The Democratic order in the United States defined the main themes, policies, and organized forms of national politics from the 1930s through the 1960s. Contemporary American politics remains deeply influenced by the accomplishments of the Democratic order and by its limits. Key features of that regime remain the focus of fierce political debate. Thus conflicts about the appropriate role of the state in social welfare provision and economic regulation intensified in the mid-1990s, while stringently antistatist positions gained a growing public role.

This book is about the creation and renewal of the Democratic political order in the 1930s and 1940s. By political order I mean a durable mode of organizing and exercising political power at the national level, with distinct institutions, policies, and discourses. The Democratic political order in the 1930s defined new relations among the Democratic Party, the national state, and political interest groups and social movements, notably the labor movement. It fused democratic and modernizing themes in a progressive liberalism that advocated government action to achieve economic stability, enhance social security, and expand political representation. Its eventual decline several decades later was largely the unintended result of reliance on the state for political support. This dynamic eroded nonstate Democratic forces and made it difficult to respond politically to deep social and economic change.