1. A task that has begun in Shafer, Byron et al., The End of Realignment? Interpreting American Electoral Eras (Madison, Wis., 1991).Google Scholar

2. Burnham, Walter Dean, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; idem, The Current Crisis in American Politics (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; McCormick, Richard L., The Party Period and Public Policy: American Politics from the Age of Jackson to the Progressive Era (New York, 1986).Google Scholar

3. Burnham, Walter Dean, “The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe,” American Political Science Review 59 (March 1965): 7–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Summers, Mark, The Plundering Generation: Corruption and the Crisis of the Union, 1849–1861 (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; Argersinger, Peter, Structure, Process, and Party: Essays in American Political History (Armonk, N.Y., 1992).Google Scholar

5. In addition to the key works by Paula Baker, Mary Ryan, and Lori Ginzberg et al. referred to in the book, see also McGerr, Michael, “Political Style and Women's Power, 1830–1930,” journal of American History 77 (December 1990): 864–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Although a very good start has been made in this in such books as McGerr, Michael, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865–1928 (New York, 1986)Google Scholar, and Wattenberg, Martin, The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952–1988 (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), as well as in a range of popular political declinism studies that have appeared in the late 1980s and early 1990s.Google Scholar