Books in the Chicago Studies in American Politics (CHUP) series

In the modern Congress, one of the highest hurdles for major bills or nominations is gaining the sixty votes necessary to shut off a filibuster in the Senate. But this wasn't always the case. This title shows that filibustering is a game with slippery rules in which legislators who think fast and try hard can triumph over superior numbers.

With the 2012 presidential election upon us, will voters cast their ballots for the candidates whose platforms and positions best match their own? Or will the race for the next president of the United States come down largely to who runs the most effective campaigning? This book reveals how both factors come into play.

How do threats of terrorism affect the opinions of citizens? This book demonstrates how our strategies for coping with terrorist threats significantly influence our attitudes toward fellow citizens, political leaders, and foreign nations.

As Washington elites drifted toward ideological poles over a few decades, did ordinary Americans follow their lead? This book reveals that we have responded to this trend - but not, for the most part, by becoming more extreme ourselves.

In a democracy, we have come to assume that people know the policies they prefer and elect like-minded officials who are responsible for carrying them out. But does this actually happen? This book looks at citizens' views on candidates both before and after periods of political upheaval, including campaigns, wars, and natural disasters.

Ethnocentrism - our tendency to partition the human world into in-groups and out-groups - pervades societies around the world. This book explains how ethnocentrism shapes American public opinion.

Throughout the contest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, politicians and voters alike worried that the outcome might depend on the preferences of unelected superdelegates. This book shows that for several decades, unelected insiders in both major parties effectively selected candidates long before citizens reached the ballot box.

Despite George W Bush's opposition to big government, federal spending increased under his watch more quickly than it did during the Clinton administration. This book shows that efforts to expand markets and shrink government have the ironic effect of expanding government's reach by creating problems that force legislators to enact new rules.

We are not just social animals, but social citizens whose political choices are significantly shaped by peer influence. Drawing upon data from settings as diverse as South Los Angeles and Chicago's wealthy North Shore, the author shows that social networks do not merely inform citizens' behavior, they can - and do - have the power to change it.