Il movimento populista di fine Ottocento negli Stati Uniti e la sua perdurante influenza sulla politica americana

Abstract

In the last decade of the 19th Century a third party threatened the established party system of the United States. The People’s Party, whose members were referred to as Populists, tried to unite in a single electoral coalition the rural sections of the country, divided between the two major parties: the Democrats being the party of the “solid” South, the Republicans the dominant force in the vast area stretching from the Midwest to the Rocky Mountains. Populists missed this ambitious goal and were soon absorbed by the Democrats. In 1896 the Democratic–Populist ticket led by William J. Bryan lost to William McKinley and the Republicans would dominate, with few exceptions, American politics for four decades. In the early 2000s the South–West alliance became a reality through the coalition that propelled George W. Bush, a Republican, to the White House. The article traces the history of the populist movement and its short-term and long-term influence on American politics.