Daniel J. Hopkins

Harvard Book Store welcomes DANIEL J. HOPKINS—a professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania—for a discussion of his latest book The Increasingly United States: How and Why American Political Behavior Nationalized.

About The Increasingly United States

In a campaign for state or local office these days, you’re as likely today to hear accusations that an opponent advanced Obamacare or supported Donald Trump as you are to hear about issues affecting the state or local community. This is because American political behavior has become substantially more nationalized. American voters are far more engaged with and knowledgeable about what’s happening in Washington, DC, than in similar messages whether they are in the South, the Northeast, or the Midwest. Gone are the days when all politics was local.

In The Increasingly United States, Daniel J. Hopkins explores this trend and its implications for the American political system. The change is significant in part because it works against a key rationale of America’s federalist system, which was built on the assumption that citizens would be more strongly attached to their states and localities. It also has profound implications for how voters are represented. If voters are well informed about state politics, for example, the governor has an incentive to deliver what voters—or at least a pivotal segment of them—want. But if voters are likely to back the same party in gubernatorial as in presidential elections irrespective of the governor’s actions in office, governors may instead come to see their ambitions as tethered more closely to their status in the national party.

Praise

“Hopkins takes an empirical hammer to shatter the outdated maxim ‘all politics is local.’ Instead, he persuasively illustrates that politics in the United States have become increasingly nationalized and that this is crucial to other major trends in American politics, such as the rise in partisan polarization. This is an authoritative book on an overlooked but essential topic.” —Nate Silver, founder and editor of FiveThirtyEight

“Like a master craftsman evaluating his materials, Hopkins carefully confirms some explanations for the steady nationalization of American party politics and discards others, skillfully using virtually every technique in the social science toolkit. This is meticulous empirical research that raises big normative questions about where America is headed.” —Robert D. Putnam, Harvard University

“America’s constitutional order is premised on a citizenry that takes its state and local allegiances seriously. What happens when these allegiances fade? In The Increasingly United States, Hopkins offers an incisive look at our increasingly nationalized political life and what it means for the future of federalism and the health of our democracy.” —Reihan Salam, executive editor at the National Review