Books in the Elements in American Politics series

The Lautenberg Act was passed in 2016, winning support across businesses and environmental groups. Does that portend more progressive actions? We show it as a function of the status quo changing due to regulatory efforts abroad, and in the United States, and from outside pressures on business. These processes may not be unique to toxics.

Directly compares the British House of Commons and United States House of Representatives. Through similar motivations, member ideology and party agenda are revealed to produce party disloyalty based on data of legislative voting agenda following changes in agenda control. Legislative scholars are encouraged to regard commonalities of both political systems.

Does Trump's election mean Americans reflexively resist factual information? Evidence strongly suggests not. Americans across the political spectrum are responsive to factual information, even when facts undercut claims made by their party's politicians. However, being more factually accurate does not generally change people's political beliefs.

Following the 2014 elections, a group of organized conservatives called the House Freedom Caucus regularly issued threats against its own party's leadership. This Element posits explanations for why such threat-making might occur and what might increase its likelihood of success, then tests those explanations.

This Element turns to a more systematic approach, emphasizing whole electorates and examining facts through a dynamic lens. It argues public opinion will converge toward truth over time and frequently finds correct views of facts grow stronger under information flow, while misperception recedes.

In 1969, political scientist Jack Walker published 'The Diffusion of Innovations among the American States' in the American Political Science Review, which has since become a cornerstone of political science, This Element documents the deep and extensive impact it has had on the study of policymaking in the US states.

A central question in political representation is whether government responds to the people. To understand that, we need to know what the government is doing, and what the people think of it. We seek to understand a key question necessary to answer those bigger questions: How does American public opinion move over time?

This Element explores the growing party divisions on the environment in the United States. It draws upon quantitative and qualitative data from several decades of national and state politics. The study contributes theory to the party position change literature, showing that interest groups change parties, but in turn are changed by them. In the 1970s the characteristics that predicted voters' attitudes on the environment also predicted legislators' votes. Yet as environmentalists and their opponents aligned with parties, officials had incentives to set their own views aside to represent new party constituencies. Influence flowed in both directions, however. Environmentalists were drawn to the Democrats as they confronted GOP-linked business lobbies. Environmentalists' resulting need to cooperate with other groups close to Democrats led them to change their positions. Although environmentalists were long unwelcoming to minorities, they embraced immigration reform, allied with unions on trade, and worked with civil rights lobbies and labor in battles over judicial nominations. The Element concludes with discussion of how the current party alignment on the environment might change.

With the victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 United States presidential election, populists have come to power in the US for the first time in many years. However, US political scientists have been flat-footed in their response, failing to anticipate or measure populism's impact on the campaign or to offer useful policy responses. In contrast, populism has long been an important topic of study for political scientists studying other regions, especially Latin America and Europe. The conceptual and theoretical insights of comparativist scholars can benefit Americanists, and applying their techniques can help US scholars and policymakers place events in perspective.

American political observers express increasing concern about affective polarization, i.e., partisans' resentment toward political opponents. We advance debates about America's partisan divisions by comparing affective polarization in the US over the past 25 years with affective polarization in 19 other western publics. We conclude that American affective polarization is not extreme in comparative perspective, although Americans' dislike of partisan opponents has increased more rapidly since the mid-1990s than in most other Western publics. We then show that affective polarization is more intense when unemployment and inequality are high; when political elites clash over cultural issues such as immigration and national identity; and in countries with majoritarian electoral institutions. Our findings situate American partisan resentment and hostility in comparative perspective, and illuminate correlates of affective polarization that are difficult to detect when examining the American case in isolation.

What are the consequences when politicians make prejudiced statements? Schaffner shows, with a series of experiments, that exposure to Trump's prejudiced rhetoric causes people to express more prejudice themselves. This may lead to increasingly heightened inter-group tensions which could pose a threat to political and social stability in the US.