The Theory of Civic Realignment
Political Science | American Government | Democratic Theory
Legitimacy, Function, and the Future of the American Republic
Proposed Instructor: Benjamin Everidge, M.A.
Georgetown University Fellow | 2024 Independent Candidate for the U.S. Senate from Florida | Author
Undergraduate Upper-Division Seminar / Graduate-Level Elective
I | Course Description
American political science has long sought to explain the evolution of political parties, electoral coalitions, democratic institutions, and public confidence in government. From V. O. Key's critical elections to Walter Dean Burnham's theories of political realignment, scholars have examined the recurring transformations that reshape the American electorate and redefine the balance of political power.
But what happens when citizens begin to question not merely which political party should govern, but whether the institutions of government are capable of governing effectively at all?
This course introduces and critically examines the Everidge Theory of Civic Realignment, a proposed framework for understanding the changing relationship between American citizens, political institutions, and democratic legitimacy.
The theory hypothesizes that contemporary American politics is experiencing a transformation in which political legitimacy increasingly depends upon institutional performance, public trust, civic participation, and demonstrated competence rather than partisan affiliation alone.
Students will explore the theory's four principal concepts: Legitimacy Migration, Civic Identity Politics, the Functionalist–Symbolist Divide, and the Functional Republic.
The seminar will place these concepts within the broader intellectual traditions of American political development, democratic theory, political behavior, constitutional government, and public administration.
Importantly, the course will not presume that Civic Realignment has been empirically established. Students will be encouraged to challenge the theory, compare it with competing explanations, identify weaknesses, and develop research capable of supporting or falsifying its propositions.
The semester culminates in a student research symposium examining whether America is entering a new era of political realignment or experiencing a different form of democratic transformation.
II | Course Objectives and Learning Outcomes
Upon completing the course, students should be able to explain the historical development of American realignment theory, distinguish realignment from dealignment and polarization, evaluate the relationship between political trust and governmental performance, and assess the prospects for independent political movements within America's constitutional and electoral institutions.
Students will also develop the ability to distinguish normative political arguments from empirically testable hypotheses, interpret public-opinion and electoral data, and construct original arguments about the future of American self-government.
The overarching intellectual question is: Can the American Republic experience a fundamental political realignment driven not primarily by partisan ideology, but by citizens' demand for competent, accountable, and functional government?
III | Course Organization: The Three-Hour Evening Seminar
Each class will combine traditional academic instruction with the interactive discussion and analytical exercises associated with advanced political science seminars.
The teaching philosophy is intentionally Socratic. Students should leave each evening having considered not simply what the instructor believes, but why an alternative interpretation might be equally persuasive.
IV | The Fifteen-Week Academic Schedule
WEEK 01
The American Republic: Representation, Legitimacy, and the Consent of the Governed
The opening seminar examines the constitutional and philosophical foundations of American representative government. Students consider the political thought of Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Tocqueville, exploring how constitutional legitimacy differs from institutional popularity and administrative effectiveness.
Essential question: What makes government legitimate, and can a government be constitutionally legitimate yet functionally unsuccessful?
Readings: The Federalist, Nos. 10, 51, and 70; Declaration of Independence; Tocqueville, Democracy in America (selected chapters).
WEEK 02
The Development of America's Two-Party System
Students examine the emergence of political parties, the collapse of the Federalists and Whigs, and the institutional forces that have sustained two-party competition. Particular attention is given to the distinction between political parties as constitutional necessities and parties as historically evolved organizations.
Essential question: Is America's two-party system a constitutional expectation, a political convenience, or an institutional constraint?
Readings: E. E. Schattschneider, Party Government; John H. Aldrich, Why Parties? (selected chapters).
WEEK 03
Critical Elections and the Classical Theory of Political Realignment
This session introduces V. O. Key, Walter Dean Burnham, and the historical debate over critical elections. Students evaluate the elections of 1860, 1896, 1932, and 1968, distinguishing genuine electoral transformations from retrospective historical interpretations.
Essential question: Do political realignments occur in recognizable cycles, or have scholars imposed patterns upon complex electoral history?
Readings: Key, “A Theory of Critical Elections” (1955); Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (1970).
WEEK 04
Dealignment, Polarization, and the Rise of Political Independents
Students distinguish party identification from voter registration and voting behavior. They examine independent-leaning partisans, genuinely unattached voters, ideological polarization, and the barriers confronting independent candidates.
Essential question: Does the growing number of self-described independents indicate a fundamental political transformation or a change in how Americans describe existing partisan preferences?
Readings: Russell Dalton, The Apartisan American; Keith et al., The Myth of the Independent Voter; selected Gallup, Pew, and ANES datasets.
Assignment: First analytical essay due — 1,500 words on realignment versus dealignment.
WEEK 05
The Crisis of Institutional Trust
Drawing upon David Easton, Pippa Norris, and Peter Mair, this class investigates the relationship between political support, democratic dissatisfaction, and institutional decline. Students compare confidence in Congress, courts, local government, and political parties.
Essential question: When Americans lose confidence in their political institutions, are they withdrawing consent from democracy itself or expressing dissatisfaction with its performance?
Readings: Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life; Norris, Democratic Deficit; Mair, Ruling the Void.
WEEK 06
Introducing the Everidge Theory of Civic Realignment
The instructor formally presents Civic Realignment as a theoretical model. Students examine its proposed causal sequence: perceived institutional dysfunction, declining representational trust, the search for alternative civic institutions, and possible reorganization of political loyalties around competence.
Essential question: Can a realignment occur in the location of political legitimacy without a corresponding realignment in party control?
Readings: Everidge, The Everidge Theory of Civic Realignment: Legitimacy, Function, and the Post-Partisan Republic (working manuscript); Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.
Workshop: Students develop competing hypotheses and identify evidence that would disprove the Everidge model.
WEEK 07
Legitimacy Migration: Where Does Public Trust Go?
Students investigate whether trust withdrawn from national political institutions is transferred to local government, nonprofit organizations, employers, civic associations, or other institutions—or whether it simply dissipates.
Essential question: Is legitimacy migration an observable process, or merely a metaphor for declining institutional confidence?
Readings: Putnam, Bowling Alone; selected institutional trust studies from Pew Research Center and Edelman.
Research exercise: Construct a comparative institutional-trust matrix and discuss its methodological limitations.
WEEK 08
Midterm Examination and Theoretical Defense
The midterm consists of an analytical essay examination followed by a structured seminar debate. Students must defend or critique the Everidge Theory using the scholarship covered during the first seven weeks.
Central proposition: The contemporary American electorate is undergoing a civic realignment that classical electoral realignment theory cannot adequately explain.
Assessment: Midterm examination and oral defense. Students are evaluated on evidence and reasoning, not agreement with the instructor.
WEEK 09
Civic Identity Politics: Belonging Beyond Party
Students explore political identity, social belonging, group loyalty, and civic association. The seminar examines whether attachment to community problem-solving can create a meaningful political identity independent of traditional partisan or ideological commitments.
Essential question: Can civic identity become politically powerful without reproducing the same tribal behavior it seeks to overcome?
Readings: Tajfel and Turner, “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict”; selected work by Leonie Huddy on partisan identity; Tocqueville on associations.
WEEK 10
Functionalists and Symbolists: A New Political Cleavage?
The seminar examines the distinction between performance-oriented political behavior and symbolic political expression. Students consider whether the two are mutually exclusive, whether symbolism can serve legitimate democratic purposes, and whether functionalism is distinguishable from technocracy.
Essential question: Is functionality versus symbolism a genuine political cleavage, or simply another way of describing familiar differences in political behavior?
Readings: Murray Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics; Scharpf, Governing in Europe; selected political-behavior scholarship.
Assignment: Develop a survey instrument that could measure functionalist and symbolist orientations.
WEEK 11
Performance Legitimacy and the Functional Republic
Students examine the relationship between electoral representation, administrative capacity, public accountability, and measurable outcomes. Particular attention is paid to the danger of allowing competent administration to substitute for democratic consent or constitutional rights.
Essential question: Can performance strengthen democratic legitimacy without subordinating representation, liberty, and the rule of law to efficiency?
Readings: Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay; Mark Moore, Creating Public Value; Robert Behn, Rethinking Democratic Accountability.
WEEK 12
Independent Politics and Institutional Reform
This class considers independent candidacies, ballot access, ranked-choice voting, fusion voting, nonpartisan elections, and alternative coalition structures. Students assess whether electoral reform can translate civic dissatisfaction into durable political representation.
Essential question: Can independent political movements become governing institutions without ultimately developing the same incentives as established parties?
Readings: Duverger, Political Parties (selected chapters); selected scholarship on electoral systems and American ballot-access law.
Case study: Compare Florida, Maine, and Alaska, distinguishing registration patterns from electoral institutions.
WEEK 13
Civic Partnerships, Local Government, and the Future of Public Problem-Solving
Students investigate collaborative governance, nonprofit participation, public-private partnerships, and public-private-philanthropic partnerships. They assess both the opportunities for improved public outcomes and the risks of private influence, unequal accountability, and democratic displacement.
Essential question: Can civic partnerships restore governmental functionality while preserving public accountability?
Readings: Fung and Wright, Deepening Democracy; Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (selected chapters); relevant collaborative-governance research.
Assignment: Final research paper prospectus and preliminary findings due.
WEEK 14
The Future of American Political Realignment: 2030–2050
This forward-looking seminar evaluates competing scenarios for American political development: renewed party competition, continued polarization, electoral dealignment, institutional fragmentation, or a measurable civic realignment. Students develop conditional forecasts grounded in evidence rather than inevitable predictions.
Essential question: What observable developments would establish that America has entered a new political era?
Readings: Review of course scholarship; student-selected peer-reviewed research; recent electoral and public-opinion data.
Workshop: Present and critique competing future scenarios.
WEEK 15
The Civic Realignment Symposium: Defending, Revising, or Rejecting the Theory
The final evening is organized as an academic symposium. Students present original research and engage in peer questioning. The instructor concludes with a synthesis of the strongest arguments supporting, modifying, and challenging Civic Realignment.
Concluding question: Does the Everidge Theory offer a sufficiently distinctive, explanatory, and testable contribution to American political science?
Final assessment: Research paper submission and symposium presentation.
V | Required and Recommended Reading
I recommend one central course reader containing my Everidge manuscript and selected journal articles, supplemented by several foundational books. This avoids requiring students to purchase an excessive number of texts.
Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics
Walter Dean Burnham · 1970
Establishes the classic framework for understanding critical elections and electoral realignment.
The Apartisan American
Russell J. Dalton · 2013
Provides the principal competing explanation for weakening partisan identification.
Ruling the Void
Peter Mair · 2013
Examines the growing distance between citizens and established political parties.
Exit, Voice, and Loyalty
Albert O. Hirschman · 1970
Introduces a fundamental framework for how people respond to declining organizational performance.
Political Order and Political Decay
Francis Fukuyama · 2014
Examines state capacity, accountability, institutional deterioration, and governance effectiveness.
Instructor-authored primary reading: Benjamin Everidge, The Everidge Theory of Civic Realignment: Legitimacy, Function, and the Post-Partisan Republic, working manuscript, to be distributed to students.
The manuscript will be identified as a proposed theory under scholarly development, not as an established consensus within the discipline. A final course reader will include verified Chicago-style bibliographic entries and assigned chapter or page ranges.
VI | Student Assignments and Grading
The Final Research Paper
Each student will prepare an original research paper of approximately 4,000–5,000 words, using Chicago author–date citations and a formal bibliography.
Students may choose to investigate independent voter identification, institutional trust, performance legitimacy, civic identity, electoral reform, or competing theories of democratic change. They may also propose a modification or rejection of the Everidge model.
The strongest papers will move beyond philosophical agreement or disagreement to identify observable evidence, construct defensible research methods, and acknowledge alternative explanations.
VII | Academic Standards and Course Policies
The course will be conducted according to the standards of academic integrity, respectful scholarly debate, methodological transparency, and intellectual independence. Political affiliation will have no bearing on grades or classroom standing.
Because the instructor is also the author of the principal theory under examination, the course will explicitly distinguish the presentation of an original scholarly hypothesis from advocacy on its behalf. Students will receive equal credit for well-supported critiques and for well-supported defenses.
Generative artificial intelligence may be used for exploratory research and organizational assistance, subject to institutional policy, but students must independently verify sources, disclose material AI assistance, and remain responsible for all arguments and evidence they submit.
VIII | The Signature Teaching Exercise: The Civic Realignment Test
This course will have one distinctive academic feature: a semester-long exercise in which students build and test an empirical framework for Civic Realignment.
The objective would be to determine whether the theory identifies something that established models of partisan realignment, dealignment, and democratic dissatisfaction do not already explain.
Students will examine whether these dimensions are associated, whether they predict meaningful political behavior, and whether the proposed relationships survive controls for ideology, age, education, socioeconomic status, and existing partisan attachments.
The exercise will also expose an important potential weakness of the theory: identifying as an independent does not necessarily imply a preference for nonpartisan governance, and declining trust in one institution does not automatically establish increased trust in another.
IX | Guest Lecturers and Special Seminar Opportunities
A particularly valuable feature of this course design is to invite practitioners who can illuminate the distinction between political theory and governing reality.
A former governor or mayor could address the practical limits of cross-partisan leadership. An election-law scholar could explain the institutional barriers confronting independent candidates. A public-opinion researcher could discuss the methodological problems of measuring legitimacy. A political journalist could examine how information ecosystems influence political identity. A public administrator could explore whether improved service delivery actually restores democratic trust.
X | The Semester's Closing Intellectual Challenge
The course will end with a challenge to the next generation of political scientists: For more than two centuries, Americans have argued over who should govern. Democrats and Republicans have built their political identities around competing visions of what government should do. But a new question may be emerging that neither party can afford to ignore: Can the institutions of the American Republic govern effectively enough to retain the confidence of the people they represent?
If citizens begin to reorganize their political loyalties around that question, we may be witnessing a new form of political realignment - one measured not only by elections, but by the movement of public trust, civic allegiance, and democratic legitimacy.
The responsibility of political science is not to celebrate that possibility. It is to investigate it.