Politics

The political life of New England is best known for two features: the New State Movement and Country Party hegemony. Yet the heyday of these closely connected – indeed overlapping – movements was limited to the period from the 1920s to the 1960s. Now, New State sentiment is the preserve of a small band of enthusiasts, and the country party's successor, the National party, has suffered various slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in its old New England heartland. Both are only part of a longer story of political change and continuity. The Country Party's achievement was that it created a political machine successful in responding to the enduring features of New England's political culture as well as to changes in the social and economic life of the region during the years 1890 – 1970. This chapter seeks to place in their proper perspective the well-known and distinctive features of New England's twentieth-century political history.