Using list experiments on the 2008 and 2012 Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project, we investigated whether respondents are more likely to vote against presidential candidates from marginalized groups. We show that conservative and Republican respondents are disinclined to support Muslim and gay candidates. However, neither Right- nor Left-leaning respondents are significantly opposed to female candidates. Surprisingly, we uncovered asymmetric prejudices toward Mormons and African Americans. In both 2008 and 2012, Republicans were far more uncomfortable with gay or Muslim candidates than with African American candidates (per se). However, Democrats in 2012 were deeply uncomfortable with Mormon candidates. These findings illustrate that prejudice in presidential politics is not confined to right-wing pathologies alone but is present on both sides of the partisan–ideological divide.

In 785 mother–child (50% male) pairs from a longitudinal epidemiological birth cohort, we investigated associations between inflammation-related epigenetic polygenic risk scores (i-ePGS), environmental exposures, cognitive function, and child and adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems. We examined prenatal and postnatal effects. For externalizing problems, one prenatal effect was found: i-ePGS at birth associated with higher externalizing problems (ages 7–15) indirectly through lower cognitive function (age 7). For internalizing problems, we identified two effects. For a prenatal effect, i-ePGS at birth associated with higher internalizing symptoms via continuity in i-ePGS at age 7. For a postnatal effect, higher postnatal adversity exposure (birth through age 7) associated with higher internalizing problems (ages 7–15) via higher i-ePGS (age 7). Hence, externalizing problems were related mainly to prenatal effects involving lower cognitive function, whereas internalizing problems appeared related to both prenatal and postnatal effects. The present study supports a link between i-ePGS and child and adolescent mental health.

The policies of Republican Governor Scott Walker have come to symbolize a resurgent assault on the public sector, and on public employee unions in particular, by the Republican Party. The fact that this is happening in Wisconsin, the state that in the last century was considered the “laboratory of Progressivism,” makes the politics surrounding these policies all the more compelling. In The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, Katherine J. Cramer analyzes the “politics of resentment” surrounding these developments. Employing an ethnographic “method of listening,” Cramer furnishes thick description of the political language employed by rural Wisconsinites, and proceeds to develop an interpretive theory of “political resentment” that illuminates the reasons why lower-class citizens so strongly oppose public policies seeking to offset social and economic inequality. The book is important methodologically and politically. We have thus invited a range of social and political scientists to comment on the book as a work of political science and as a diagnosis of the current political moment.

Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson's Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class is both a work of political science and a contribution to broad public discussion of distributive politics. Its topic could not be more relevant to a US polity wracked by bitter partisan disagreements about taxes, social spending, financial regulation, social insecurity, and inequality. The political power of “the rich” is a theme of widespread public attention. The headline on the cover of the January–February 2011 issue of The American Interest—“Inequality and Democracy: Are Plutocrats Drowning Our Republic?”—is indicative. Francis Fukuyama's lead essay, entitled “Left Out,” clarifies that by “plutocracy,” the journal means “not just rule by the rich, but rule by and for the rich. We mean, in other words, a state of affairs in which the rich influence government in such a way as to protect and expand their own wealth and influence, often at the expense of others.” Fukuyama makes clear that he believes that this state of affairs obtains in the United States today.

Readers of Perspectives on Politics will know that the topic has garnered increasing attention from political scientists in general and in our journal in particular. In March 2009, we featured a symposium on Larry Bartels's Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. And in December 2009, our lead article, by Jeffrey A. Winters and Benjamin I. Page, starkly posed the question “Oligarchy in the United States?” and answered it with an equally stark “yes.” Winner-Take-All Politics thus engages a broader scholarly discussion within US political science, at the same time that it both draws upon and echoes many “classic themes” of US political science from the work of Charles Beard and E. E. Schattschneider to Ted Lowi and Charles Lindblom.

In this symposium, we have brought together a group of important scholars and commentators who offer a range of perspectives on the book and on the broader themes it engages. While most of our discussants are specialists on “American politics,” we have also sought out scholars beyond this subfield. Our charge to the discussants is to evaluate the book's central claims and evidence, with a focus on three related questions: 1) How compelling is its analysis of the “how” and “why” of recent US public policy and its “turn” in favor of “the rich” and against “the middle class”? 2) How compelling is its critique of the subfield of “American politics” for its focus on the voter–politician linkage and on “politics as spectacle” at the expense of an analysis of “politics as organized combat”? 3) And do you agree with its argument that recent changes in US politics necessitate a different, more comparative, and more political economy–centered approach to the study of US politics?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

Recent trends indicate that American politics is becoming more “cultural” or “value-based.” However, the leading account of cultural conflict in advanced industrial democracies—Ronald Inglehart's theory of Postmaterialism—has received relatively little attention from students of American politics. The present paper argues that cultural orientations have come to exert a substantial influence on American political life; however the cultural divisions relevant for contemporary American politics are those between religious traditionalists and those rejecting traditional religiosity rather than divisions between Postmaterialists and Materialists. Using the 1980 through 1992 National Election Studies, we test the relative influence of our measure of religious traditionalism and Inglehart's value typology on the political orientations of the American populace. The analysis shows that cultural orientations significantly influence American political behavior. However, the impact of these divisions is almost always more substantial when cultural orientations are defined by religious traditionalism than when they are defined by material-postmaterial value priorities.

The theory of value change suggests not only that materialists and postmaterialists make different political choices but that, more fundamentally, they use different criteria for making those choices. Specifically, it is argued that materialists rely mainly on economic criteria to make political decisions whereas postmaterialists are motivated primarily by noneconomic concerns. Using data from the 1976–1992 National Election Studies (NES) presidential year surveys, this article estimates a series of logit models in which presidential choice is the dependent variable, and the effects of economic and noneconomic issues are assessed separately for materialists and postmaterialists. The results indicate that noneconomic issues do exert an impact on postmaterialists, but they also tend to be significant for materialists as well. Similarly, economic issues, when they exert an impact, are significant for both materialists and postmaterialists. Thus, although the evidence in this article does not support the proposition that materialists and postmaterialists employ a different political calculus, it does indicate that noneconomic concerns have come to play a significant role in U.S. presidential elections.

How do political issues arise, and come to affect political party politics? We develop a theory and model of issue evolution, illustrating both by examining the dynamic evolution of the issue of racial desegregation. Our modeling concerns two central problems: (1) the structure of the evolution—a pattern of dynamic causality between the early policy cues from professional politicians, in Congress in the case at hand, and later mass response, and (2) the sequence of changes in elite behavior, changes in mass perceptions of party issue stances, changes in mass affect toward the parties, and changes in party identifications among citizens. We suggest that the causal process developed for the racial case is quite general for other times, other nations, and other issues. The theory of issue evolution is developed as a general statement of the organic connection between elite and mass behavior, a working model of the dynamics of American politics across time and issues.

Students of American political behavior have usually turned to “critical election” realignment theories to explain the dynamics of long-term change in the party system. These theories are problematic on both theoretical and empirical grounds. A theory that can account for change within the context of a stable electoral system is required. We propose a theory of issue evolution that explains normal partisan change, and illustrate the theory by examining the impact of racial issues on party identification. The theory looks to the evolution of new issues as the stimulus of partisan change and to the continuous replacement of the electorate as the mechanism through which such change is effected. In a comparison of three theoretical models of issue evolution, we conclude that racial desegregation has provoked a subtle but permanent change in the recruitment of new members of political parties.

Both implicit democratic norms and the reconstructions provided by theorists of rational choice suggest that issue voters are more sophisticated–educated, informed, and active in politics–than other voters. But some issues are clearly more difficult than others, and the voters who respond to “hard” and “easy” issues, respectively, are assumed to differ in kind. We propose the hypothesis that “easy-issue” voters are no more sophisticated than non-issue voters, and this is found to be the case. The findings suggest a reevaluation of the import of rising and falling levels of issue voting and suggest a prominent role for “easy” issues in electoral realignments.

The purpose of this paper is to reformulate the linkage between interparty competition and welfare policies in the American states. Specifically, it is hypothesized that this linkage should be substantially greater among states with strong, effective legislatures than among states with weak, ineffective legislative systems. When legislative effectiveness was defined in terms of professionalism and welfare effort was assessed by seven specific measures, it was found that the link between party competition and welfare expenditures was indeed stronger among states with effective, as opposed to ineffective, legislative systems. Further, when controls were introduced for several socioeconomic factors, the linkage continued to be stronger among states with professional legislatures. It is concluded, consequently, that the influence of party competition on state welfare policies is mediated by the differential effectiveness of state legislatures.