How Does the United States Fit into Zimblatt's Formulation

Zimblatt says little about democratic transition in the United States, other than to say that the South lagged the rest of the country.  Certainly it is true that the United States had regular elective government going back to the earliest colonial times, and had no landed aristocracy outside of the the South.  But true democracy in the form of universal (manhood) suffrage and mass parties did not arrive until the 1830's.*

Furthermore, the United States from the start had a very decentralized government and no single governing elite.  Instead, we had two governing elites -- the landed aristocracy of the South and the commercial/industrial elite of the North. This also meant that the whole right-left spectrum did not exactly apply to U.S. politics.

Treating conservative and right wing to mean upholding the status quo of power (which, for the sake of brevity, I will call the SQP) and liberal or left as challenging the SQP, such labels did not apply well in the US because there was not a single SQP.  Rather, there were two SQP's -- one based on land and slave ownership in the South, and one based on trade, commerce and (later) industrial development in the North.  The United States also had two political parties.  One -- called the Republican Party in Jefferson's time, the Democratic Republican Party in Jackson's time, and finally just the Democrats -- was the party that upheld the SQP South and challenged the SQP North.  Opposed to it were a series of parties -- first the Federalists, then the National Republicans, and then the Whigs -- that upheld the SQP North.  Until the rise of Republican Party in the 1850's, no one challenged the SQP South, and even the Republicans originally did not intend to challenge the Southern SQP, but merely to contain it.

In the earliest years of our Republic, the Federalist Party held power, and did not challenge the SQP North or South.  The election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 posed a challenge to the SQP North, and Federalists responded with the sort of hysterical overreaction that ruling elites so often show to even a mild challenge to their dominance.  First they attempted to block Jefferson by making Aaron Burr President instead.**  New England contemplated secession.  While the Federalist grudgingly acquiesced for a time, first Jefferson's embargo and then the War of 1812 under Madison led New England to near-revolt and serious discussions of nullification and secession.

The crisis ended with the end of the war, and the Federalist Party largely died out as a party of traitors, while the Republicans adopted the best parts of Federalist platform. An Era of Good Feelings ensued.  That era came to an end with the rise of Andrew Jackson and his challenges to the SQP North.  When Jackson won an electoral and popular plurality but not majority in 1824, Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams were sufficiently alarmed that they jointed forces to choose Adams as President, with Clay as his Secretary of State.  (If no candidate wins a victory in the Electoral College, Congress makes the decision).

In 1828, Jackson swept to power with a strong majority that could not be denied, posing a serious challenge to the SQP North.  And Northern elites grumbled but acquiesced, splitting the Republican Party into Democratic Republicans (Jackson supporters) and National Republicans (Jackson opponents).  The National Republicans soon began calling themselves Whigs, suggesting that Jackson was behaving like a monarch.  And, like British Conservatives, Whigs learned to form a mass party and to compete electorally, accepting defeat so they could live to fight another day.

While I, like many others, have referred to "mature" democracy, I have never been able to define the term, except in age. Zimblatt offers a useful definition of "mature" democracy.  A democracy is "mature" when the party of the SQP has lost an election, accepted its defeat, and learned to compete as democratic party.

By this definition, Athens became a "mature" democracy when the populist Themistocles banished the conservative Aristides, and Aristides submitted without complaint.***  And the Northern United States became a "mature" democracy when it accepted Andrew Jackson as President.

The South was a different matter altogether.  While Jeffersonian and Jacksonian politicians posed as champions of the common man against northern elites, they were themselves champions of the SQP South and were able to cover themselves with democratic glory only because no one challenged the southern SQP.  With the rise of the Republican Party in the 1850's, the South finally saw its SQP challenged and reacted with a hysteria that dwarfed any hysteria over Jefferson.  Secession and civil war ensued, and reconciliation was ultimately based on an agreement that Republicans would no longer challenge the SQP South.  (Democrats went right on challenging the SQP North). This arrangement remained in place until the Civil Rights Movement and the civil rights legislation of the 1960's.  So the South did not become a "mature" democracy until the 1960's -- and maybe not even then.  Many trace the current political crisis to the Democrats' decision to challenge the SQP South over 50 years ago.

So why has the South been so uniquely resistant to allowing any sort of challenge to the SQP?  Some people (I can imagine David Hackett Fischer among them) would argue that the culture of the South is particularly resistant to the sort of challenge to the SQP, compromise, and institutional disagreement that are so vital to a mature democracy.  Others would say that challenges to the SQP North never challenged its racial SQP, and that the issue of race is paramount, everywhere and always.  And I will simply say that it will take a great deal more knowledge and study that I have at hand to reach even a tentative answer on the matter.

Next: My biggest criticism of Zimblatt

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*Although political parties were a British invention, mass parties originated in the United States.
**The Electoral College at the time made the winner President and the runner-up Vice President.  To avoid having political rivals in the two offices, Jefferson and Burr ran in tandem and won equal numbers of votes.  There was no rule at the time to determine which of them we President and which was Vice President, even though everyone knew that Jefferson was at the top of the ticket.   
***Aristides was one of a series of conservative leaders who accepted temporary exile without complaint.  Kimon and Thucydides were also banished and submitted without complaint.  Over time, the Athenians learned to get along without exiling defeated leaders.