Volume 138 - Number 2 - Summer 2023
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 reflection of and potent contributor to political discord in the United States.
Volume 138 - Number 1 - Spring 2023
Quantum Political Science: Learning About Politics from Egypt Lisa Anderson reviews Mona EL-Ghobashy’s Bread and Freedom: Egypt’s Revolutionary Situation . Anderson draws on her experience as a political scientist and president of the American University in Cairo during the Arab Spring to assess El-Ghobashy’s subtle and provocative characterization of the events of the period, drawing broader conclusions about the practice of political science under conditions of uncertainty.
Volume 138 - Number 1 - Spring 2023
Polarized Politics: Protest Against COVID-19 Containment Policies in the USA Eric Neumayer analyze protests against COVID-19 containment policies in U.S. states. They show that protest was strongly influenced by partisan control over state governorship and legislatures. The authors argue that protest events occurred in states fully controlled by Democrats even when they adopted similarly stringent containment policies as Republican-controlled states and that the same increase in stringency triggered more protest in blue than in red states.
Volume 138 - Number 1 - Spring 2023
The 2022 Elections: A Test of Democracy’s Resilience and the Referendum Theory of Midterms Gary C. Jacobson discusses the 2022 midterm elections. He examines why Democrats lost far fewer House seats than standard referendum models predicted given high inflation and Joe Biden’s low approval ratings. He argues that Donald Trump’s meddling and the Court’s Dobbs decision reframed the vote choice in ways that energized Democrats, hardened partisan attitudes, and minimized defections even among those with negative opinions of Biden’s performance.
Volume 137 - Number 4 - Winter 2022-23
U.S. Public Knowledge about the Holocaust Then and Now Susan Welch and Emily Kiver analyze political and sociological ramifications of the Holocaust and its change over time. They challenge the view that knowledge of the Holocaust within the American public is declining, finding that knowledge has remained relatively steady, and that the Holocaust continues to feature prominently within the American public’s consciousness.
Volume 137 - Number 4 - Winter 2022-23
Gender, American Identity, and Sexism John Graeber and Mark Setzler explore the extent to which men and women differ in their views of American national identity and how these views of “Americanness” influence a person’s sexist beliefs. They find few differences between men and women regarding what it means to truly belong to the nation and that the relationship between national identify and sexism is no stronger for men than it is for women.
Volume 137 - Number 4 - Winter 2022-23
Hungary’s Slide toward Autocracy: Domestic and External Impediments to Locking In Democratic Reforms Ognen Vangelov trace the remarkable trajectory of post-Communist Hungary over the past three decades, when the onetime “poster country” for successful liberalization in the erstwhile Soviet bloc managed to turn into the leading champion of illiberalism in the entire European Union (EU). They argue that a combination of internal and exogenous factors vitiated the earlier promise of EU “conditionality” to bring about Hungary’s transition to a stable liberal democracy. They are grateful for suggestions made by anonymous reviewers of earlier drafts of this article, as well as by Professor Zsuzsa Csergö, of Queen’s University.
Volume 137 - Number 3 - Fall 2022
Americans Still Held Hostage: A Generational Analysis of American Public Opinion about the Iran Nuclear Deal Mazaher Koruzhde and Valeriia Popova examine the effect of the Iran hostage crisis on American public opinion on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. They argue that Americans who were “old enough” to share a collective memory of the crisis form a “crisis generation” and are significantly less likely to approve of the deal, regardless of their party and ideological orientations.
Volume 138 - Number 1 - Spring 2023
Can Social Movements Save American Democracy? A Review Article Movements and Parties . He argues that recent scholarship on the fragility of American democracy has generally focused on political elites rather than the mass public and that Tarrow’s book offers an essential corrective to this view. Lieberman notes that Tarrow shows how social movements have been central to historical patterns of democratization and democratic backsliding in American history and how movements have systematically interacted with political parties in ways that have profoundly shaped the American democratic experiment.
Volume 137 - Number 2 - Summer 2022
State Building in Crisis Governance: Donald Trump and COVID-19 Sidney M. Milkis look at the final year of the Donald Trump presidency, and the administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. They argue that Trump’s actions fit a rationale, partisan strategy endemic to executive-centered partisanship. Consequently, Trump and the Republican Party failed to suffer the repudiation that punished previous presidents when adjudged failed crisis leaders.
