The Increasingly United States
How and Why American Political Behavior Nationalized
336 pages
|
69 line drawings, 9 tables
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6 x 9
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© 2018
- Contents
- Review Quotes
Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Introduction: The Increasingly United States
Chapter 2. Meanings of Nationalization, Past and Present
Chapter 3. The Nationalization of American Elections, 1928–2016
Chapter 4. Staying Home When It’s Close to Home
Chapter 5. Local Contexts in a Nationalized Age
Chapter 6. Explaining Nationalization
Chapter 7. E Pluribus Duo
Chapter 8. Sweet Home America
Chapter 9. The Declining Audience for State and Local News and Its Impacts
Chapter 10. Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
Chapter 1. Introduction: The Increasingly United States
Chapter 2. Meanings of Nationalization, Past and Present
Chapter 3. The Nationalization of American Elections, 1928–2016
Chapter 4. Staying Home When It’s Close to Home
Chapter 5. Local Contexts in a Nationalized Age
Chapter 6. Explaining Nationalization
Chapter 7. E Pluribus Duo
Chapter 8. Sweet Home America
Chapter 9. The Declining Audience for State and Local News and Its Impacts
Chapter 10. Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
Review Quotes
Nate Silver, founder and editor, FiveThirtyEight
“Hopkins takes an empirical hammer to shatter the outdated maxim ‘all politics is local.’ Instead, he persuasively illustrates that politics in the United States have become increasingly nationalized, and that this is crucial to other major trends in American politics, such as the rise in partisan polarization. This is an authoritative book on an overlooked but essential topic.”
Robert D. Putnam, Harvard University
“Like a master craftsman evaluating his materials, Hopkins carefully confirms some explanations for the steady nationalization of American party politics and discards others, skillfully using virtually every technique in the social science toolkit. This is meticulous empirical research that raises big normative questions about where America is headed.”
Reihan Salam, executive editor, National Review
“America’s constitutional order is premised on a citizenry that takes its state and local allegiances seriously. What happens when these allegiances fade? In The Increasingly United States, Hopkins offers an incisive look at our increasingly nationalized political life and what it means for the future of federalism and the health of our democracy.”
Lynn Vavreck, University of California, Los Angeles
“At a time when most people think Americans are increasingly different from one another, this book shows one way we are increasingly similar—we’ve given up serious engagement in local and state politics because our partisan identities have been made meaningful by national politics. All politics isn’t local—not even close, it turns out—and the consequences extend beyond our local communities all the way to a gridlocked US Congress.”
Yascha Mounk | New Yorker
“Hopkins is a sure-footed guide to the twilight of local politics, and he’s aware of the risks that these developments may pose.”
Lee Drutman | Vox
“An extremely important piece of work. . . . There are at least half a million elected officials in the United States. Only 537 of them are federal. And yet almost all of our collective attention is on those federal officials and in particular, just one of them: the president. As a result, elections these days, at every level of government, increasingly operate as a singular referendum on the president. . . . This disconcerting disconnect between national political behavior and localized elections is the subject of The Increasingly United States.”
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Political Science: American Government and Politics | Political Behavior and Public Opinion
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