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Partisan Nation

The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era

Partisan Nation

The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era

A provocative exploration of how America’s democratic crisis is rooted in a dangerous mismatch between our Constitution and today’s nationalized, partisan politics.

The ground beneath American political institutions has moved, with national politics subsuming and transforming the local. As a result, American democracy is in trouble.

In this paradigm-shifting book, political scientists Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler bring a sharp new perspective to today’s challenges. Attentive to the different coalitions, interests, and incentives that define the Democratic and Republican parties, they show how contemporary polarization emerged in a rapidly nationalizing country and how it differs from polarization in past eras. In earlier periods, three key features of the political landscape—state parties, interest groups, and media—varied locally and reinforced the nation’s stark regional diversity. But this began to change in the 1960s as the two parties assumed clearer ideological identities and the power of the national government expanded, raising the stakes of conflict. Together with technological and economic change, these developments have reconfigured state parties, interest groups, and media in self-reinforcing ways. The result is that today’s polarization is self-perpetuating—and intensifying.

Partisan Nation offers a powerful caution. As a result of this polarization, America’s political system is distinctly and acutely vulnerable to an authoritarian movement emerging in the contemporary Republican Party, which has both the motive and the means to exploit America’s unusual Constitutional design. Combining the precision and acuity characteristic of their earlier work, Pierson and Schickler explain what these developments mean for American governance and democracy.

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Political Science: American Government and Politics

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Reviews

"Noted political scientists Pierson and Schickler draw on their extensive scholarship to examine various periods of American history during which polarization was particularly virulent....[Partisan Nation] is well researched, and the authors’ analysis of past eras of polarization changes in what they label 'intermediary institutions' such as interest groups and mass media is incisive....An intriguing...examination of the toxic American political landscape."

Kirkus

"Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler’s Partisan Nation is a groundbreaking work about U.S. politics that arrives amidst a tumultuous presidential campaign. Released days before the contentious first—and possibly only—debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the book seeks to define the issues behind the intractable polarization playing out in the American electorate."

Washington Independent Review of Books

"Is our political system in such a uniquely terrible place? Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler think that it is, and they spell out their reasons in Partisan Nation. . . . [Their] argument is that Madison’s solution no longer works. This is not just because the Internet has made the notion of 'geographic dispersion' obsolete. It’s also because the nature of politics has changed."

Louis Menand | The New Yorker

"Ruled by elected leaders for hundreds of years, the U.S. seems like it ought to be the paradigmatic example of a consolidated democracy. So how, after all that time, could the American democratic project be coming apart?. . . .Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler, two leading scholars of American politics, [show that] increasingly extreme partisanship warped American politics in ways that created many of the effects of the autocrat’s playbook, paving the way for Trump long before he tried to run the plays."

Amanda Taub | New York Times Magazine

“In this crucial, clarifying book, Pierson and Schickler systematically identify the institutional mechanisms that promote social divisions between Democrats and Republicans. Importantly, they also explain that today’s polarization—while opening the door to democratic backsliding—may also be the only way to make progress toward multi-racial democracy. Indeed, they describe a political moment in which the United States teeters on the verge of either great progress or significant regression in the scope of its pluralism and democratic representation. Partisan Nation is a must-read for anyone hoping to understand the mechanisms behind the increasing extremism and animosity in American politics.”

Lilliana Mason | coauthor of "Radical American Partisanship"

“Partisan Nation is among the most important and insightful books on American politics I have read in years. Pierson and Schickler persuasively demonstrate that the threats now gathering against American democracy are unmatched since at least the Civil War and that, rather than offering a means to resist them, our rickety Constitutional structure is magnifying the danger. With command of the broad sweep of American history and keen insights into the rhythms of contemporary politics, Pierson and Schickler have produced an indispensable guide for anyone trying to understand the chaotic and ominous new dynamics of our political life. Their analysis is often chilling—but it could not be more timely and urgent.”

Ron Brownstein | senior writer, The Atlantic

Table of Contents

1. The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics

Part 1: Polarization in Historical Perspective
2. Conflict and Faction in the Early Republic and Civil War Era
3. Constrained Polarization at the Turn of the Century

Part 2: The Rise of Contemporary Polarization
4. Triggers of a Nationalized Partisanship
5. The Transformation of State Parties, Interest Groups, and Media

Part 3: The Crisis of the New American Constitutional Order
6. Policy by Other Means
7. Democracy in the Balance
8. What’s Next
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index