The Politics of Constitutional Memory and Political Articulation: Text Analysis of U.S. Party Platforms

Lindsay J Maurer, University of California, Davis

Memory scholars have established a link between collective memory, identity, and political legitimacy. Although memory is key to establishing party identity and party legitimacy, which are crucial to the process of political articulation, current sociology research has not considered memory as a means of articulation. I use both quantitative computational text analysis methods and qualitative methods to analyze a corpus of Democratic and Republican party platforms from 1840-2020. I focus on the shape and structure of partisan constitutional memory, a highly salient element of American national identity. Exploratory quantitative findings demonstrate that party platform references to the Constitution differ in frequency between the two parties and change significantly in frequency over time. Using the 1856 Republican party platform as a case study, I argue that selective framing acted as a means of articulating an antislavery political bloc, and that understanding the temporal dimensions of selective framing, which I call temporal density and temporal reverberations, are key to understanding the politics of memory as a means of articulation. Key words: constitutional memory, politics of memory, political articulation, selective framing, temporal dimensions, temporal density, temporal reverberations

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 Presented in Session 12. Politics and Partisanship