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.
Volume 137 - Number 4 - Winter 2022-23
Negotiating Unilateralism in the Executive Branch: A Review Essay Diane J. Heith reviews By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power by Andrew Rudalevige. She finds that Rudalevige’s exhaustive dive into newly discovered archival documents presents opportunities for revisioning executive order formation, from its traditional top-down formulation. However, she questions the time bound nature of the conclusions drawn for influencing unilateral behavior in a polarized environment.
Volume 137 - Number 1 - Spring 2022
The Conservative Bias in America’s Local Governments Raymond J. La Raja use new population-level data to examine the ideologies of municipal residents relative to those of elected officials in their communities. They find that the average ideology of local officials is markedly more conservative than that of the average resident and that local officials are especially distant from non-white constituents.
Volume 137 - Number 3 - Fall 2022
Lessons from The Politics of Ballot Design : A Review Article The Politics of Ballot Design: How States Shape American Democracy by Eric J. Engstrom and Jason M. Roberts. She argues that the scholarship might have benefitted from an examination of recent work by scholars who work in election science—a new field which examines the conduct and administration of elections—and that election scientists can also learn from scholars examining institutions such as Congress and political parties.
Volume 137 - Number 4 - Winter 2022-23
Barbara Walter’s Script for Civil War in America: A Review Essay Jack Snyder reviews Barbara Walter’s How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them . Walter argues that modern civil wars take the form of guerrilla warfare and organized terrorism. They are started mainly by declining ethnic groups in polarized partial democracies. Her contention that the contemporary United States is heading in this direction has a surface plausibility, but requires strong qualifications.
Volume 137 - Number 1 - Spring 2022
How Can Presidents and the Executive Branch Preserve and Protect American Democracy? A Review Essay Meena Bose reviews Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic: The Deep State and the Unitary Executive by Stephen Skowronek, John A. Dearborn, and Desmond King. She finds that their study of the “dueling concepts,” or “phantoms,” of the “deep state” and “unitary executive” in American politics presents a trenchant assessment of the challenges of presidential governance today. She questions whether their recommendations for stronger party leadership and more collaborative decision making will address the problems that are so thoughtfully presented in this profound analysis of the American political system.
Volume 136 - Number 4 - Winter 2021-22
Ages of Organization: The Emergence of National Interest Groups in American History
