Recalibrating Reform The Limits of Political Change [Paperback]

Stuart Chinn highlights this phenomenon, dubbed 'recalibration', as a regular companion to reform, and highlights the barriers to, and possibilities for, change in American politics.This book examines a pattern of conservative resurgence following several eras of reform in American history by pointing to the phenomenon of recalibration. It demonstrates the difficulty of achieving substantive political change in American politics, as elements of the old political order tend to find ways to survive and reassert themselves after reform. By highlighting recalibration as a regular companion to reform, the book ultimately sheds light on the barriers to, and possibilities for, sweeping change in American politics.This book examines a pattern of conservative resurgence following several eras of reform in American history by pointing to the phenomenon of recalibration. It demonstrates the difficulty of achieving substantive political change in American politics, as elements of the old political order tend to find ways to survive and reassert themselves after reform. By highlighting recalibration as a regular companion to reform, the book ultimately sheds light on the barriers to, and possibilities for, sweeping change in American politics.Some of the most important eras of reform in U.S. history reveal a troubling pattern: often reform is compromised after the initial legislative and judicial victories have been achieved. Thus Jim Crow racial exclusions followed Reconstruction; employer prerogatives resurged after the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935; and after the civil rights reforms of the mid-twentieth century, principles of color-blindness remain dominant in key areas of constitutional law that allow structural racial inequalities to remain hidden or unaddressed. When momentous reforms occur, certain institutions and legal rights will survive the disruption and remain intact, just in different forms. Thus governance in the postreform period reflects a systematic rels‚