Divisions in U.S. Echo Failures of Reconstruction, Novkov Writes in Washington Post
ALBANY, N.Y. (Jan. 25, 2022) — A year after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump, political science Professor Julie Novkov shared her thoughts on the political divide in the United States and its long-term ramifications for our democracy in an article published by The Washington Post.
Novkov, a constitutional scholar and the interim dean of Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, noted that while some analysts worry that the normalization – and promotion – of violent discourse brings the nation to the brink of civil war, others argue that such rhetoric is misguided. Novkov suggests that a better analogy to where we are in history is what happened to the U.S. after the Civil War, during Reconstruction.
“The U.S. civil war — the only one the country has endured — bore familiar hallmarks: extreme partisan division, geographic sectionalism, and the existence of radically incompatible visions for the role of state and federal government, particularly regarding slavery,” Novkov wrote in her article, which appeared in the Post’s online politics and analysis site, The Monkey Cage.
But while we may be at a constitutional crisis, that doesn’t mean we are close to war, she says. After the Civil War ended, “the United States attempted to reconstitute itself around a new vision of national citizenship and equality. This attempt failed,” writes Novkov, who holds a joint appointment in the Department of Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies. “The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Melville Fuller, retrenched federal authority. Rather than pursue a long civil war, the national Republican Party capitulated, deferring U.S. transformation for generations.”
This retreat, Novkov argues, left the U.S. open to pitched battles at the state level, resulting in anti-democratic and racist policies in Southern states and the nation with no will to challenge these policies. Polarization in the nation today, and a Supreme Court that seems willing to grant states wide latitude, make collaboration across party lines to resist current anti-democratic forces difficult, she says.