Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy

Although American democracy in the 19th century excluded white women and all people of color from civic life, it nevertheless was a radical, progressive departure from the European experience, asserts Northwestern University history professor Wiebe. Its hallmarks were an open, popular politics; resistance to institutionalized power; and diffusion of responsibility. This populist democracy, he maintains, was swept away by America's industrial transformation between the 1890s and the 1920s, which created hierarchical divisions between a powerful capitalist ``national class,'' a middle class fixated on local concerns and a multiethnic, unskilled lower class. Twentieth-century American democracy, in Wiebe's unsettling, profound analysis of the decline of popular self-government, has brought a proliferation of pressure groups and lobbies as well as the rise of individualism and consumerism, with millions of Americans indoctrinated to participate in their own marginalizing. To revitalize today's apathetic, atomized citizenry, he calls for ``a guerrilla politics of everyday life'' that would demand corporate accountability and foster groups with a hand in shaping public policy. (Apr.)