Partisan Nation: The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era

by Paul Pierson, Eric Schickler

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.

Genres: Politics

336 pages, Hardcover

Published September 5, 2024

About the author

Paul Pierson is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the Avice Saint Chair in Public Policy. Before taking this position in 2004, he was professor of government at Harvard University, where he taught from 1988 to 2004.

Pierson's first book, Dismantling the Welfare State? (1994), won the American Political Science Association's Kammerer Prize for the best book published on American national politics and policy in 1994. He has been the recipient of a number of prestigious fellowships, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Jean Monnet Fellowship at the European University Institute in Florence, and a Russell Sage Foundation Fellowship.

Professor Pierson is an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for American Progress, where his work concentrates on comparative public policy, political economy, and the welfare state. His writing has appeared in Politics and Society, Comparative Political Studies, and Governance. Pierson is currently working on two books on long-term changes in the American political system. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Reviews

[Bill Sleeman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Partisan Nation is an informative and challenging book. In attempting to trace both the history and the current trajectory of American partisan politics authors Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler certainly have attempted a lot. That isn’t necessarily a problem – there is a serious need for general readers to better understand ‘how did we get here’ (thanks D.B.). Unfortunately, this book is not the tool for that job. Pierson and Schickler both write like the academics that they are. The writing is dense, stiff – almost formulaic - and stuffed with political and social science jargon that will make it too much for the casual follower of politics, the very individuals who might benefit from such a resource. At the same time, the authors, while they do an excellent job bringing together diverse arguments and views, do not cover much new ground. The more serious reader / follower of politics will find Partisan Nation to be just one more work in a vast sea of books attempting to understand how our political system has both changed and yet remains unchanged. Again, it is well researched and grapples with important issues but - by promoting this book as they have (most certainly not a fault of the authors) - the audience that I think the publisher hoped to connect with are probably still out of reach with this work.

[Chris Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

In our ever increasing partisan country, the authors do a phenomenal job documenting how this has all been a part of our history. While our country was founded with interest groups to keep the partisan level at the state level, this new landscape has changed our current system. With the state party, media interests, and changing Supreme Court appointees, can our constitution survive?

[Sean Hendricks · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid, informative read. Initially, I worried the information would be influenced by Pierson's biases or desire to create a captivating narrative, but the latter half of the book squashed those concerns. His understanding of Civil Rights-Era politics and how it formed the late 20th century political climate(see: The Red and The Blue by Kornacki) and how it ties into contemporary politics is extremely important to understand. The way that he describes the GOPs transformation from a moderate broad coalition to a narrow one, and the incentives that result from that transformation, perfectly explain much of the gridlock we see today.