This study conceptualizes party realignment in terms of interrelated and durable shifts on four “levels”. Several ways in which these levels may relate to one another are suggested, including the possibility of discontinuities among them. The study focuses on elite party composition and balance and roll-call behavior in the U. S. House of Representatives in the period between the Civil War and the 1890s. It concludes that a “minor” party realignment occurred between 1873 and 1877, that veterans' shifts from their previous positions and an influx of Democratic newcomers were major factors effecting Congressional policy-behavior change at that time, but that elite party balance conducive to policy stalemate or complex compromises and Congressional reluctance to embrace some potentially polarizing issues were obstacles to a “major” realignment.
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