In the Current Issue

Volume 138 - Number 2 - Summer 2023

Articles

The Dimensions, Origins, and Consequences of Belief in Donald Trump’s Big Lie
Gary C. Jacobson examines the dimensions of belief in Trump’s big lie of a stolen election: its origins and the conditions that sustain it, its effect on the Republican Party, and its impact on the 2022 midterm elections. He concludes that belief in the big lie is both a re?ection of and potent contributor to political discord in the United States.

Police Unions, Race, and Trust in the Police
DANIEL DISALVO AND MATTHEW NAGLER look at the effect of police unionization on trust in the police and, in particular, in mediating the adverse impacts of police killings of civilians on trust within the U.S. multiracial context. They ?nd that in jurisdictions where police bargain collectively the drop in non-black trust is effectively eliminated, suggesting that police unionization essentially abets the polarization of trust in the police between blacks and non-blacks.

Counting Like a State: The Politics of Intergovernmental Partnerships in the 2020 Census
Philip Rocco analyzes variation in state and local government investments in the implementation of the 2020 census. He argues that census investments depend on the salience of the 2020 count to public of?cials, the governing coalition’s partisan identities and incentives, and the availability of subnational institutional capacity for census operations.

Taking Ideas Seriously in Political Science: The Diffusion of Presidentialism in Latin America after Independence
CRAIG PARSON, ADOLFO GARCÉ, AND Daniel Béland survey the asymmetrical status of “ideational theorizing” in political science and present and assess methodological and epistemological views that underlie the asymmetry. They illustrate their arguments empirically by examining Latin American constitutional choice. They argue that the Latin American case illustrates that there are good reasons to think that an ideational account connects in more concrete ways to available evidence than leading alternative hypotheses about constitutional choice.

Impending Civil Strife or Further Evidence of Non-Attitudes? A Review Article
Shanto Iyengar reviews Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and Consequences for Democracy by Nathan P. Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason. He summarizes the authors’ key ?ndings on the psychological antecedents of support for violence and the political contexts that either facilitate or discourage outbreaks of violence. He enumerates a set of reservations concerning both the authors’ conceptualization of political violence as an extension of partisanship and key elements of their research design.

Is There a Wave of Right-Wing Terrorism? A Review Article
Daniel Byman uses Waves of Global Terrorism: From 1879 to the Present by David Rapoport as a take-off point to discuss more broadly right-wing violence today drawing on past waves and identi?es unique characteristics of the present danger. He argues that to better ?ght rightwing violence, it is vital to resource law enforcement, work with technology companies, and improve the overall political debate.

Staying True to the Founding Principles: A Review Article
JOSEPH BESSETTE reviews In the Nation that Never Was: Reconstructing America’s Story by Kermit Roosevelt III. He challenges that author’s argument that Americans fundamentally misunderstand the nation’s founding principles as articulated in the Declaration of Independence of 1776 and argues that Roosevelt’s view is bereft of support in the historical record.

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