“Stronger Together? Investigating the Democratic Party’s Long Coalition,” with Paul Pierson, UC Berkeley

ISPS Initiative on American Political Economy - SPECIAL EVENT

The Democratic Party has come to dominate the nation’s metropolitan centers (cities and, increasingly, their suburbs) – “blue” places that have grown not just richer but also more diverse. Much scholarship has focused on the GOP’s response to these trends. Much less has centered on the Democrats’, despite their crucial role in navigating the country’s perilous attempt to transition to a stable multi-racial democracy.

Please join Paul Pierson for a research-driven conversation about the transformation of the Democratic Party’s “long coalition” as it has come to rely on a more heterogenous set of metro voters and an evolving constellation of interest groups. What has shaped the party’s policy agenda? How have its leaders managed a changing mass and elite coalition, particularly the often distinctive and not infrequently conflicting concerns of affluent white suburban voters and a (often less affluent and more urban) voters of color?  How have the United States’ distinctive electoral and political institutions conditioned this response? And what does this mean for American democracy? PLEASE RSVP AT THIS LINK

Paul Pierson is the John Gross Distinguished Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley. He serves as Director of the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative, and as Co-Director of the multi-university Consortium on American Political Economy. His research, which focuses on the American political economy and public policy, has been awarded several major prizes from the American Political Science Association. He is the author or co-author of seven books, including the best-selling Winner Take All Politics, one of four books he has written with Jacob Hacker. His latest book, with Eric Schickler, is Partisan Nation: The Unmaking of the American Constitutional Order, which is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press.

Sponsored by a new ISPS initiative, the American Political Economy eXchange (APEX).