The Regime Question: The United States in Global Perspective

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

The United States is witnessing a resurgence of regime contention in politics, and indeed a hardening of a regime cleavage that has divided politicians and the electorate not just according to policy and identity but also on the very question of democratic legitimacy. Questions about the legitimacy of established democratic practices and institutions are entering the political discourse like they have been at no point in recent history. However, we have very few tools to understand what this might mean for the future of democratic politics in the United States. This roundtable brings together a range of comparative perspectives on the impact of regime contestation in democratic settings. Drawing on research from the US, Europe, Asia, and Latin America, presenters will explore the impact of regime contestation in legislative politics, inter-branch relations, and party development. We seek to contribute to our understanding of this year’s theme, “Democracy, Difference, and Destabilization” through exploration of one of the greatest challenges facing democracy in the United States and elsewhere, the return of a regime dimension that threatens to radically restructure the political landscape.

Our roundtable participants are widely-recognized experts in comparative and American politics whose published and forthcoming work touches on fundamental questions on regime stability. Our participants also reflect the diversity of APSA’s membership, and usefully cross traditional subfield and area boundaries.

Amel Ahmed (U-Mass Amherst) is an expert in comparative and historical approaches to regime change. She specializes in democratization in Europe, and has worked extensively on the origins of electoral institutions and their effects on political competition over the past two centuries.

Julia Azari (Marquette) works on party development and policy history in the United States, and has published widely on the Trump presidency and its historical and institutional antecedents both in academic and popular venues.

Sara Wallace Goodman (UC Irvine) is a leading scholar of citizenship and migration policy whose work outlines the policy implications and political consequences of migration and naturalization. Her current research examines the politics of citizenship in times of democratic crisis in the United States and Europe.

Didi Kuo (Stanford) studies the role of clientelism in democratic consolidation, straddling the subfields of American and comparative politics and adopting a historical and developmental approach to political change in the United States and the United Kingdom.

T.J. Pempel’s (UC Berkeley) research on Japanese and East Asian politics has addressed the very concept of “regime change” and “regime shift” within consolidated democracies, and he is one of the world’s foremost experts in the changing political and economic regimes of Japan, and U.S.-East Asian relations in the post-9/11 era.

Thomas Pepinsky (Cornell) works primarily on Southeast Asian politics, and has written for both academic and popular audiences about Trump presidency and democratic stability in comparative and historical perspective.

David Samuels (Minnesota) works on institutions and the political economy of democratization, with a focus on new and consolidating democracies and an area specialization in Brazil and Latin America.

Each of our participants will draw on their existing research (and, where necessary, their work in progress) to address the core questions of regime competition in the contemporary United States. In outlining parallels with the comparative experiences of countries as diverse as Brazil, Germany, and Japan, and drawing on American political history to place current events in their appropriate context, our roundtable will outline the problem of regime competition in American politics and outline an emerging research agenda on the politics of regime change in the United States.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Cosponsor

• Division 11: Comparative Politics

Chair

• Sara Wallace Goodman University of California, Irvine

Presenters

• Amel F. Ahmed University of Massachusetts, Amherst

• Julia Rezazadeh Azari Marquette University

• Didi Kuo Stanford University

• T.J. Pempel University of California, Berkeley

• Thomas Pepinsky Cornell University

• David J. Samuels University of Minnesota, Twin Cities