The great diversity of progressive reformers and the ambiguous meaning of progressivism have led some to question whether the Progressive movement possessed any intellectual or political coherence. Although many leading political leaders and thinkers joined the Progressive Party (better known as the Bull Moose Party), that organization’s brief existence (1912–16) underscores the movement’s powerful centrifugal forces. The party was torn apart by fundamental disagreements among its supporters about the role of the national state in regulating society and the economy. For example, the progressives’ 1912 presidential campaign, with the celebrated former president Theodore Roosevelt as its standard bearer, was deeply divided over whether the reform movement should attack legally enforced racial segregation in the South (see Jim Crow laws). In the end it did not, instead accepting the right of states and localities to resolve the matter of race relations. Most progressives, in fact, called for the “enlightenment,” rather than the expansion, of popular sovereignty. Their idea of national community did not include—indeed, was threatened by—African Americans and immigrants. Moreover, because reformers held such divergent views on the meaning of patriotism, progressives were irrevocably fractured by America’s entry into World War I. More generally, the very notion of progressive democracy is fraught with contradiction, presuming to combine reformers’ celebration of “direct democracy” and their hope to achieve more-disinterested government—their ambition to create a “modern” state—which would seem to demand a more powerful and independent bureaucracy.

Without denying that the Progressive movement was weakened by a tension between reforms that diminished democracy and those that might make democracy more direct, its central thrust was an attack on the institutions and practices that sustained the decentralized republic of the 19th century and posed an obstacle to the creation of a more-active, better-equipped national state. For all their differences, progressives shared the hope that democracy and administrative efficiency could be combined and that in this combination Americans’ obsession with self-interest and rights could be tempered by the development of a greater sense of national and international responsibility. For progressives, public opinion would reach its fulfillment with the formation of a modern executive—famously celebrated by Theodore Roosevelt, as “the steward of the public welfare”—freed from the provincial, special, and corrupt influence of political parties and interest groups.

The legacy of progressivism

Although progressives failed in many respects, their legacy is reflected in the unprecedented and comprehensive body of reforms they established at the dawn of the 20th century.

In the most fundamental sense, progressivism gave rise to a reform tradition that forced Americans to grapple with the central question of the founding: Is it possible to achieve self-rule on a grand scale? That was the question that had divided the Federalists and Anti-Federalists at the time of the country’s founding. The persistence of local self-government and decentralized political associations through the end of the 19th century postponed the question of whether the framers’ concept of “We the People” was viable. But, with the rise of industrial capitalism, constitutional government entered a new phase. It fell to progressives to confront the question of whether it was possible to reconcile democracy with an economy of greatly enlarged institutions and a society of growing diversity.

Up to a point, the Progressive era validated the Anti-Federalist’s fears. Despite progressivism’s championing of mass democracy, its attack on political parties and its commitment to administrative management combined to make American politics and government seem more removed from the everyday lives of citizens. Yet progressive reformers also invented institutions and associations that enabled citizens to confront, if not resolve, the new problems that arose during the Industrial Revolution. Many of the political organizations that have played significant roles in American democracy from the 20th century—labor unions, trade groups, and professional, civic, and religious associations—were founded during the Progressive era.