American politics is typically a story about winners. The fading away of defeated politicians and political movements is a feature of American politics that ensures political stability and a peaceful transition of power. But American history has also been built on defeated candidates, failed presidents, and social movements that at pivotal moments did not dissipate as expected but instead persisted and eventually achieved success for the loser's ideas and preferred policies.

With Legacies of Losing in American Politics, Jeffrey K. Tulis and Nicole Mellow rethink three pivotal...

American politics is typically a story about winners. The fading away of defeated politicians and political movements is a feature of American politics that ensures political stability and a peaceful transition of power. But American history has also been built on defeated candidates, failed presidents, and social movements that at pivotal moments did not dissipate as expected but instead persisted and eventually achieved success for the loser's ideas and preferred policies.

With Legacies of Losing in American Politics, Jeffrey K. Tulis and Nicole Mellow rethink three pivotal...

Since the founding of the American Republic, the North and South have followed remarkably different paths of political development. Among the factors that have led to their divergence throughout much of history are differences in the levels of competition among the political parties. While the North has generally enjoyed a well-defined two-party system, the South has tended to have only weakly developed political parties--and at times no system of parties to speak of.

With Why Parties Matter, John H. Aldrich and John D. Griffin make a compelling case that competition between...

Once elected, members of Congress face difficult decisions about how to allocate their time and effort. On which issues should they focus? What is the right balance between working in one's district and on Capitol Hill? How much should they engage with the media to cultivate a national reputation? William Bernhard and Tracy Sulkin argue that these decisions and others define a "legislative style" that aligns with a legislator's ambitions, experiences, and personal inclinations, as well as any significant electoral and institutional constraints.

Bernhard and Sulkin have developed a...

An analysis of how all politics became non-local-how US politics has increasingly become nationalized, so that local races break down on the same partisan lines and issues as national ones, even if that wouldn't necessarily make sense at a glance.

One of the most distinctive aspects of our politics today is the sorting of religious and non-religious voters into different parties; Margolis shows that this is more an effect of partisan sorting than a cause.