A provocative exploration of how America-s democratic crisis is rooted in a dangerous mismatch between our Constitution and today-s nationalized, partisan politics. The ground beneath American political institutions has moved, with national politics subsuming and transforming the local. As a result, American democracy is in trouble. In this paradigm-shifting book, political scientists Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler bring a sharp new perspective to today-s challenges. Attentive to the different coalitions, interests, and incentives that define the Democratic and Republican parties, they show how contemporary polarization emerged in a rapidly nationalizing country and how it differs from polarization in past eras. In earlier periods, three key features of the political landscape-state parties, interest groups, and media-varied locally and reinforced the nation-s stark regional diversity. But this began to change in the 1960s as the two parties assumed clearer ideological identities and
