PartisansandPartners

Americans are deeply divided by politics, but Josh Pacewicz argues in Partisans and Partners that the traditional understanding of red/blue, right/left, urban/rural division is too simplistic. Experiencing this firsthand in Iowa, a crucial primary state, Pacewicz examines two cities—one traditionally Democratic, the other Republican—only to discover that younger voters are moving away from strict political affiliations previously held by their elders. While the dividing lines between American political parties have sharpened, Americans are growing weary of traditional party politics and instead, becoming apolitical or supporting outsider candidates. Pacewicz identifies this shift as a result of a fundamental reorganization of community institutions that political parties have been historically linked to. Weaving together significant themes in American political history, including globalization, decline in organized labor, loss of locally owned industries, uneven economic development, and emergence of grassroots populist movements, Partisans and Partners is a timely and comprehensive analysis of American politics as it unfolds on the ground.

Review Quotes: Andrew Abbott, University of Chicago: “A tale of two cities, and through them, tidal shifts of American politics in the last forty years. Based on years of painstaking field work as well as archival and documentary analysis, the book develops a whole new approach to theorizing American political life. This will be one of the definitive American political ethnographies, right up there with Robert Dahl’s Who Governs?”

Nina Eliasoph, University of Southern California: “This superb study of the transformations of local political power in the United States over the past forty years doubles as a beautiful, tender, and evocative portrait of two whole ways of life, and triples as a set of answers to the most burning political questions of the day. Local politicians, party members, scholars of politics and culture, nonprofit managers, voters: everyone should read this book! By bringing poetry, science, and history to bear on our country—and world’s—most urgent political and social questions, Partisans and Partners ought to become a classic.”

作者简介

JoshPacewiczisassistantprofessorofsociologyandurbanstudiesatBrownUniversity.