Review of The Limits of Agrarian Radicalism: Western Populism and American Politics By Peter H. Argersinger

Authors

David F. Prindle, University of Texas at Austin

Date of this Version

1996

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly 16:3 (Summer 1996). Copyright © 1996 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Abstract

The book consists mainly of a collection of reworked articles that appeared in various journals from 1967 to 1992. At the level of analysis, the author's meta-argument is that the Populists were ultimately unsuccessful because they failed politically. That is, they both failed to manage the ideological tensions within their movement, and failed to overcome various structural impediments placed in their path by the established parties. He elaborates this argument with a series of case studies, following in close detail a number of state conventions and elections. The documentation in these studies is impressive, and the studies themselves are convincingly argued.