The Rational Southerner: Black Mobilization, Republican Growth, and the Partisan Transformation of the American South

by M.V. Hood III, Quentin Kidd

Since 1950, the South has undergone the most dramatic political transformation of any region in the United States. The once Solid-meaning Democratic-South is now overwhelmingly Republican, and long-disenfranchised African Americans vote at levels comparable to those of whites. In The Rational Southerner, M.V. Hood III, Quentin Kidd, and Irwin L. Morris argue that local strategic dynamics played a decisive and underappreciated role in both the development of the Southern Republican Party and the mobilization of the region's black electorate. Mobilized blacks who supported the Democratic Party made it increasingly difficult for conservative whites to maintain control of the Party's machinery. Also, as local Republican Party organizations became politically viable, the strategic opportunities that such a change provided made the GOP an increasingly attractive alternative for white conservatives. Blacks also found new opportunities within the Democratic Party as whites fled to
the GOP, especially in the deep South, where large black populations had the potential to dominate state and local Democratic Parties. As a result, Republican Party viability also led to black mobilization.

Using the theory of relative advantage, Hood, Kidd, and Morris provide a new perspective on party system transformation. Following a theoretically-informed description of recent partisan dynamics in the South, they demonstrate, with decades of state-level, sub-state, and individual-level data, that GOP organizational strength and black electoral mobilization were the primary determinants of political change in the region. The authors' finding that race was, and still is, the primary driver behind political change in the region stands in stark contrast to recent scholarship which points to in-migration, economic growth, or religious factors as the locus of transition. The Rational Southerner contributes not only to the study of Southern politics, but to our understanding of party system change, racial politics, and the role that state and local political dynamics play in the larger context of national politics and policymaking.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published August 24, 2012

Reviews

[Mscout]

Political realignment is not a new phenomenon in this country, nor is it a new field of study. It has been shown to be extant from the election of 1800 forward in American presidential politics. V O Key was one of the earliest to describe the theory in his 1955 article, “A Theory of Critical Elections.” And yet. The transition of the “Solid South” from monolithic support for the Democratic Party to a region with a thriving, if not in some areas overwhelming, Republican Party over the last half-century, has been shocking to many. While theories abound as to the driving forces behind this particular realignment, for many it is still unexplained. Hood, Kidd, and Morris introduce yet another model, the “Theory of Relative Advantage”, to explain the Southern realignment in The Rational Southerner. According to this theory, “among the factors that influence people’s decisions…are (1) the relative competitiveness of the party in a wide variety of political arenas (viability) and (2) the relative consistency of each party’s political objectives with a citizen’s own objectives (control)” (11). The authors then show that this theory not only explains the realignment, but the great variations across the region with the timing and power of that realignment.
As explained in the book, the theory was originally formulated to describe the growth of the GOP in the South (159). However, Hood, et al, could not separate the growth of the Republican Party from the mobilization of African American voters that occurred during this same time period. Others, such as Key, attempted to tie in race via Key’s “Blackbelt Hypothesis”, but as the authors point out, there is a flaw in that theory. Key’s hypothesis states that white Southerners were drawn to the GOP because of “black context”; the greater the black population, the greater the growth in the Republican Party. However, the growth occurred during a time of great black out-migration from the region, meaning that the GOP was actually growing as the African American population was decreasing. Likewise the authors address and refute many of the more popular explanations for the Southern realignment, including the leftward shift of the Democratic Party, the role of class, migration patterns, and Southern evangelicalism.
By tying the two trends together, GOP growth and black mobilization (here defined as black voter registration), the authors can give a clearer representation of the realignment and all of its variations over time and space. In the end, as more African Americans registered to vote, and joined the Democratic Party, whites, especially conservative whites, switched allegiance to the Republican Party. As more whites left, African Americans gained more power within the Democratic Party, leading to more black mobilization. The pattern repeats itself throughout the region, albeit in varying rates and degrees over the last half of the twentieth century. As they determined, the realignment was “primarily driven by racial dynamics,” just differently than Key had posited seventy years earlier (181, author’s emphasis).
In seeking to prove the “Theory of Relative Advantage”, the authors use a great deal of data from both the American National Election Studies (ANES) and the Comparative State Elections Project (CSEP). Data was pulled for both the state and substate levels to show the variations, not only across the region, but within smaller areas as well. This data shows a “strong relationship between black electoral strength and GOP growth even when accounting for variations in the strength of other factors” (180). Additionally, the book’s appendices include the origins of the data used, by chapter and subject, as well as explanations for the statistical methods used for computing the variables for many of their calculations, allowing the reader to “follow along” rather than take the figures at face value.
While by no means the last word on the subject, Hood, Kidd, and Morris present a compelling new argument for the “Theory of Relative Advantage,” even as they hearken back once again to Key’s work at the beginning of the period. This well-researched text, while not exactly light reading, is very approachable, even for those outside the field of political science. Upper level and graduate courses in both history and political science could find the text useful, as well as the educated layperson seeking more knowledge on the issue. The data is presented in numerous tables and charts, which give the reader a fine visual depiction of the trends and statistics discussed in the text. The figures are presented in such a way as to complement the clear explanations given in the text and the two work together well. All in all, The Rational Southerner is a welcome addition to the scholarship of Southern realignment.

[Trey Hood]