# Donald Warren's Middle American Radicals explained: the other Radical Center (1976) > Donald I. Warren's The Radical Center: Middle Americans and the Politics of Alienation (1976) described Middle American Radicals, middle and lower-middle income voters who felt squeezed by the rich above and the poor below. They backed strong social insurance and distrusted big corporations, and they were also hostile to welfare agencies, harsh on crime and keen on strong leaders. For today's radical centrism the book is a warning and a brief: these voters want a state that protects them and a fight with concentrated power, and if the centre ignores them, populists take them. - URL: https://www.radicalcentre.eu/en/articles/donald-warren-middle-american-radicals-explained - Language: en - Publisher: radical centre / centro radical - Published: 2026-10-12 - Topic: Ideas & history - Author: radical centre - Licence: CC BY 4.0 ## Key points - Donald I. Warren, a sociologist at Oakland University in Michigan, surveyed white American voters in 1971 and 1975 and published The Radical Center in 1976. - His Middle American Radicals believed the middle class was squeezed from above and below and that government favoured both the rich and the poor. - They backed Social Security, Medicare, national health insurance and job guarantees, and were the group most hostile to big corporations. - They were also the most conservative group on welfare agencies, race and crime, distrusted Washington and wanted strong leadership. - John Judis traces a line from these voters to George Wallace, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan and Donald Trump. There are two radical centres in the history of the idea, and they rarely meet. One is the reform programme of the early 2000s, Halstead and Lind's book and Mark Satin's. The other is half a century old and comes from survey research. In 1976 the sociologist Donald I. Warren published *The Radical Center: Middle Americans and the Politics of Alienation*, and he used the phrase for something that looks a lot more like Europe's anxious middle in 2026 than like a think-tank agenda. Warren worked at Oakland University in Michigan. As John Judis recounts in a 2015 essay on the book, he ran large surveys of white American voters in 1971 and again in 1975, and found a group that the usual labels missed. He called them Middle American Radicals, or MARs. Judis, who considers the book one of the three or four that best explain American politics over the past half-century, puts them at about a quarter of the electorate at the time. The University of Notre Dame Press description is more cautious and says as many as one in five Americans shared the outlook. ## Who the Middle American Radicals were The sociology is quite precise. MARs had middle or lower-middle incomes and no college degree. They worked in skilled or semi-skilled manual jobs, or in lower-level clerical and sales work. The publisher stresses that the outlook cut across people with little in common economically, occupationally or educationally, which is part of what made it interesting. Their defining belief was that the middle class was under siege from above and below, and seriously neglected. Government, as they saw it, looked after the rich and the poor at the same time and forgot the people in between. From there the views refuse to line up. According to Judis, MARs were the group most likely to say that corporations had too much power, were too big and ignored the public. They backed, by large margins, government job guarantees, price controls, Medicare, national health insurance, federal aid to education and Social Security. On those questions they sound like the left of the Democratic Party. On other questions they sound like the right. They were the least likely to say white Americans had a duty to make up for past wrongs against Black Americans. They were the most critical of welfare agencies, opposed busing for school integration and wanted the police to be tougher on crime. They were the most distrustful of the national government, and in the same breath they wanted strong leadership in Washington, a situation where one person is in charge. ## What the book tries to do with them Warren did not stop at a portrait. The table of contents shows a book that moves from description to remedy. After chapters on who MARs are, their concerns, their working lives and the organisations they resent, the second half turns to politics: their place on the national scene, then chapters titled *Reducing MAR Alienation*, *MARs and Institutional Changes* and *Programmatic Directions: Some Guidelines from MARs Themselves*. The book also looks at potential support for presidential candidates and for a third national party. Warren treated alienation as a problem that institutions could make worse or better. Judis follows the story forward. He sees MARs behind George Wallace's campaigns in 1968 and 1972, behind Ross Perot's 19 per cent in 1992, behind Pat Buchanan's primary insurgencies and behind Donald Trump. None of these candidates was simply against government: Wallace wanted higher Social Security benefits, Perot higher taxes on the rich, Buchanan and Trump refused to cut Social Security and Medicare. All of them attacked Washington's gridlock and all of them promised a stronger executive. Judis cites the right-wing writer Samuel Francis, whose 1982 essay on MARs called that appetite for a strong leader Caesarism. And he notes a pattern: these surges come when people sense national decline and distrust their leaders, and fade when the sense of decline lifts. ## What radical centrism should take from Warren Read from Europe, the book is uncomfortable and useful. Uncomfortable because Warren's radicals mixed legitimate grievances with racial resentment, and the line Judis draws ends in the kind of strongman politics a radical centre exists to resist. Useful because it shows exactly where the reformist radical centre has been weakest. From the left side of Warren's data comes a clear demand. The squeezed middle wants social insurance that covers it, and it wants someone to take on concentrated corporate power. A radical centre that talks about markets and competition has to mean competition against incumbents too, with antitrust and anti-rent-seeking rules that bite at the top. From the right side comes a lesson about how programmes feel. MARs resented welfare bureaucracies and distrusted distant government. They backed the big universal programmes that everyone pays into and draws from, pensions and health insurance above all, and they resented the agencies they saw as serving someone else. Visible rules, work rewarded and order kept matter to these voters, and a centre that dismisses that will lose them. And from Warren himself comes the idea that fits neither camp. Alienation is a political fact in its own right. People who feel neglected by every centre of power at once will back whoever promises to smash the lot. The remedy Warren pointed to was institutional: closer, more accountable government and organisations that give the middle a voice. Put the three together and you get a position. Build universal social insurance, fight concentration in business and in the state with the same energy, and redesign institutions so the people in the middle can see who decides and hold them to account. The alternative, as Judis's list of candidates shows, is that someone offers them a Caesar instead. This weekend's exercise asks for ten rules for deciding policy, the second five of them tomorrow. Warren's book earns one: every reform should be tested against the people who feel squeezed from both sides, before they find someone else to listen to them. ## FAQ ### Who was Donald Warren? Donald I. Warren was an American sociologist at Oakland University in Michigan. His 1976 book The Radical Center: Middle Americans and the Politics of Alienation, published by the University of Notre Dame Press, introduced the idea of Middle American Radicals. ### What is a Middle American Radical? Warren's term for middle and lower-middle income voters, usually without a college degree, who felt the middle class was neglected and squeezed by both the rich and the poor. They combined support for social insurance with distrust of big government, big business and welfare agencies. ### Is Warren's radical center the same as radical centrism? No, it is a different use of the same phrase. Warren described an alienated, populist electorate. The radical centrism of Halstead and Lind or Mark Satin is a reform programme. The two meet because the programme needs those voters. ## Sources - [The Radical Center: Middle Americans and the Politics of Alienation](https://muse.jhu.edu/book/52409), University of Notre Dame Press / Project MUSE (1976) - [The return of the Middle American radical](https://carnegieendowment.org/europe/posts/2015/10/the-return-of-the-middle-american-radical), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2015) - [Radical centrism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_centrism), Wikipedia (2026)