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American Politics

by Samuel P. Huntington · 320 pages · ~6 hrs

Politics & GovernmentHistoryPhilosophy

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Samuel P. Huntington argues that American politics is uniquely shaped by what he calls 'the American Creed'—a cluster of ideals including liberty, equality, individualism, and hostility to concentrated authority—and by the inevitable gap between those ideals and the institutions Americans actually live under. Every two or three generations, he contends, this 'IvI gap' (ideals versus institutions) becomes intolerable, and Americans launch periods of 'creedal passion' in which they attempt to remake their political order to better match their stated values. Huntington traces these recurring spasms of reform through the Revolutionary era, the Jacksonian period, the Progressive era, and the upheavals of the 1960s and early 1970s. He notes that the result is never the abolition of hierarchy and authority, since governance requires both, but a chastened rebalancing. A Harvard political scientist best known for The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington wrote this book in the early 1980s while reflecting on the convulsions of the prior two decades. He warns that the American Creed makes the country both unusually self-critical and unusually difficult to govern. The book remains a touchstone for thinking about American exceptionalism, populist revolts, and why reform movements in the United States tend to circle back to the same set of foundational complaints.

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