The Liberal Consensus Reconsidered
American Politics and Society in the Postwar Era
Description:... The paradigm of the 'liberal consensus' has critically shaped scholarly understanding of the United States during the two decades after World War II. Both influential and controversial, it remains the subject of lively debate among scholars seeking to explain the political and social transformations of that era. Some historians contest the existence of consensus in post-1945 America, while others employ the term, sometimes unreflectively, as a shorthand descriptor of the contemporary mood. In contrast, this work argues that a revised, nuanced, and dynamic definition of consensus liberalism provides a compelling way to appreciate how the vitality of the postwar economy and the external challenges of the early Cold War shaped the United States in profound ways, both politically and socially.
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