This article examines the development of the affirmative action issue since its inception, and compares its dynamics and evolution with the broader civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. It identifies and discusses three periods or phases of the affirmative action regime. This vein of research helps provide at least a partial explanation for why policies in related areas of civil rights may produce different outcomes, and explicates the broad resistance to key elements of the anti-discrimination effort of the last three decades. A tentative model based on the congruence of the policy stance of political institutions to public opinion is suggested. We conclude that while issues such as affirmative action may be susceptible to long-run institutional counter pressures, voluntary programs to increase diversity will certainly continue.