From Political Divisions to Regime Threat? Cleavages and American Democracy
Saturday, September 5, 10:00 am to 11:30 am
2026 APSA Annual Meeting & Exhibition — Boston, MA | Register here
In-person | Roundtable
Participants:
- (Chair) Kenneth M. Roberts, Cornell University
- (Presenter) Robert C. Lieberman, Johns Hopkins University
- (Presenter) Daniel Schlozman, Johns Hopkins University
- (Presenter) Christina Wolbrecht, University of Notre Dame
- (Presenter) David E. Campbell, University of Notre Dame
- (Presenter) Theda Skocpol, Harvard University
- (Presenter) Amel F. Ahmed, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- (Presenter) Robert Mickey, University of Michigan
Session Description:
Political science offers no ready-made formulas for sustaining democracy in a two-party system where one of the major parties has become an insurgent anti-democratic force, or a vehicle for actors who are. On this panel, we explore this uncharted terrain by examining the sociological and political foundations, partisan alignment, political construction, and implications of the regime cleavage that has emerged in U.S. politics in the first decades of the twenty-first century. We will explore how Americans sorted themselves into antagonistic partisan camps on the basis of race, religion, education, gender, and geography, and examine how these social cleavages stacked onto each other and intensified partisan polarization over the nature of the regime itself. Our premise is that a combination of historical and comparative approaches is a productive way to make sense of these questions. Efforts to fortify American democracy in a context of hyper-polarization must understand the nature of the political cleavage and how best to counter and contain its autocratic expressions. Recasting American politics in terms of regime cleavage, in short, may help to generate strategies about how to confront and potentially reverse the authoritarian drift. Presentations will cover race (Lieberman and Schlozman), gender (Wolbrecht), religion (Cambell), and Immigration (Skocpol), with discussion and commentary by Roberts, Ahmed, and Mickey.