Realignment Theory and the Modern American Presidency: A Reformulation

Realignment theory must be adapted to take account of changes that have occurred in the nature of the American presidency. The modern presidency is characterized by a direct, near-exclusive relationship with the public, through use of the mass media. This relationship has fundamentally altered the President's relationship with other political institutions and distanced presidential politics from congressional and local politics. The American party system, in other words, now encompasses a number of separate political processes that need to be approached as distinct theoretical problems. Realignment theory successfully explains much of what has taken place in one of those processes, presidential politics, over the last twenty years. But, given the immediacy of the modern President's relationship with the voting public, we should no longer expect broad shifts in the character of presidential electoral coalitions to be reflected at other levels of the American party system.