up true socialist progress, though even the propagandists would not seriously
hold that those they are attacking are actually conservative. The term came into
popular usage through liberal thinkers in the 19th century, whose idea of the
inevitability and desirability of progress was so strong that they felt it was
possible to identify groups or institutions who were clearly attempting to hold
back an unarguably good process. In as much as conservatism does imply a
resistance to rapid change, and a doubt that there is necessarily any particular
path of social progress for humanity to follow, the connection between
reaction and conservatism has a surface plausibility. The implication however
is that a reactionary has nothing but a negative opposition to trends or ideas, or
a desire for traditional values and structures, and as such is politically anachro-
nistic. Outside some theory that tells its exponents what progress really is the
term reactionary has little use, because most policy-making is a matter of
reacting to circumstances, and from any political perspective there will be
many trends in a society which clearly should be resisted.
Realignment
Realignment is a concept in political science usually referring to the change of
basic voting loyalties by groups in the electorate.Political sociologyhas
demonstrated that most electorates consist of socio-demographic groups with
strong long-term identifications with a particular political party. Although not
everyone who is, for example, a young, urban, northern, working-class male
will always vote for the Labour Party in Britain, the odds are strongly in favour
of him doing so. Similarly nearly all blacks in the USA will vote Democrat.
These loyalties, often inherited in a fairly automatic way from parents, and
reinforced by peer-group pressure, last for decades and result in a high
predictability in electoral behaviour.
From time to time, however, social change, major events like wars or
economic disruption cause sudden breaks in these semi-automatic electoral
regularities. When this happens a realignment may occur, shifting the bulk of
whole socio-demographic groups to new party loyalties. It is often argued, for
example, that the economic collapse in the USA after the Wall Street crash, and
Franklin Roosevelt’s recovery policies, made the 1932 presidential election a
realigning election in which new voting loyalties, known as theNew Deal
coalition, were formed and which lasted until at least the 1960s. Similarly the
elections after the First World War in Britain, when the Labour Party was first
able to present itself as a viable socialist alternative party, set up new working-
class loyalties, taking voters from the Liberals and realigning electoral politics in
Britain in a way which lasted at least until the 1970s. Realignment should not
be confused with dealignment, a similar process, but one which sees voters
Realignment