Jamie L. Carson, Joel Sievert, and Ryan D. Williamson. Nationalized Politics: Evaluating Electoral Politics Across Time

One of the most common questions political scientists are asked by more casual observers of politics is something along the lines of “Have we ever seen a political environment like this before?” It’s difficult for many to imagine that the extent of attachment to—and division between—America’s two major political parties could have ever been quite so pronounced as it is today. However, with Nationalized Politics: Evaluating Electoral Politics Across Time in hand, we now have hard evidence, particularly in the area of elections, to add to this important discussion. With this ambitious analysis of electoral politics and party loyalty over vast reaches of both time and place, Jamie Carson, Joel Sievert, and Ryan Williamson have done a service to the discipline and to our ongoing discussion of—and in many cases, concern over—the growing nationalization of our elections, parties, and public opinion.

Carson et al. argue, and demonstrate with persuasive evidence across this book, that the current “extent of nationalization has now reached levels unseen since the 19^th century” (4), but that these twin peaks of nationalization were driven by very different causes, and could have very different effects. Electoral nationalization in the nineteenth century was due largely to institutional features like the partisan balloting process, in which voters were “generally unable to select among individual candidates” (4).