and personal activities. Although the Democratic conservative coalition
shared the du Ponts' dislike of the Roosevelt's broker state, they cannot be
called corporatists in the broader sense. Nor, it is argued, can the du Ponts
be so characterized if corporatism is defined beyond the business sphere.
Although Burk argues that the du Ponts wrongly described themselves as
Jeffersonians, it is argued here that both the conservative coalition and
the du Ponts did subscribe to what can be called the conservative inter-
pretation of Jefferson's thought, which stressed the primacy of individual
concerns and aspirations over organizational and class interests. ²² Whereas
Burk argues that the du Ponts did not oppose centralization as long as
they could direct that process to serve their own purposes, and that "If
they and their allies could not control the machinery of economic stabiliza-
tion, then it was better that the machinery be dismantled than be operated
by their enemies," it is the argument of this book that the social and politi-
cal vision of the du Ponts and the conservative coalition was flawed by an
unresolved conflict between the corporatism they practiced in the private
business sphere and the individualism and negative-state ideology they
espoused in public affairs. ²³

The methodology of this book is clearly not consonant with John
Vincent's complaint in 1966 that too much political history is written
about the tiny subculture of party politicians who are assumed to be rep-
resentative of the political concerns of the nation as a whole ²⁴. In fact
this book's approach is clearly at odds with the "new political history"--
and its stress upon voter behavior and the politically disenfranchised and
its disdain of party platforms and leadership machinations--that has so
dominated the field since Vincent passed judgment. Recently, however,
some political historians have questioned the assumption of voter sover-
eignty over public policy which underpinned much of the political his-
tory written in the 1970s and 1980s. This questioning has been led by
Richard McCormick, as noted above, Samuel Popkin, and Thomas Fer-
guson. ²⁵ Ferguson argued in 1983 that the degree of control exercised by
voter coalitions over political parties had been exaggerated and that it
was "high time" that new approaches to political parties were developed
which would give prominence to the role of "business elites" and party
institutions. Blocs of major investors, and not the rank and file, were the
major determinants of party policies and candidatures, Ferguson claimed,
and it was up to political historians to recognize that fact of political life. ²⁶

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