Period Effect

THE PERIOD EFFECT refers to change within, or influence upon, political behavior that can be ascribed to generational difference, not simply age differences. Age differences would account for a difference of opinion on tax law between a young man and his grandfather, but not for the changes of the Civil Rights Movement or the Progressive Era. While the generation effect may describe differences in outlook that are carried across time by an age cohort, the period effect describes a change or influence that remains true across age, gender, ethnic, and other boundaries, at a particular point in time. Civil Rights workers and Progressive reformers, for example, included people from all walks of life, though, of course some demographics were better represented than others. This is sometimes also called a situational effect, especially when the situation is easy to describe, such as the prosperity of the 1920s, the troubles of the subsequent Great Depression, or the problems facing the south during Reconstruction.

The presence of a period effect does not mean that everyone will be affected the same way, or that all groups will be affected equally. As a cause of a general trend, it is more analogous to the effect of a book dropped on someone's dinner plate: the steak may be essentially unscathed, mashed potatoes will be spattered, but lose none of their integrity, a delicate pastry will be ruined, and the plate itself may break, while the silverware simply shifts position. Everything is affected, but the nature of the effect is a product of the interplay of factors rather than a blanket change. In the Progressive Era, for instance, some conservative groups dug in their heels and asserted their conservatism to greater degree (such as the Baptist fundamentalists and the Conservative Jews) as a response to the reformist movements in their environment. Even in doing so, they changed; the silverware shifted position.

There are some clear examples of period effects in American political history: the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Great Depression, and World War II. They were all events that affected every American's way of life, as well as the fundamental behavior of American government. Other period effects are not tied to specific events, and were not necessarily consciously noted by voters: the Progressive Era instilled a spirit of reform so pervasive that not all reformers wanted to reform in the same direction, as nativist anti-immigrant groups and socialist political parties, secularizing churches and fundamentalist seminaries, rose up simultaneously. The Cold War could be described as having a period effect, or perhaps, more accurately, as encompassing several of them: the tensions of the 1950s and 1980s, and the activism of the 1960s.

A realignment election is an election (or series of elections) that is part of a dramatic shift in politics, such as the 1896 election of William McKinley amidst the prevailing spirit of populism and reform among his opponents, the advent of the New Deal Era with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932, and the Democrats' loss of southern loyalty because of their support of the Civil Rights Movement (a shift that began at the Democratic National Convention in 1948 became a fact by 1968). Realignment elections are expected to occur [Page 497]every 36 years in American history. The period effect is similar to the German concept of the Zeitgeist, the “spirit of the age.” Steam Engine Time is also sometimes heard, referring to the simultaneous and independent development of a steam engine by inventors unaware of each other, invoking the idea that the conditions of the time, the resources and scientific climate, were simply conducive to the invention of a steam engine.

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