Sam Rosenfeld

David A. Bateman, author of Disenfranchising Democracy: Constructing the Electorate in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France

“Schlozman and Rosenfeld provide an ambitious and novel account of the country’s contemporary political crises: the authoritarian threat from the Republican right, the listlessness of the Democrats, and the widening gulf between them. Provocative and insightful, The Hollow Parties makes a powerful argument that the defense of American democracy requires parties to again become central institutional actors in civic life.”

E. J. Dionne Jr., author of Code Red: How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country

“This is a wonderful and necessary book rooted in a sense of urgency and a wise understanding of American history. The Hollow Parties argues persuasively and passionately that political parties are essential to a healthy democracy, and that their salvation lies not in raising gobs of money but in rooting themselves in the daily civic lives and bread-and-butter concerns of local communities. It’s also a joy to read a pathbreaking work of political science written in eloquent and elegant prose.”

Lily Geismer, author of Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality

“This masterful book marks a landmark and paradigm-shifting study of American political parties. It is ambitious in the best sense of the word and is an argument with which anyone interested in American politics will have to contend.”

Michael Kazin, author of What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party

“The most sweeping and most incisive history of party organization I have ever read. Schlozman and Rosenfeld have crafted a narrative that captures the drama and nuances of political behavior with the kind of zestful eloquence found in the work of the best historians. Nearly every page includes observations that made me reflect anew about matters I have been writing and teaching about for a long time. This is a truly impressive book.”

Daniel Ziblatt, coauthor of Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point

"A sweeping, original, and deeply persuasive account of a hidden hinge of American democracy: political parties. To understand why and how our politics ended up where they are today, read this book."

Thomas Karel, Library Journal

"What sets this book apart from others about American political parties is its sense of urgency ... Schlozman and Rosenfeld argue forcefully for a resurgence of robust parties to get U.S. politics back on track."

Michael Hartmann, Giving Review

"We can see and should hold donors to account for—and work, be it through politics, policy, and/or practice, for less of—that which The Hollow Parties shows so well that lies between the well-funded, actual party-supplanting splotches, on both the left and right, and those people who don’t fund and aren’t in them."

Ben Jacobs, Washington Examiner

"In a moment when the misconception that there are two overly powerful political parties is too broadly held, [The Hollow Parties] provides a convincing and detailed counterargument that stronger parties would lead to a stronger political system."

John Sides, Democracy

"In this insightful book, the political scientists Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld do three things. They tell the history of the six political traditions that have informed American political parties—what they call 'party strands.' They describe how political parties became 'hollow,' seemingly everywhere but lacking in fundamental capacities. And they provide a guide for revitalized parties. They are, unabashedly, 'partisans of parties.' This makes them a rare voice in our political conversation. Theirs is a voice well worth listening to."

Kenneth Baer, The Washington Monthly

"Engaging ... The hollowness of our parties matters, say Schlozman and Rosenfeld, because parties matter."

Joseph Postel, Fusion

"There is a great deal to learn from The Hollow Parties ... Not only does it provide an excellent history of America’s parties up to the 1970s, it also offers a compelling framework for reconciling the paradoxes of today’s parties."  

Michael Barone, Claremont Review of Books

"One of the high points of The Hollow Parties is the authors’ description of the enthusiastic support for Jackson’s Democrats in 1828 and 1832 ... Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld see clearly the development of America’s two great political parties, free of liberal historians’ enchantment with Andrew Jackson and the scorn of Southern Democrats and Mugwump Republicans for Reconstruction."

Jessica T. Mathews, Foreign Affairs

"The authors are passionate believers in the vital role that the major political parties should play in American democracy, one they fear both parties have relinquished over the past half century."

Robert W. Merry, Wall Street Journal

"Thought-provoking ... Schlozman and Rosenfeld, along with their modern-day critique, offer a sweeping and often trenchant history of American party dynamics that helps us to see how much things have changed."

Gustav Jönsson, The Signal

"Schlozman and Rosenfeld show how, over the past half-century, both major parties have lost what previously defined them—their roots in American civic life."

Phillip Wallach, Law and Liberty

"In their deeply researched and original new book, [Schlozman and Rosenfeld] trace two centuries of party development, with special attention to those who might sometimes be overlooked as mere party functionaries. Their indictment of our contemporary scene is forceful."

Chris Lehmann, The Nation

"An engaging and perceptive historical account ... Schlozman and Rosenfeld are right that any hope of reclaiming a viable small-d democratic politics from our era of authoritarian reaction and gladiatorial culture warfare entails a ground-up reinvention of the hollow and unresponsive party system that we have come to wearily endure."

Matthew Yglesias, cofounder and senior correspondent, Vox

“Partisan and ideological polarization are defining features of our time, but they are more often denounced than understood. In The Polarizers, Rosenfeld sheds much-needed light on the origins of present-day politics—revealing the human actors who took deliberate steps to bring about the political alignment we know today. His readable, deeply informed narrative should change the way we think about the recent past and even our own times, showing the era of polarization to be not a fall from grace but a plausible response to the very real problems and dilemmas of the old political order. Rosenfeld’s new research and new insights brilliantly challenge much over-crusted conventional wisdom about polarization, and offers hints as to how conscious political action can help redress the flaws of the current party system much as past actors took steps to cure the ills of the past.”

Andrew Hartman, author of A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars

“Using impressive, indeed herculean, amounts of archival work, Rosenfeld shows that as more and more Americans became politically aware and as, in the wake of the polarizing 1960s, people found ideological cohesion around economic and cultural issues, a growing number of ideologically driven and issue-based activists worked to ensure that the Democratic and Republican Parties respectively represented their cohering interests. Rosenfeld’s analysis is built upon a surprising irony: the very partisanship that so many pundits now lament was something that pundits of an earlier era wanted! The Polarizers is a provocative book that unlocks the black box of partisan polarization.”

Julian E. Zelizer, author of The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society

“Many observers complain about partisanship in contemporary politics, but Rosenfeld provides a careful and fascinating history of the people who created our current system. Frustrated with the way that bipartisanship had created gridlock in the 1950 and 1960s, partisan entrepreneurs such as Paul Butler believed that strong and ideologically cohesive parties would offer a better way to govern. They believed that partisanship promised to make a stronger democracy. Through tremendous archival research, Rosenfeld shows how this all happened and provides a fresh perspective on the roots of our current system.”

Ira Katznelson, author of Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time

“Less an elegy than an illuminating genealogy, The Polarizers places today’s sharp partisanship in historical context. Moving fluidly between fascinating particulars and systematic analysis, the book’s rich account of persons, motivations, and mechanisms illuminates central transformations within American political life, all the while offering acute judgments about the party system, past and present.”

Steven Webster, Political Science Quarterly

"A comprehensive analysis that is meticulously researched and presented in compelling fashion ... Rosenfeld's ability to highlight the intricate details of individuals' conscious decisions to push the American party system toward polarized ends while not neglecting to situate these decisions within a broader context is perhaps the most impressive aspect of the book. For those interested in the history of American political development and how our party system came to be so rancorous, The Polarizers is a must-read."

Boris Heersink, Journal of Politics

“A remarkable achievement in terms of its historical description ... As a political history of the post–World War II era, The Polarizers provides a comprehensive analysis of both parties’ development. The fact that Rosenfeld manages to cover both parties in this regard is impressive.”

B. Dan Wood and Soren Jordan, Perspectives on Politics

"Academics, especially political scientists, have provided a wide range of empirical evidence of increased polarization (particularly among elites) in American politics ... but what has been missing from recent political science work has been a focus on micro-level mechanisms operating in the modern era. ... Sam Rosenfeld fills this gap by providing a detailed account of these micro-level processes. Using a vast array of archival sources, he documents how polarization is largely the result of the initiative of a few key individuals wishing to instill national ideological unity in the parties in the face of competing pressures for local constituencies."

Andrew J. Taylor, Party Politics

"[C]areful and meticulously chronicled ... Here is an important work of recent American political history, enhanced by Rosenfeld’s skillful wordsmithing and silvery prose."

James E. Cronin, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics

"[E]xtremely useful ... A distinctive feature of Rosenfeld’s telling of the coming of polarization is that

he pays roughly equal attention to what was happening on the right and the left."

Mark Wickham-Jones, Journal of Contemporary History

"Rosenfeld marshals an imposing volume of data and provides a historical underpinning that many other accounts lack ... Rosenfeld’s compelling text offers a gripping account of a fascinating period of party change throughout the United States."

Matthew Avery Sutton, Journal of American History

"This book should change the way we teach post-World War II American politics, the rise of a polarized electorate, and the evolution of the party system."

Laura Jane Gifford, American Historical Review

"Specialists will appreciate [Rosenfeld's] challenge to preexisting assumptions; a more general audience will also benefit from this insightful exploration of why our political system functions—or fails to function—as it does today."

Mark Wickham-Jones, Journal of American Studies

"[Rosenfeld] outlines a micro-level actor-focussed account of the mechanisms by which polarization emerged in the decades after 1945 ... Scholars pushed for polarization, justified it normatively, outlined potential reforms, battered politicians into accepting them, and legitimated many of the measures that policymakers subsequently introduced."

Kirkus Reviews

"A delight for policy wonks and politicos, Rosenfeld's insightful study of the development of political parties since World War II is highly instructive for our current moment."

Choice

“A timely and significant contribution to the literature on political sorting and polarization that defines the current state of the two major American political parties ... A readable and well-structured history of our current party system ... Highly recommended.”

Rose Deller, LSE Review of Books

“A thorough and detailed study that introduces readers to the myriad figures who contributed to the development of what Rosenfeld deems the ‘polarization without responsibility’ of our present times.”

Norman Ornstein, Democracy

"As Sam Rosenfeld documents in his important new book, the polarization that resulted did not just happen, was not simply caused by people moving from one part of the country to another—it was presaged decades earlier, and pushed by a bevy of influential people ... Rosenfeld gets it just right, through prodigious research in the archives, including sifting through countless volumes of historical papers of the participants, and writes about it clearly and compellingly."

Lee Drutman, Washington Monthly

"For anyone who cares about our political future enough to learn from its past, The Polarizers is absolutely essential reading."

Sam Tanenhaus, The New Republic

"As Sam Rosenfeld shows in The Polarizers, the irrational-seeming “extreme partisanship” and “tribalism” that contaminate our politics today originated in the principled efforts of writers, activists, and politicians who thought the two parties needed more polarization, ideological fixity, and internal discipline."

James Bowman, Weekly Standard

“To some political junkies, reading Sam Rosenfeld’s book will be an exercise in almost unbearable nostalgia for that world of political stability and comity and the kind of genuine debate that can only come with mutual respect between those of differing political points of view ... [The Polarizers] is a tribute to the meticulousness of his scholarship in reconstructing such a difficult and complicated history, one that was complicated, at least in part, deliberately.”

Fred Siegel, City Journal

"'When partisan team spirit becomes reinforced by shared substantive beliefs on core issues,' notes Sam Rosenfeld, 'peoples’ partisan identities become a more intensely felt component of their self-identities. Righteous passion for one’s own side intensifies while distrust of and hostility toward the other side deepen.' He’s right ..."

David Frisk, Law and Liberty

"The main strength of The Polarizers is its richly detailed account of how the institutional Democratic Party changed—of how, indeed, it changed to the point that Bernie Sanders came close to winning its nomination in 2016 ... Still, his accurate account of the GOP’s evolution is noteworthy in at least two ways. He points out various calls by significant figures for a more right-wing party as early as the late 1940s, and he shows the extent of national chairman Bill Brock’s cooperation in this transformation in the late 1970s—especially in the establishment of supply-side tax cuts as a common GOP message."

Political Polarization and American Democracy - Syllabus

America as a Democracy - Syllabus

American Political Development - Syllabus

War and the Shaping of American Politics - Syllabus

American Elections and Party Power - Syllabus

The Presidency and Executive Leadership - Syllabus