News from the John W. Kluge Center: Register Now for Pillars of Democracy - Political Parties

Registration is now open for the next event in our Pillars of Democracy series. This event will be on the political parties and will take place live on Zoom on November 18, 2021, at 4pm.

Though mention of political parties is not to be found in the founding documents of the United States, and many early American leaders thought them dangerous to the new government, party politics quickly became a central part of the political system. Indeed parties are essential to organizing mass politics in democracies.

Despite periodic efforts to create new parties, for well over a century nothing has broken the hold of the Democratic and Republican parties on governance and elections. But while a president or major legislative faction from outside the two-party system may be hard to imagine in the near future, primary elections, party discipline in voting, and the relationships between the parties have changed a great deal in recent decades. Public attitudes towards the parties have changed as well. Join the John W. Kluge Center, the Brookings Institution, and the American Enterprise Institute for a discussion of the party system, how it shapes our political futures, and how it might be improved.

Panelists for the program include:

Henry Olsen is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC).  Olsen’s career included a stint as a political consultant and three years working for the California Assembly Republican Caucus. After graduating from the U. of Chicago law school, he clerked for the Honorable Danny J. Boggs on the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. He then began working as an analyst and scholar at several think tanks, including the Manhattan Institute and American Enterprise Institute.  He is the author or co-author of two books, one of which is “The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism.” His biennial election predictions have been widely praised for their uncanny accuracy, and he is a frequent guest on television and radio programs.

Tasha Philpot is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin Department of Government, where she is also affiliated with the Center for African and African American Studies, the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis, and the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies. Philpot’s research focuses on the conditions that enable marginalized groups in American society to function in a more democratic system. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and published in political science’s top peer-reviewed journals. She has also authored three books, the most recent of which is “Conservative but Not Republican: The Paradox of Party Identification and Ideology among African Americans” (2017, Cambridge University Press).

Sophia Jordán Wallace is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington. She received her B.A. from UC San Diego and her Ph.D. from Cornell University. She specializes in Latino Politics, representation, and immigration politics and policy. Her research has been funded by the Ford Foundation, Social Sciences Research Council, Dirksen Congressional Center, and the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. Her co-authored book, “Walls, Cages, and Family Separation: Race and Immigration Policy in the Trump Era,” was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.

Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the Political Reform program at the New America Foundation. He is the author of “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America” (Oxford University Press, 2020) and “The Business of America is Lobbying” (Oxford University Press, 2015), and was the winner of the 2016 American Political Science Association's Robert A. Dahl Award, given for "scholarship of the highest quality on the subject of democracy." He is co-host of the podcast “Politics in Question” and writes for the New York Times, Vox, and FiveThirtyEight, among other outlets. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. from Brown University.