The Rational Southerner

M.V. Hood is Associate Professor of Political Science at University of Georgia. Quentin Kidd is Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of Government Department at Christopher Newport University. Irwin L. Morris is Professor of Political Science and Director of Graduate Studies and University of Maryland.

What drove the transformation of post-World War II politics in the South? In The Rational Southerner, M. V. Hood, Quentin Kidd, and Irwin L. Morris develop a theory of relative advantage to explain why whites fled the Democratic Party and what propelled black political mobilization. Collating decades of data, the authors demonstrate that race was, and is, the chief force behind political change in the region.

Section I: Theory and Background ; Ch. 1: Introduction ; Ch. 2: A Half Century of Political Change in the South ; Ch. 3: The Strategic Dynamics of Southern Political Change ; Ch. 4: Relative Advantage in Action: Case Studies in the Evolution of Republican State Parties in the South ; Section II: Republican Growth ; Ch. 5: Putting Relative Advantage to the Test: State-Level Republican Growth in the Modern American South ; Ch. 6: Relative Advantage and Republican Growth at the Sub-State Level ; Ch. 7: An Examination of the Theory of Relative Advantage at the Individual-Level ; Section III: Black Mobilization ; Ch. 8: Relative Advantage in a Post-VRA World: Black Voter Registration in the Modern South ; Section IV: Conclusion ; Ch. 9: Summary and Concluding Thoughts ; Appendix A: Data Sources ; Appendix B: Variable Operationalizations ; Appendix C: Ancillary Statistical Models Works Cited