Paths Out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in America's Deep South, 1944-1972

by Robert Mickey

The transformation of the American South--from authoritarian to democratic rule--is the most important political development since World War II. It has re-sorted voters into parties, remapped presidential elections, and helped polarize Congress. Most important, it is the final step in America's democratization. Paths Out of Dixie illuminates this sea change by analyzing the democratization experiences of Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Robert Mickey argues that Southern states, from the 1890s until the early 1970s, constituted pockets of authoritarian rule trapped within and sustained by a federal democracy. These enclaves--devoted to cheap agricultural labor and white supremacy--were established by conservative Democrats to protect their careers and clients. From the abolition of the whites-only Democratic primary in 1944 until the national party reforms of the early 1970s, enclaves were battered and destroyed by a series of democratization pressures from inside and outside their borders. Drawing on archival research, Mickey traces how Deep South rulers--dissimilar in their internal conflict and political institutions--varied in their responses to these challenges. Ultimately, enclaves differed in their degree of violence, incorporation of African Americans, and reconciliation of Democrats with the national party. These diverse paths generated political and economic legacies that continue to reverberate today. Focusing on enclave rulers, their governance challenges, and the monumental achievements of their adversaries, Paths Out of Dixie shows how the struggles of the recent past have reshaped the South and, in so doing, America's political development.

Genres: History, Politics, Political Science, Race, American History, Nonfiction, The United States Of America

583 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 19, 2015

Reviews

[Erik Champenois · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Paths Out of Dixie" is a groundbreaking book which situates the history of the American South's civil rights era in a comparative politics framework. Mickey argues that the United States before the civil rights era consisted of a democratic federal polity with states being a mixture of democratic and authoritarian enclaves. The United States, in other words, was not a complete democracy until after the abolition of one-party rule in the south and accompanying changes in desegregation, and civil and voting rights.

The heart of the book focuses on three states in the Deep South - South Carolina, Mississippi, and Georgia. These three states represent three different approaches to federal and Black activist pressure for desegregation and civil rights - with South Carolina representing an early and managed harnessed democratization, Mississippi a late and divisive protracted democratization, and Georgia a bifurcated split by region democratization (north Georgia representing a harnessed and south Georgia a protracted democratization). The book carefully analyzes the strength of state institutions, elite attitudes, federal government pressure, national party pressure, and black activism, showing how these elements combined to result in diverging democratizations as well as resultant differences in electoral consequences. States with earlier responsiveness to federal and national party pressure changed more quickly from Democratic to Republican (as part of the southern shift), whereas states (like Missouri) with late and more divisive responsiveness maintained stronger Democratic representation for a longer period of time.

Mickey's book builds off of the concept of the "long civil rights movement" or the periodization of the civil rights era as not just limited to the 1950s and 1960s but as encompassing the 1940s through the 1970s (and in some ways both harking back to earlier times and continuing into the present). He shows clearly how national Democratic party pressure for desegregation started in the 1940s under the Truman administration, resulting in tensions between the southern parts of the party and the national party, including the Dixiecrat revolt. These pressures led to factions competing for the label of the Democratic party in the south and in the loosening of the one-party state, accelerating further with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Barry Goldwater's Republican nomination.

A few months ago I listened to an interview with Liberian academic and activist Robtel Neajai Pailey on racism in international development. In the interview, she spoke about "the white gaze of development" measuring non-white people "against the standard of northern whiteness, and taking their political, economic and social processes as a norm." "Development is visualized or portrayed as a global south phenomenon." She recommended de-centering the white gaze by "looking for the south in the north, and the north in the south."

My reading list, while representing varied interests, is focusing more on "looking for the south in the north, and the north in the south" and seeing more clearly the implications of colonialism and accompanying racism and violence on both the global north and south. In that regard, Mickey's book opens up new avenues for further thinking. In the final pages of his book, he discusses the degree to which American political development has usually been compared to developments in Europe - as part of Western political development more broadly. In contrast to this perspective, he suggests that "we might benefit from looking South, where several other polities have wrestled simultaneously with questions of racial hierarchies, labor, and politics in a post-emancipation context" (p. 352). He mentions the Southern Hemisphere including specifically Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico as examples. Indeed, instead of seeing American democracy as a centuries-long, fully consolidated situation, the contestation of American democracy throughout its history and the continued contestations over voting laws (and other civil rights) mean that we may have much to learn by seeing "the [global] south" in the "north"/the United States of America.

I almost dropped a star due to the book being a sometimes dry and difficult read. The nearly 200 pages of endnotes makes for a lot of stop-and-go breaks for those like me who generally try to read the notes. The book would likely also have been easier to read had I read more introductory histories of the civil rights era and were more familiar with the literature - it's a more difficult read for the beginner. That said, I highly recommend this book for those already familiar with the era who want to delve into it more deeply. It's certainly one of my favorites so far this year.

[Leanne Powner · Rating 5 out of 5]

In _Paths out of Dixie_, Robert Mickey confronts the experience of the American South during the civil rights era from the underutilized perspective of comparative democratization. Conceptualizing southern states as authoritarian enclaves within a larger democratic polity, he traces the factors surrounding the often slow erosion of the enclave state until the state’s conversion into a biracial, fully participatory democracy. The structure of state executive power, especially including the county level and the division of authority between center and peripheral units, played a large role in how states were able to manage the various attacks on segregation. The state Democratic party’s relationship with the national party, in contrast, helped to explain the eventual timing and incorporation of Blacks into the state parties and the evolution of the state Republican parties, as well as explaining some of how the national government responded to developments in the states.

The detailed archival work that went into this book makes the analysis solid and the conclusions credible. The book is detailed and extensively documented but still well-written, and that combination of features does not occur frequently. Mickey thoroughly addresses competing arguments and explains why the evidence is inconsistent with them – another feature which is frequently missing from even good qualitative scholarship. This is high-quality qualitative APD scholarship, and a valuable read for anyone interested in civil rights, democratization (even the non-comparative kind), or the history and evolution of the deep South.

Mickey has a thoroughly researched book in which he deploys a range of concepts to explain what actors do and to categorize the context(s) and outcomes. I wish a little more time had been spent on the underlying conceptual apparatus. I recognize that the book is already exceptionally long, but the conceptual framework that shapes the book is too important to cut. Specifically, I’m talking about the concept of an enclave – which is not widely used in the comparative politics literature and was unfamiliar to me even though I read that literature regularly – and the various types of democratizations that he identifies as the outcomes. How one measures the DV – criteria for each category, what the alterative but unrealized categories might have been (or is this an exhaustive list?), etc. – is far too important to leave out or give short shrift.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense but interesting comparative history of how different authoritarian Southern state governments approached challenges from above (changes in federal / judicial policies) and below (civil rights activism) to produce different transitions to more broadly accessible democracy. A lot of detailed case history is involved, so a bit difficult to generalize this more broadly, but the focus on the question of regime strategy and decision-making processes and how regime structures and incentives inform that decision-making makes for a useful counterpart with other histories of the insurgent civil rights movement.

[Alex Perdue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not even getting into what I think about some of the side arguments he makes about certain actors or other characters outside his main narrative. (For instance, I disagree heavily with his notion about the Upper South largely acquiescing to integration.) But, man, what an absolute masterwork of qualitative political science. Beyond even that, Mickey is an astonishingly good storyteller. Would that every political scientist had the chops and style to write his way.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genuinely one of the most careful and stimulating studies of recent American political history which deserves as wide an audience as possible, even if it took me just over four years to finish.

[Julian Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr. Mickey's thesis is fascinating: the five states of the Deep South (MS, LA, AL, GA, SC) should be understood as authoritarian enclaves, or polities within a democratic nation, that underwent gradual democratization during the mid-20th century due to forces from above (the US federal government, pro-democracy activists from outside the enclaves) and within the state. Mickey thus incorporates the language of comparative politics (particularly, comparative political development) to describe the fall of the Jim Crow regimes in a way I found really interesting. This frame of reference is one I'll incorporate into the way I look at Southern history and politics. Overall, Mickey argues that the decisions of regime elites at key moments in the democratic transition are key to explaining the divergent political and economic outcomes of the three case studies he explores: Mississippi, South Carolina, and Georgia.

Some other really fascinating things I learned from Paths out of Dixie:
- differences in the governor's control over state police (the coercive apparatus, in comparative politics-speak) helped shape the outcome of the campus desegregation crises of the 1950s, and subsequently the national perception of different Deep South states (Mississippi as particularly hardline in opposition to integration and South Carolina as home to an orderly transition) and even subsequently how quickly two-party competition emerged in these states
- in Georgia, the overturning of the white primary in 1946 fostered a biracial challenge to Jim Crow that nearly overturned the regime and brought about an earlier democratic transition
- while the Jim Crow South is often thought of as a "herrenvolk democracy," where one ethnic group is enfranchised and others are denied democracy, restrictions on free speech and freedom of association for whites daring to criticize Jim Crow, as well as the poll tax, malapportionment, etc, means the Deep South states are better categorized as authoritarian regimes during the Jim Crow era
- Georgia had a comparatively weaker Black domestic challenge to authoritarian rule, which Mickey argues is better explained through the decisions of elites than the baseline conditions of the state

With all of these really fascinating insights and ideas, why the 4-star rating? Unfortunately, I found parts of the book a little dull, as Mickey described the ways in which regime elites deliberated their response to variois democratization pressures. 5 stars for ideas, but unfortunately proving this thesis through evidence wound up being dull at times for this leisure reader. Still, the framework Mickey presents on subnational authoritarianism in an American context and the American South as the site of a democratic transition just 50 years ago is quite fascinating, especially as democracy at the state level in the United States sometimes faces the threat of democratic backsliding in the present.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting context for under political power in America.