Volume 138 - Number 3 - Fall 2023
“Laboratories against Democracy” and the Case against Federalism Daniel J. Hopkins reviews Jacob M. Grumbach’s new book, Laboratories against Democracy: How National Parties Transformed State Politics . While he voices some skepticism about the claim that federalism exacerbates contemporary threats to American democracy, he argues that the book is important, demands consideration, and is a model of synthetic scholarship.
Volume 138 - Number 3 - Fall 2023
Rethinking Political Polarization Andreas Schedler analyzes the concept of political polarization. He introduces a democratic dimension to scholarly debates regarding polarization that have revolved mostly around “ideological” and “social” polarization. He argues that polarization can be understood as an instance of “extraordinary” conflict in which compliance with democratic norms turns uncertain and democracy stops being “the only game in town.”
Volume 138 - Number 2 - Summer 2023
Police Unions, Race, and Trust in the Police
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
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 3 - Fall 2022
Is He Speaking Our Language? Donald Trump's Leadership Traits in Comparison with Previous Presidents SUSAN H. ALLEN and MARYANN E. GALLAGHER compare Donald Trump’s leadership traits to those of other recent U.S. presidents. They argue that even though Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric and actions may seem to indicate a leader deliberating challenging existing institutions, they were instead outcomes of a deeply distrustful individual focused primarily on maintaining the support of loyalists, not policymaking.
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 4 - Winter 2022-23
The Polarized American Electorate: The Rise of Partisan-Ideological Consistency and Its Consequences Alan I. Abramowitz presents evidence from American National Election Studies surveys showing that party identification, ideological identification and issue positions have become much more closely connected over the past half century. He argues that as a result, the ideological divide between Democratic and Republican identifiers has widened considerably. The rise of partisan-ideological consistency has contributed to growing affective polarization as well as increasing party loyalty and straight ticket voting.
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.
