Review
“Hopkins takes an empirical hammer to shatter the outdated maxim ‘all politics is local.’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, 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, National Review
“At a time when most people think Americans are increasingly different from one another, this book shows one way we are increasingly similar—we’ve given up serious engagement in local and state politics because our partisan identities have been made meaningful by national politics. All politics isn’t local—not even close, it turns out—and the consequences extend beyond our local communities all the way to a gridlocked US Congress.” -- Lynn Vavreck, University of California, Los Angeles
“Hopkins is a sure-footed guide to the twilight of local politics, and he’s aware of the risks that these developments may pose.” -- Yascha Mounk ― New Yorker
“An extremely important piece of work. . . . There are at least half a million elected officials in the United States. Only 537 of them are federal. And yet almost all of our collective attention is on those federal officials and in particular, just one of them: the president. As a result, elections these days, at every level of government, increasingly operate as a singular referendum on the president. . . . This disconcerting disconnect between national political behavior and localized elections is the subject of The Increasingly United States.” -- Lee Drutman ― Vox
About the Author
Daniel J. Hopkins is associate professor in the Political Science Department and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He is coeditor, with John Sides, of Political Polarization in American Politics.
