical election can
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47
See Anthony Giddens, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Cambridge: Polity,
1998),Anthony Giddens, The Third Way and Its Critics (Cambridge: Polity, 2000).
48
John C. Berg, “Prospects for More Parties in the United States by the Year 2000,” paper
presented at the Conference on Parties in the Year 2000 (Manchester, U.K., 1995),John C. Berg,
“Cracks in the U.S. Two-Party System,” paper presented at the American Political Science
Association (San Francisco, 1996),John C. Berg, “Spoiler or Builder? The Effect of Ralph
Nader’s 2000 Campaign on the U.S. Greens,” in The State of the Parties: The Changing Role of
Contemporary American Parties, ed. John C. Green and Rick D. Farmer (Lanham MD: Rowman
& Littlefield, 2003).
49
See, for example, Berg, “Spoiler or Builder? The Effect of Ralph Nader’s 2000 Campaign on
the U.S. Greens.”.
Convention