US Politics

APSA (1950)

Political parties: Argues that American democracy requires coherent, programmatic, internally cohesive parties that offer voters clear alternatives and can govern once elected. Evaluation: Provides the classic benchmark for ‘responsible party government’, but its limitation is that it assumes stronger party cohesion will improve accountability without fully anticipating how ideological sorting can produce polarisation, deadlock, and hostility in a separated-powers system.

Cohen, et al. (2008)

Political parties: Argue that American parties remain powerful in presidential nominations, but their power operates through informal networks rather than formal command. Evaluation: Useful because it challenges the simple ‘weak parties after reform’ story, but Trump 2016 shows party control is conditional on elite coordination rather than automatic.

Schlozman and Rosenfeld (2024)

Political parties: Argue that American parties are simultaneously polarised and hollow - they remain central to elections and governing conflict, but have lost much of the rooted organisational capacity that once linked citizens to party institutions. Evaluation: Challenges the assumption that polarised parties must be strong parties, but its limitation is that ‘hollowness’ must be defined carefully to avoid becoming a catch-all description.

Grossman and Hopkins (2016)

Political parties: Argues that Democrats and Republicans are not mirror-image parties - Republicans operate more as an ideological movement party, while Democrats operate more as a coalition of social groups seeking concrete government action. Evaluation: Explains why party strength, discipline, and internal conflict look different on each side, but the main caveat is that Trump complicates the picture of Republicans as purely conservative-ideological.

Maisel and Berry (2010)

Political parties: Discusses that American parties and interest groups have not disappeared into candidate-centred politics, but have adapted through networks, fundraising, activist coordination, congressional leadership, and group alliances.

Masket (2009)

Political parties: Argues that informal party organisations - activists, interest groups, donors, and party-linked insiders - shape nominations and push legislatures toward polarisation. Evaluation: Connects nominations to legislative behaviour, but its limitation is that it focuses heavily on informal organisations and may understate national media and presidential effects.

Shafer and Wagner (2019)

Political parties: Argue that American party development is shaped by a recurring conflict between responsible party government and populist or plebiscitary responsiveness. Evaluation: Turns party weakness into a historical and normative dilemma rather than a simple failure, but its limitation is that it can be quite abstract unless tied to concrete reforms such as primaries, platforms, campaign finance, and congressional organisation.

Ware (2002)

Political parties: Argues that direct primaries were not simply imposed on parties by anti-party reformers; they also emerged from a process of party institutionalisation in which party elites sough more regular, legitimate, and manageable nomination procedures. Evaluation: Compliments the idea that primaries just weakened party elites, but its limitation is that the contemporary primary system has developed effects beyond its original institutional logic.

Ahler and Brookman (2018)

Electoral system and voting behaviour: Argue that polarised politicians can sometimes represent citizens better than apparently moderate politicians, because voters often hold cross-cutting issue preference that make a faithful issue delegate appear ideologically extreme. Evaluation: Disrupts the simple claim that elite polarisation provides democratic misrepresentation, but its limitation is that it explains measured polarisation, not all forms of partisan extremism of affective hostility.

Fowler (2020)

Electoral system and voting behaviour: Challenges the claim that American voters are simply intoxicated arbitrary partisan attachments, arguing that evidence for blind partisanship is weaker than often assumed and that policy voting is more prevalent. Evaluation: Directly addresses the ‘intoxicated partisans’ thesis, but its limitation is that policy voting and partisan identity are often difficult to separate empirically.

Green, Palmquist and Schickler (2002)

Electoral system and voting behaviour: Argue that party identification is a durable social identity that powerfully structures how citizens interpret politics and cast votes. Evaluation: Essential for understanding partisanship as identity rather than simple policy calculation, but its limitation is that it can understate how ideology, elite conflict, and events reshape partisan attachments over time.

Hopkins (2018)

Electoral system and voting behaviour: Argues that American political behaviour has become nationalised, meaning voters increasingly interpret state and local politics through national party conflict rather than local performance or local issues. Evaluation: Links voting behaviour to federalism, media, and party polarisation, but its limitation is that it may be less able to explain cases where local personalities or state-specific issues still matter.

Iyengar and Westwood (2014)

Electoral system and voting behaviour: Show that partisan identity has become a powerful basis for social division, with out-party hostility operating in ways comparable to other forms of group bias. Evaluation: Explains affective polarisation, but it is hard to empirically prove that animus, rather than policy, is the primary cause of voting decisions.

Levendusky (2009)

Electoral system and voting behaviour: Argues that American voters have become sorted - liberals increasingly identify as Democrats and conservatives as Republicans, making party and ideology far more closely aligned than in the mid-twentieth century. Evaluation: Explains why voters may appear more partisan without necessarily becoming uniformly more extreme, but its limitation is that sorting does not by itself explain affective hostility.

Mason (2018)

Electoral system and voting behaviour: Argues that American politics has become uncivil because identity now stacks together with other social identities, making party conflict feel like a conflict between social groups rather than a disagreement over policy. Evaluation: Powerful for explaining affective polarisation, but can underplay the genuine policy stakes that also structure partisan conflict.

Orr and Huber (2020)

Electoral system and voting behaviour: Argue that measured partisan animosity has a substantial policy basis - people dislike the other party partly because they associate it with disliked policies, not only because of arbitrary tribalism. Evaluation: Important corrective to affective-polarisation accounts, but its limitation is that it does not deny identity-based hostility, only narrows how much can be treated as policy-free animus.

Bartels (2008)

Interest groups: Argues that American democracy responds disproportionately to affluent citizens, so economic inequality translates into political inequality. Evaluation: Links money, responsiveness, and class power, but its limitation is that unequal responsiveness does not prove a direct quid pro quo mechanism in every policy case.

Baumgartner, et al. (2009)

Interest groups: Argue that lobbying influence is difficult to measure because most lobbying occurs in complex policy environments where the status quo is powerful, sides vary in resources and coalitions, and success often means blocking change rather than producing visible victories. Evaluation: Key for understanding interest group success measurement, but it deliberately resists simple claims about who ‘wins’ from lobbying.

Drutman (2015)

Interest groups: Argues that corporate lobbying has become pervasive, proactive, and self-reinforcing, turning business into a deeply politicised actor and Washington politics into a more corporate environment. Evaluation: Illustrates business power, but its limitation is that more lobbying capacity does not automatically mean guaranteed policy success.

Fowler, et a. (2020)

Interest groups:

Gilens and Page (2014)

Interest groups:

Goldstein (1999)

Interest groups:

Maisel, et al. (2010)

Interest groups:

Werner (2012)

Interest groups:

Neustadt (1991)

Presidency:

Edwards and Howell (2009)

Presidency:

Edwards (2016)

Presidency:

Howell (2013)

Presidency:

Skowronek (2008)

Presidency:

Canes-Wrone, Howell and Lewis (2008)

Presidency:

Christenson and Kriner (2019)

Presidency:

Jones (2005)

Presidency:

Bennett (2016)

Media:

Flaxman, et al. (2016)

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Graber and Dunaway (2017)

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Hayes and Lawless (2021)

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Hayes and Lawless (2021)

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Lawrence, Sides and Farrell (2010)

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Levendusky (2013)

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Waldman, et al. (2011)

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