American State National

Over the past generation, the Democratic and Republican parties have each become nationally coordinated political teams. American political institutions, on the other hand, remain highly decentralized. Laboratories against Democracy shows how national political conflicts are increasingly flowing through the subnational institutions of state politics—with profound consequences for public policy and American democracy.

The Great National Divides discusses the many divisions in the United States and how to fix these divides to reunite this great country. It begins by tracing a first divide back to the origins of the racial divide going back to Civil War times. Then it discusses our bleak present, reflected in the controversy over the killings of Blacks by cops and the Black Lives Matter movement. It describes the difficulty of ending segregation and ending or delaying affirmative action.