American Politics in the Postwar Sunbelt
Conservative Growth in a Battleground Region

This book analyzes the political culture of the American Sunbelt since the end of World War II.

Sean P. Cunningham (Author)

9781107672345, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 June 2014

304 pages, 3 b/w illus. 1 map
21.5 x 13.9 x 1.5 cm, 0.35 kg

'Sean Cunningham offers a compelling overview of Sunbelt politics since World War II. He persuasively demonstrates that although the Sunbelt became the base of the contemporary Republican Party, its political history is more contested and ambiguous than is often thought. Cunningham's analysis connecting political and policy outcomes to economic and demographic transitions, as well as his account of how federal money helped shape the region's development, are especially insightful.' Timothy N. Thurber, Virginia Commonwealth University

This book analyzes the political culture of the American Sunbelt since the end of World War II. It highlights and explains the Sunbelt's emergence during the second half of the twentieth century as the undisputed geographic epicentre for conservative Republican power in the United States. However, the book also investigates the ongoing nature of political contestation within the postwar Sunbelt, often highlighting the underappreciated persistence of liberal and progressive influences across the region. Sean P. Cunningham argues that the conservative Republican ascendancy that so many have identified as almost synonymous with the rise of the postwar American Sunbelt was hardly an easy, unobstructed victory march. Rather, it was consistently challenged and never preordained. The history of American politics in the postwar Sunbelt resembles a roller-coaster of partisan and ideological adaptation and transformation.

Introduction: what is the Sunbelt ... and why is it important? 1. Convergence, metropolitanization, and anticommunism
2. Race, rights, and the liberal consensus
3. Wars against liberalism
4. Southern, suburban, and Sunbelt strategies
5. Mobilizing the religious right in the politicized 'Bible Belt'
6. Reagan's Sunbelt, Reagan's America
7. Shades of red, shades of blue
Epilogue. Sunbelt politics in the twenty-first century.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3], History of the Americas [HBJK]