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 have extended across the last hundred years of American history, according to Gerstle. The New Deal order rose in the 1930s and collapsed in the 1970s. The neoliberal order rose in the 1970s and declined in the 2010s.
