American Government and Popular Discontent: Stability without Success

Popular distrust and the entrenchment of government by professionals lie at the root of America's most pressing political problems. This characterization of contemporary American politics stems from the transformations brought about from the 1950s to the 1980s. Presidential and congressional behavior, voting behavior, public opinion, public policy and federalism were all reconfigured during that time and many of those changes persist to this day and structure the political environment in the early twenty-first century. Schier and Eberly's system-level view of American politics demonstrates the disconnect between an increasingly polarized and partisan elite and an increasingly disaffected mass public.