My first and primary reply to Thomas Ogorzalek’s review is one of deep gratitude. I have been thinking about the nationalization of American political behavior for several years now, and his review still manages to be one of the most insightful pieces I have read on the topic. In particular, it raises a few issues that are at once critical and not always center stage in The Increasingly United States.
For instance, my book provides extensive evidence that aspects of Americans’ immediate environments—say, whether they live near nuclear power plants or military bases—do not typically influence their political attitudes. The exceptions appear to be on issues that are prominent in national politics, including racially inflected issues such as criminal justice, terrorism, and immigration. But Ogorzalek asks if the observation that Americans’ attitudes tend not to have a strong spatial imprint is itself a product of suburbanization and the increasingly similar built environments in many American communities. Maybe contemporary spaces are not influential precisely because our spaces are relatively similar, with political divisions organized primarily between, rather than within, localities? I continue to think that the bulk of the evidence suggests that for many Americans, getting involved in politics means stepping into a distinct arena that is highly nationalized—and that is true even though the spaces they call home raise quite distinctive political issues. Even suburbs that are designed in similar ways can differ markedly in the issues they face. But the prospect that spatial factors matter less because they may vary less is well worth further exploration.
Ogorzalek also raises a provocative question: “How different, really, are nationalization and racialization?” Absolutely, these two processes are related. When E. E. Schattschneider wrote about changing the scope of conflict and nationalization in 1960, Civil Rights and struggles over segregation were a central example. One explicit political strategy of Civil Rights activists was to nationalize an issue that had been addressed locally in prior decades, and so to shift the scope of conflict in ways that would advantage their cause. (In part, it is the story of how this played out in urban congressional delegations that Ogorzalek tells so well.) What is more, in a highly nationalized political environment, politicians have strong incentives to fixate on issues that are resonant and evocative nationwide. And if those issues tend to be symbolic, identity laden, and racially charged, nationalization provides a potentially important explanation for contemporary politics’ seeming fixation on such issues. So while I do not think that nationalization is a synonym for racialization, I think that they are closely intertwined.
The Cities on the Hill and The Increasingly United States are in key ways quite different books. Ogorzalek’s work focuses on political elites, and it provides detailed historical evidence that reshapes how we think about the role of political machines and other institutions in enabling coordinated activity across the levels of government. Relying more on surveys and election returns, my book instead focuses squarely on voters and on political behavior, as well as some of the macrosocial causes behind the nationalizing trends. And yet, there are critical points of agreement. Both books provide evidence that the American federalist system must be studied as a single, integrated whole, with critical dynamics emerging from the interplay between the system’s different levels. Jointly, these books make the case that understanding subnational politics is vital, and also that such understanding emerges when we study different levels of the federal system in tandem.
