The American Political Economy: Markets, Power, and the Meta Politics of US Economic Governance

This article provides an overview of the emerging field of American political economy (APE). Methodologically eclectic, this field seeks to understand the interaction of markets and government in America's unequal and polarized polity. Though situated within American politics research, APE draws from comparative political economy to develop a broad approach that departs from the American politics mainstream in two main ways. First, APE focuses on the interaction of markets and governance, a peripheral concern in much American politics research. Second, it invokes a theoretical orientation attentive to what we call meta politics—the processes of institution shaping, agenda setting, and venue shopping that unfold before and alongside the more visible processes of mass politics that figure so centrally in American politics research. These substantive and theoretical differences expand the study of American politics into neglected yet vital domains, generating fresh insights into the United States’ distinctive mix of capitalism and democracy. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Political Science, Volume 25 is May 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Walter Lippmann, emotion, and the history of international theory

The recent ‘emotion turn’ in international theory is widely viewed as a cutting-edge development which pushes the field in fundamentally new directions. Challenging this narrative, this essay returns to the historical works of Walter Lippmann to show how thinking about emotions has been central to international theory for far longer than currently appreciated. Deeply troubled by his experience with propaganda during the First World War, Lippmann spent the next several decades thinking about the relationship between emotion, mass politics, and the challenges of foreign policy in the modern world. The result was a sophisticated account of the role of emotional stereotypes and symbols in mobilizing democratic publics to international action. I argue that a return to Lippmann's ideas offers two advantages. First, it shows his thinking on emotion and mass politics formed an important influence for key disciplinary figures like Angell, Morgenthau, Niebuhr, and Waltz. Second, it shows why the relationship between emotion and democracy should be understood as a vital concern for international theory. Vacillating between scepticism and hope, Lippmann's view of democracy highlights a series of challenges in modern mass politics – disinformation, the unintended consequences of emotional symbols, and responsibility for the public's emotional excesses – which bear directly on democracies' ability to engage the world.

Bolívar y Chávez. Fundamentos históricos y religiosos del populismo chavista

Desde hace más de dos décadas, la política venezolana ha estado marcada por la presencia del chavismo como orientación revolucionaria del país. Independientemente de que hoy en día esa política es reconocida como una política fracasada que ha provocado el éxodo de millones de venezolanos, esa política estuvo dirigida en sus primeros a la transformación política, social y económica de la nación en pos del llamado socialismo del siglo XXI. Precisamente es en este primer período en el que nos vamos a concentrar. Si definimos el populismo en sentido estricto como esa forma de política de masas que parte de la idea de la existencia de una voluntad popular y la existencia de un modo carismático de dominación basado en la vinculación directa del líder con las masas, el chavismo fue un fenómeno populista. En el presente artículo muestro, basándome en escritos biográficos, entrevistas y discursos, la adecuación del caso venezolano a la definición propuesta y los fundamentos religiosos e históricos del mismo. For more than two decades, Venezuelan politics has been marked by the presence of Chavismo as the country's revolutionary orientation. Regardless of the fact that nowadays this policy is recognized as a failed policy that has caused the exodus of millions of Venezuelans, this policy was aimed in its first at the political, social and economic transformation of the nation in pursuit of the so-called socialism of the 21st century. It is precisely in this first period that we are going to concentrate. If we define populism in the strict sense as that form of mass politics that starts from the idea of the existence of a popular will and the existence of a charismatic mode of domination based on the direct link between the leader and the masses, Chavismo was a populist phenomenon. In this article I show, based on biographical writings, interviews and speeches, the adequacy of the Venezuelan case to the proposed definition and its religious and historical foundations.

Partisanship in the #MeToo Era

Partisanship structures mass politics by shaping the votes, policy views, and political perceptions of ordinary people. Even so, substantial shifts in partisanship can occur when elites signal clear differences on a political issue and attentive citizens update their views of party reputations. Mismatched partisans who strongly care about the issue respond by changing parties in a process of “issue evolution” when writ large. Others simply update their views to match their party in a “conflict extension” process. We build on these models by integrating the largely separate research strands of party issue ownership. Using sexual misconduct as a critical case study, we argue that partisan change can occur rapidly when party elites move strategically to take ownership of an issue, thereby clarifying differences between the parties. Using a quasi-experiment, a survey experiment, and data from dozens of national surveys, we find recent, rapid shifts in party reputations on #MeToo, views of the issue, party votes, and broader party support.

The Trump Era Legacy of Partisanism

What did Trump’s four years do to our mass politics? Partisanism—a blind, often unyielding loyalty to one’s own party—has come to define much of our political discourse, very much to the detriment of the American polity. Both the literature and the data on party evaluations confirm that people are behaving in ways that display not just consistent polarization but a deeper level of partisan bias, despite their lack of ideological consistency. Political science should respond to these developments with increased focus on the negative aspects of partisanship that can lead to this form of partisanism so dangerously exhibited in the Capitol riot, among other events, as well as a thoughtful classroom critique of these habits.

Pandemics and Political Development

ABSTRACT Do pandemics have lasting consequences for political behavior? The authors address this question by examining the consequences of the deadliest pandemic of the last millennium: the Black Death (1347–1351). They claim that pandemics can influence politics in the long run if the loss of life is high enough to increase the price of labor relative to other factors of production. When this occurs, labor-repressive regimes, such as serfdom, become untenable, which ultimately leads to the development of proto-democratic institutions and associated political cultures that shape modalities of political engagement for generations. The authors test their theory by tracing the consequences of the Black Death in German-speaking Central Europe. They find that areas hit hardest by that pandemic were more likely to adopt inclusive political institutions and equitable land ownership patterns, to exhibit electoral behavior indicating independence from landed elite influence during the transition to mass politics, and to have significantly lower vote shares for Hitler’s National Socialist Party in the Weimar Republic’s fateful 1930 and July 1932 elections.