Please join the American Politics Workshop as they host Matt Grossmann, Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University.
Abstract:
American politics is likely to remain a closely divided, highly polarized two-party system for the foreseeable future. That reality doesn’t make policymaking impossible—but it does change which strategies reliably work, where progress is still achievable, and how reformers should think about their goals. Instead of treating today’s partisan environment as an abnormal detour or reasoning that only a sweeping institutional overhaul can fix things, Policymaking for Realists argues that we can accept durable polarized parity as the baseline and learn how to govern effectively inside it. This entails recognizing that the most viable route to sustained policy progress continues to be incremental, coalition-based change that can survive implementation, legal challenges, and partisan turnover. Governance in the second Trump administration serves as a stress test for the book’s argument: when national politics becomes more confrontational and seemingly stable policy regimes are under threat, the premium rises on strategies that can withstand conflict while still producing tangible improvements. The book shows where incremental, wide-coalition policy is proving resilient.
Matt Grossmann is Director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) and Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University. Most recently, Dr. Grossmann is publishing How Social Science Got Better: Overcoming Bias with More Evidence, Diversity, and Self-Reflection (Oxford University Press, 2021) on the topics of Trump's election, the Great Recession, what makes humans unique, models of infectious disease, social immobility, and racial bias in policing. His book, Red State Blues: How the Conservative Revolution Stalled in the States, is from Cambridge University Press. He finds that while the Republican Party has gained substantial political control of state governments but has largely failed to enact policies that advance conservative goals. Grossmann is also co-author of Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats, published by Oxford University Press in 2016 (with David A. Hopkins) and winner of the Leon Epstein Outstanding Book Award from the American Political Science Association. His previous books include Artists of the Possible: Governing Networks and American Policy Change Since 1945, published by Oxford University Press in 2014 and The Not-So-Special Interests: Interest Groups, Public Representation and American Governance, published by Stanford University Press in 2012. He is co-author of Campaigns & Elections, the leading elections textbook from W.W. Norton. Grossmann’s a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center in Washington, DC, host of The Science of Politics Podcast and a regular contributor to FiveThirtyEight’s online political analysis. He has also published op-eds in The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Ariel Sowers
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