In the Current Issue

Volume 136 - Number 2 - Summer 2021

Articles

How to Win a “Long Game”: The Voting Rights Act, the Republican Party, and the Politics of Counter-Enforcement
FREE
Adrienne Jones and ANDREW POLSKY examine how the Republican Party engaged in counter-enforcement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, notably during the Reagan and Bush 43 administrations, in an effort to maximize the voting strength of pro-Republican voting constituencies. They argue that sustained counter-enforcement efforts lead to sharp policy oscillations when parties alternate in power and that if a party pursues the long game of persistent counter-enforcement, it may find itself with the opportunity to achieve lasting results.

Pugnacious Presidents: Democratic Constitutional Systems and International Conflict
Matthew Kroenig and Madison Schramm analyze how domestic political institutions affect international conflict. Using standard international relations datasets on conflict, they demonstrate that jointly-presidential democratic dyads are over two times more likely to become involved in militarized interstate disputes than other jointly-democratic dyads. They also find that when it comes to lower-level conflicts, jointly-presidential dyads are statistically indistinguishable from nondemocratic dyads. They argue that the results have important implications for our understanding of democratic peace theory and the causes of international conflict.

The Life Cycle of Grand Strategies: The Case of the American Shift to Containment
Ilai Z. Saltzman examines the way grand strategies change by identifying their “life-cycle.” He argues that replacing an existing grand strategy is a multiplayer and decentralized process incorporating the ideational inputs of various actors, and that this process is more chaotic, porous, and nonlinear than we tend to think.

Economic Sectionalism, Executive-Centered Partisanship, and the Politics of the State and Local Tax Deduction
Nicholas F. Jacobs examines the partisan implications of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and its reform of the state and local tax deduction. He argues that fundamental changes in the geographic composition of the electorate and the centrality of presidential politics in the party system explain why the Republican Party reduced one of the most unequal features of the U.S. tax code, but chose not to emphasize its egalitarian consequences.

Does Race Stop at the Water’s Edge? Elites, the Public, and Support for Foreign Intervention among White U.S. Citizens over Time
Jon Green examines recent and historical relationships between individuals’ racial attitudes and their support for U.S. foreign policy interventions abroad. He argues that such relationships are persistent over time and are strongest among college-educated citizens, who are likelier to be socialized into elite- level political conflict.

view additional issues