Suburban Reformers: Progressive Reform Movements and the Making of Silicon Valley, 1880-1980

Open Access
- Author:
- Wolpern, Steven F
- Graduate Program:
- History
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 15, 2013
- Committee Members:
- Gary Scott Cross, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, Committee Member
Daniel L Letwin, Committee Member
Benjamin Jared Schreier, Special Member - Keywords:
- Silicon Valley
San Jose
Santa Clara County
suburban
liberalism
suburban liberalism
Janet Gray Hayes
Norman Mineta
reform - Abstract:
- Silicon Valley is broadly renowned as an economic success story fueled by technological innovation and entrepreneurship, but the region’s suburbs during the 1960s and 1970s were also home to a grassroots movement that articulated a distinctly suburban strand of liberalism. Suburban liberalism in Silicon Valley arose out of an almost century-long process of progressive reform led by professional and middle-class residents and, although ultimately taken up by the Democratic Party, its early origins lay with liberal Republicans in the Progressive Era. This dissertation makes three primary contributions to recent US political history. First, it identifies and describes an overlooked suburban strand of modern liberalism. In doing so, it challenges several of the tenants of the so-called “Rise of the Right” narrative held by many historians and contemporary political commentators. The coalescence in the 1970s of a suburban liberal municipal order in Silicon Valley belies the common belief that the coalition underlying postwar “growth liberalism” collapsed entirely in the face of an ascendant New Right. Second, this dissertation undercuts the assumption that suburban environments in the US invariably fostered a conservative political orientation among residents during the postwar decades. Silicon Valley provides an example where a majority of residents wanted government action to improve their quality of life, protect the environment, and enhance the livability of their communities. They were also socially liberal and supportive of civil rights, as demonstrated by the high number of female officeholders elected in the region during the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, by using the city of San Jose and the surrounding Santa Clara County as a case study, this dissertation also offers an economic and political history of Silicon Valley that expands our understanding of the region beyond the narrow time frames and small set of players focused on by many other scholars and commentators. This study reveals how three successive waves of progressive middle-class reform movements – one in the Progressive Era, one in the postwar decades, and one in the 1970s – laid the foundation for, and ultimately sustained the viability of, the Silicon Valley political economy.