The Unsolid South: Mass Politics and National Representation in a One-Party Enclave

"[The Unsolid South] contributes significantly to our understanding of several important questions, including how representation can be witnessed in nondemocratic, one-party states; how lawmakers translate constituent preferences into legislative action; and, more broadly, how politics in the American South developed.—Zachary D. Baumann, Political Science Quarterly"

“The distinctive politics of the South has long been a specter haunting American politics. No one has brought more clarity or analytical acuity to the study of Southern politics and its central role in the long history of American democracy than Devin Caughey.”—Robert C. Lieberman, Johns Hopkins University

“The Unsolid South is fresh, convincing, and written with the utmost skill, intelligence, and knowledge of the historical territory. Caughey takes on a big topic and does it large justice.”—David R. Mayhew, author of The Imprint of Congress

“By demonstrating the democratic basis of the Southern wing of the ‘conservative coalition,’ this excellent book mounts a serious challenge to scholars of Southern history and political parties.”—Robert Mickey, author of Paths out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in America’s Deep South, 1944–1972

“In this prodigiously researched, theoretically sophisticated book, Devin Caughey offers a nuanced reinterpretation of politics in the so-called Solid South. Focusing on Southern members of Congress, their rivals, and their constituents, Caughey not only revises the standard portrait of one-party politics in the Jim Crow South, but sheds abundant new light on the ways that Southern politics shaped national policy and political economy.”—Bruce J. Schulman, Boston University

“V. O. Key’s Southern Politics in State and Nation has an almost sacred place in the literature on American politics. Caughey’s book, with far better data, examines many of the same themes. Most, but not all, of Key’s insights are supported by this comprehensive analysis. Confining his attention to the mostly white Southern electorate, Caughey finds consistently stronger evidence of successful representation.”—James Stimson, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill