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Keller, Morton. America's Three Regimes: A New Political History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 319 pages. Paper $19.95
Morton Keller's America's Three Regimes divides U.S. history into three distinct arrangements of party politics, government, and law. First is a Deferential-Republican system, defined by internal hierarchy and the external struggle against Great Britain from the colonial era through the 1820s. Second is a Party-Democratic configuration, which lasted from the 1830s to the 1930s, in which old elites and state governments lost power to políticos, public opinion, and the federal government. Third is the current PopulistBureaucratic era, that started in the 1930s, wherein the power to set and frame the political agenda has shifted away from parties to the media and interest groups that press federal authorities - especially the courts - to recognize their claims to fundamental rights.
The scope and content of America s Three Regimes will appeal to historians, political scientists, sociologists, and anyone else interested in the nature of democratic power. Keller's thesis, which stresses continuity, persistence, and evolution over change, transformation, and revolution, is especially provocative following the election of Barack Obama. Is Obama a revolutionary? Or do we manufacture hyperbole without reason? These are important questions.
For Keller, what seems novel is often old wine in a new bottle. To borrow a metaphor from Singapore not used by Keller: in terms of political stability, the United States is an aircraft carrier, not a canoe. It is...