The biggest change in the party coalitions since the 1980s has been the movement of high-education whites into the Democratic Party and the defection of low-education whites to the GOP. Drawing on evidence from opinion surveys, election returns, and demographic data, Chapter 3 documents the parties’ changing voters and geographic constituencies. These trends continued in the 2020 election despite Democratic efforts to reverse the party’s declining popularity among noncollege whites, with some signs educational divides will spread to other racial and ethnic groups. Candidates, activists, political appointees and staffers, judges, party leaders, and campaign workers all demonstrate the same increasing divisions as rank-and-file voters. Democrats may suffer electorally because the Electoral College and apportionment of the Senate grants noncollege whites disproportionate voting power, but college-educated citizens punch above their weight in other forms of influence: as thought leaders, interest group activists, educators, media figures, scientific experts, candidates, political professionals, lawyers, and financial donors.

The standard explanation for Trump’s 2016 victory is that it was the culmination of a long-term right-wing capture of the Republican Party. However, in 2016, the most consistently right-wing candidate was Ted Cruz. Trump was unusual in that he was the candidate of no faction. Rather, Trump’s low-cost populist strategy, in which he relied on mass rallies and social media, was effective because the factions who backed his opponents could not coalesce to keep him out. Trump won the GOP primary with an historically low share of the vote. This chapter also shows that Trump was not the first to successfully pursue such a strategy. In the wake of the reforms of the early 1970s, a little-known Jimmy Carter was similarly able to capture the Democratic nomination in 1976 on the basis of a low-cost direct-communication strategy. The Democratic Party adapted then to keep future populists out. Whether the Republican Party will do so after Trump remains unclear.

Chapter 13 analyses how profound socio-demographic changes in America have contributed to a shift from the faith-driven culture wars of the twentieth century to a more secular identity politics between liberal cosmopolitans and populist communitarians in the twenty-first century. This trend appears closely linked to the rapid decline of American Christianity, which along with globalisation, individualisation and rapid ethnic change has led to an identity crisis in parts of the white working class. Given the relative unresponsiveness of the traditional party system to this development, Donald Trump succeeded in capitalising on this crisis of identity through a ‘hostile takeover’ of the GOP by the alt-right, and a gradual ‘Europeanisation’ of the American right, which shifted from a faith-based social conservativism to a more identitarian and populist white identity politics.

Given the Trump administration’s ambiguous approach to religion discussed in the previous chapter, Chapter 15 explores how American Christians have reacted to it. It finds that although there initially appeared to be a certain level of religious immunity among practicing Christians against Trumpism, this religious ‘vaccination effect’ against national populism has since diminished and even reversed to the extent that, unlike in Europe, American Christians have become one of the populist right’s most loyal constituencies. American Christians’ ‘conversion’ to Trump appears, however, to be less the result of a shift in their attitudes than of supply-side factors. Specifically, a perceived lack of political alternatives as well as the inability and unwillingness of Christian leaders to publicly speak out against Trumpism seem to have contributed to this development.

Chapter 2 presents the federal response to violence against women. We begin the chapter with a brief overview of the history of domestic violence in the United States. We then analyze the response of Congress to the domestic violence epidemic as compared to the Supreme Court’s response. This detailed presentation reveals the gaps that federal laws havr created by leaving states the option to enforce them and relegating nearly all of the enforcement of domestic violence law to local authorities. This chapter underscores the role and limi, of federal policy in remedying the inequities among women in their personal protection from domestic violence. The lack of a cohesive federal response contributes to all four levels of gender inequality in domestic violence policy.

The central claim of this chapter is that racial politics, stemming from the racial realignment between the Democratic and Republican Parties that began much earlier than many scholars appreciate, has played a critically important and yet undernoticed role in the breakdown of constitutional norms in recent decades. An increasing number of American legal scholars are writing about the importance of constitutional norms, also sometimes called constitutional conventions. Such norms are not legal in status, but they impose obligations of compliance on government officials that can be as great as legal obligations – they guide and constrain how officials “exercise political discretion.” Although constitutional norms are not required by the letter of the US Constitution, they are appropriately denominated “constitutional” because they help vindicate the spirit – or the purposes – of the Constitution. To violate a constitutional norm without sufficient public-regarding justification is not unconstitutional, but it “is anticonstitutional.” Constitutional norms were placed under great pressure during the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

Chapter 9 examines the collapse of communism in Albania and the rise of political pluralism. Seemingly overnight Albanians are released from one of the most restrictive political systems in Europe and in the process experience yet another profound shift in every aspect of life. This transition is complicated by a lack of experience with democracy and a free-market economy. The political elite seem to prioritize power over progress and Albania once again slowly slips into authoritarianism. Oligarchs and crime lords increase their influence on many aspects of the economy, the media, the government, and the administration. Relations with neighbors and the world as a whole constitutes a bright spot in postwar development as Albania joins NATO and becomes a candidate member of the European Union. The chapter concludes with a examination of Albania’s current status as well as the remaining challenges it faces including the extensive emigration of the best and the brightest as well as the lingering legacy of the brutal communist period.

Chapter Seven discusses the evolution of the opposition movements seeking Hong Kong’s democracy and autonomy before and after the handover. The mainstream democratic opposition in Hong Kong grew out of the anti-colonial and Chinese nationalist movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Their moderate, non-confrontational approach to gradual democratic reform made some gains in the first 15 years of China’s rule. Simultaneously, the increasing aggressiveness of Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong’s autonomy and freedom, coupled with the rising social polarization caused by the influx of Chinese capital, fueled the growth of more radical, confrontational social and opposition movements.

Fierce partisan conflict in the United States is not new. Throughout American history, there have been polarizing struggles over fundamental questions relating to the meaning of the Declaration, the Constitution, and the relationship between the two. These struggles over ideals have become all encompassing when joined to battles over what it means to be an American – conflicts that have become more regular and dangerous with the rise of the administrative state. The idea of a “State” cuts more deeply than suggested by Max Weber’s definition of “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” Beyond the powers of government, the State represents a centralizing ambition (at least for progressive reformers) to cultivate, or impose, a vision of citizenship. In Randolph Bourne’s words, the State is a “concept of power” that comes alive in defense of or in conflict with an ideal of how such foundational values of Americanism as “free and enlightened” are to be interpreted and enforced. The ideal is symbolized not by the Declaration and the Constitution but rather in rallying emblems such as the flag and Uncle Sam.

The corresponding societies of the Age of Revolutions survived through turning into more durable organizations – political parties. The Democratic-Republicans hotly contested the election of 1796 but suffered reversals for being Francophile enthusiasts amid the Quasi-War of 1798. Despite being threatened with repression by the Alien and Sedition Acts, however, party activists remobilized for the election of 1800, which brought Thomas Jefferson to the presidency and the Democratic-Republicans into power.

Shows that secularism is a dividing line between the parties, thus suggesting that the United States is moving toward a confessional party system, in which religiosity–secularity is a dividing line between the parties. The religious–secular divide between Republicans and Democrats is illustrated through the use of data from party convention delegates, as well as from the mass public.

Demonstrates that secularism can also lead to intraparty tension among Democrats. While many grassroots activists within the Democratic Party are highly secular (and predominantly white and upper status), the party also has a large contingent of Religionist activists (who are predominantly African American, Latino, and working class). Not only do these two groups of activists have different worldviews, they often disagree on both policy and strategy. Secularists are farther to the left, and more interested in ideological purity than compromise. In short, there is potentially a secular storm brewing within the Democratic coalition.

This chapter explores the emergence of the question of abolition within the District of Columbia in the presidential campaign of 1836. Over the course of the presidential campaign, Martin Van Buren sought to hone his position on the question of abolition in the District in response to the pressures he faced from southern Whigs. From an early position that abolition in the District would be inexpedient or impolitic, Van Buren shifted by his inaugural address to the position that such action was counter to “the spirit that actuated the venerated fathers of the republic,” while through campaign materials, public meetings, and official addresses, the Democrats developed the view that abolitionist activity aimed at altering the extant inter-State settlement on slavery was counter to the “spirit of deference, conciliation and mutual forbearance” that underwrote the federal compact. This approach enabled Van Buren and the Democrats to successfully navigate the 1836 election, but it also legitimized an appeal to spirit as a method of resolving constitutional disputes that had significant longer-term effects.

In 1976, the Iowa caucuses launched a Georgia governor and peanut farmer into the White House. In 2008, Barack Obama ran up delegate scores across the country during the Democratic nomination contest in caucus states characterized by high-intensity voting. The presidential caucuses have long been a staple of American democracy. In 2020, however, only three states—Iowa, Nevada, and Wyoming—hosted a presidential caucus. Overnight, the caucuses suddenly became obsolete. This chapter explains how and why this happened.

The major parties have repeatedly tinkered with the presidential nomination process over the past two hundred years. Since the 1968 Democratic National Convention, when rioting over an exclusionary nomination process led to a series of important reforms (primarily to the detriment of caucuses), the major parties have sought to balance ways to include ordinary individual voters in the nomination process while not necessarily excluding the party establishment.