American Governance: Politics, Policy, and Public Law
The American Governance series provides a home for readable, rigorous, and refreshing new work by emerging and established scholars of American politics. Topics that launch the series include studies of the internal politics of civil rights organizations, what competitiveness in elections contributes to American democracy, the rise of workfare since the 1970s, and the development since Reconstruction of marriage as a political and politically contested institution. The series is open to all methodological persuasions in the study of American politics.
Series Editors: Daniel Galvin Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University
Chloe Thurston Associate Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University
Staff Editorial Contact: Elisabeth Maselli, Senior Editor emaselli@upenn.edu
Founding Editors: Pamela Brandwein Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan
Marie Gottschalk Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
Christopher Howard Harriman Professor of Government and Public Policy, College of William and Mary
Richard Valelly Claude C. Smith, Class of 1914, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Swarthmore College
Developmental Approaches to American Party Politics
Edited by Jessica Hejny and Adam Hilton
Price: $54.95
ISBN: 9781512828085
Pub Date: September 2025
Format: Hardcover
304 Pages
Drawing together a new generation of historically oriented party scholars into one volume, Parties, Power, and Change both contributes to readers’ understanding of the durability and dynamism animating American party politics and explores the roots of partisan polarization and democratic backsliding that threaten American democracy today.
In Divided Unions, Alexis N. Walker argues that excluding public sector workers from the foundation of U.S. labor law, the Wagner Act of 1935, created divisions within the labor movement that have had lasting consequences for the size, strength, and influence of organized labor in American politics.
The Contentious Transformation of the Democratic Party
Adam Hilton
Price: $29.95
ISBN: 9781512826890
Pub Date: August 2024
Format: Paperback
280 Pages
Tracing the rise of the advocacy party from the fall of the New Deal order through the presidency of Barack Obama, True Blues explains how and why the Democratic Party has come to its current crossroads and suggests a bold new perspective for comprehending the dynamics driving American party politics more broadly.
Moral Victories tells the story of the growing importance of moral issues in U.S. House elections. Christian conservative activists worked to nominate friendly candidates and get them elected. The result was a Republican House delegation that cared as much about abortion and gay rights as it did smaller government and lower taxes.
Contesting Values and Economics in American Politics
Gwendoline M. Alphonso
Price: $29.95
ISBN: 9781512829655
Pub Date: January 2026
Format: Paperback
256 Pages
Polarized Families, Polarized Parties demonstrates that differing regional ideals of family have shaped party policy and ideological positions throughout the twentieth century.
Race and the Making of American Political Science shows that racial thought was central to the academic study of politics in the United States at its origins, shaping the discipline's core categories and questions in fundamental and lasting ways.
Engineering Expansion examines the U.S. Army's role in economic development from 1787 to 1860. The book shows how the Army shaped the American economy by expanding the nation's borders; maintaining the rule of law; building roads, bridges, and railroads; and creating manufacturing innovations that spread throughout the private sector.
Electoral Capitalism brings new perspective to the crisis of inequality during the Gilded Age. Examining how party leaders governed by accumulating wealth through the spoils system, Broxmeyer places in historical context debates over capitalism and democracy that continue to resonate today.
Drawing on American political development's rich theoretical tradition and historical perspective in order to better understand how long-term institutional and ideational developments have shaped the Trump presidency, this volume offers broad reflections on the future of American institutions in a time of considerable social change.
Examining the history of rap music, particularly the subgenre of political rap, and coupling public opinion research with lyrical analysis, Lakeyta M. Bonnette illustrates the ways rap music serves as a vehicle for the expression and advancement of political thought in urban Black communities.
