The term “political order” is the coinage of Gary Gerstle, an American historian and a professor at Cambridge University. Many historians focus on how Republicans and Democrats have fought and disagreed over the years. Gerstle’s work focuses instead on how hidden points of consensus between the parties create distinctive periods of history, which he calls political orders. He defines a political order as “a constellation of ideologies, policies, and constituencies that shape American politics in ways that endure beyond the two-, four-, and six-year election cycles.”1 Two such constellations
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