Podcasts-Séminaire Général du CEE

Le cycle du Séminaire Général du CEE invite des chercheuses et chercheurs extérieurs à Sciences Po, français et/ou étrangers, à présenter leurs recherches et articles en cours ou dernière publication. Le format de discussion consiste à associer systématiquement chercheuses et chercheurs seniors et juniors.

Retrouvez les podcasts de ce cycle sur cette page.

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Jane Green is a Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College and Professor of Political Science and British Politics at the University of Oxford (Nuffield College) -
Family Matters: How Concerns about the Financial Wellbeing of Younger Relatives Shape the Political Preferences of Older Adults

We derive a family-centred theory of electoral behaviour wherein older adults are willing to forego benefits to their own generation if they perceive younger family members to be struggling financially. Employing a large novel survey, multiple new family-centred survey items, analysis across policy domains and a survey experiment, we demonstrate support for our theory.  Negative evaluations of the financial wellbeing of younger family members – which are closely linked to objective economic circumstances – are associated with older adults being more likely to support ‘pro-youth’ policies, to forego spending on their own generation, and to vote against the incumbent.  These effects are not reducible to explicit self-interest motivations on behalf of older relatives themselves.  We argue that conventional self-interest assumptions require modification: people vote for the well-being of their close family members. The implications are important for understanding voter behaviour and the electoral incentives of politicians in an era of aging populations.

Dawn Langan Teele is the SNF Agora Institute Associate Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. She is co-founder of EGEN: The Empirical Study of Gender Research Network - Flipping the Gender Gap: Compulsory Voting and Inequality in Turnout

"Compulsory voting has long been hailed as an equalizer: by requiring that eligible citizens show up at the polls, compulsory regimes have higher turnout overall and are linked to better representation of all social groups among their electorates. We study the gendered impacts of compulsory voting in Chile, which moved from voluntary to mandatory registration under a compulsory regime in 1962. If compulsory rules jumpstart women's political participation, strengthening compulsory rules should enhance equality in turnout across the sexes. Using comprehensive municipal-level data of electoral returns, in which men's and women's turnout was tallied separately, and newly unearthed records of Chile's historical electoral registers, we show that mandating registration dramatically changed women's enrollment, and, remarkably, pushed women's turnout above men's. This finding challenges our understanding of the historical gender gap, showing that electoral institutions with strong participatory mandates can help women flip the gender gap in their favor."

Marlène Benquet est chargée de recherche HDR au CNRS, membre de l’Irisso - Ce que la finance fait à la démocratie :  Présentation de l'ouvrage Alt-Finance. Comment la City de Londres a acheté la démocratie

Depuis les années 2010, s’accélère en Europe le développement de partis, gouvernements et idéologies dits autoritaires qui défendent le droit d’accumuler du capital tout en réduisant les libertés, sociales et politiques. Ce programme de recherche vise à étudier le rôle des acteurs financiers dans le développement des organisations et gouvernements dits autoritaires.  La finance européenne n’est en effet pas étrangère au développement de cette nouvelle offre politique.
Au carrefour de la sociologie politique et de la science politique, cette recherche décrit l’ampleur et la nature de ces liens entre certains secteurs financiers européens et les organisations politiques dites autoritaires. Elle montre comment une part des acteurs financiers participent à structurer l’offre politique en Europe et les mécanismes via lesquels la puissance économique de ces acteurs se convertit en capacité d’influence de la vie politique et des modes de gouvernement.
L’ouvrage Alt-Finance. How the City of London Bought Democracy est une première étude de cas. À travers le cas du Royaume-Uni, le livre montre que, loin d’être une insurrection électorale des classes populaires, le développement d’une orientation anti-Europe au Royaume-Uni a été largement soutenue et financée par la finance dite alternative qui voit l’Union européenne comme un obstacle à l’accumulation de capital. Elle promeut une orientation politique que l’on peut qualifier de libertarienne autoritaire par opposition à l’axe politique néolibéral défendu par la finance mainstream. 

Simon Hix is the Stein Rokkan Chair in Comparative Politics at the European University Institute, in Florence - The Dance of European Integration: How Ideology and Policy Shape Support for the EU

Analysing 50 years of public opinion data and EU policy outputs, Simon Hix and Bjørn Høyland show how the relationship between political ideology and support for European integration has changed dramatically. In the 1970s and 1980s, people on the Right were more supportive of European integration than people on the Left. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Centrists were more supportive then Extremists. Today, the Left likes the EU while the Right opposes it. Simon and Bjørn argue that this pattern can be explained by the fact that attitudes towards the EU are endogenous to policy preferences. They develop a novel method for identifying the left-right position of EU policy outcomes, and show how citizens’ ideological “distance” from these outputs predicts their support for European integration.  This has implications for the design of EU policies going forward. 

Paul Marx is a Professor of Political Science and Socio-Economics at University of Duisburg-Essen - The Effect of Children's Economic Hardship on Future Voting

Long-term socialisation patterns are considered a key explanation for socio-economic inequalities in political participation. Material conditions in youth and childhood are assumed to contribute to rather stable trajectories of political apathy or involvement and lay the foundations for political inequality from before voting age and far into adulthood. However, our understanding of when such inequalities begin to become noticeable, the importance of parental as opposed to personal socio-economic status, and potential long-term consequences is still limited. Paul Marx and his co-author Sebastian Jungkunz address these issues using the youth questionnaire of the UK Household Longitudinal Study. They show that material deprivation in childhood still has a substantial negative effect on turnout when young adults reach the first election in which they are eligible to vote. This result holds when they control for an unusually exhaustive list of potential confounders, such as psychological childhood characteristics, parental political interest and education, present material conditions, mental health, and future educational degrees. They, hence, demonstrate that—while personal socio-economic experiences in early adulthood are not irrelevant — socio-economic family background has an independent, strong, and (probably) lasting effect on political participation.

Ragnhild Louise Muriaas is a professor of Political Science at the Department of Government, University of Bergen - Parliamentary Stayers in Western Democracies: Mind the Gender-Gap in Political Endurance

Earlier this year Ragnhild Louise Muriaas started a project funded by The European Research Council (ERC Consolidator grant) with the title “Gender-Gap in Political Endurance: a novel political inclusion theory” (SUCCESS). The paper presented in this seminar, based on research conducted by Ragnhild Louise Muriaas and Torill Stavenes, discusses the novelty of the concept of political endurance and aims to establish how the size of a gender gap in political endurance varies over time and countries in western democracies. The scholars study how gender shapes political endurance in parliaments, building on the research documenting how newcomers are disadvantaged their first term in office, while senior members enjoy certain privileges. Thus, if there are gender gaps in political endurance women could face more barriers than men in getting their job done as representatives. They put forward three different measures to study gender gaps in political endurance to find out if, how and when men are more likely than women to be a parliamentary stayer. Studying the endurance of all parliamentarians in 10 western democracies from 1965 to 2021 they show that there are gender gaps in political endurance across the different measurements, but that gender gaps are particularly apparent if they concentrate on those that have served as parliamentarians for three or more terms.

Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier, directrice de recherche au CNRS et directrice adjointe du Centre de sociologie des organisations à Sciences Po - Pourquoi nous consommons tant. Pour une économie politique de l'abondance

Dans le contexte des appels à la sobriété portés par les experts du climat, la consommation est un levier majeur de la transition écologique. A la suite de nombreuses études en sciences sociales, Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier suggère que la croyance selon laquelle une telle transition écologique pourrait reposer sur les seules épaules des consommateurs est illusoire. Elle met en évidence les fortes interdépendances, au sein d'une économie politique de la consommation d'abondance, entre les politiques publiques, les modèles économiques des entreprises et les pratiques des consommateurs. En adoptant une perspective sociologique économique et foucaldienne, elle développe un agenda de recherche pour explorer comment la consommation d'abondance devient une norme légitimée et institutionnalisée. La consommation d'abondance, qui est hautement intensive en ressources, est structurelle à la fois dans les politiques économiques des gouvernements et dans les modèles d'affaires des entreprises et est donc constamment organisée et gouvernée. Cependant, elle n'est pas imposée aux individus par la force. Le gouvernement de la consommation repose sur des technologies de pouvoir qui façonnent et orientent la conduite des consommateurs, les amenant à adopter les normes de la consommation d'abondance en activant et en jouant sur leurs dispositions acquises par la socialisation marchande.

Luc Boltanski, sociologue, est directeur d'études à l'EHESS et Arnaud Esquerre, sociologue, est directeur de recherche au CNRS - "Qu'est ce que l'actualité politique ?"

Dans l'ouvrage "Qu'est-ce que l'actualité politique ? Événements et opinions au XXIe siècle", Luc Boltanski et Arnaud Esquerre s’intéressent à deux processus constitutifs de l’espace public en démocratie. D’une part, les processus de mise en actualité : se saisissant de ce qui se passe maintenant, ces processus font connaître à nombre de personnes l’existence de faits que ces dernières n’ont pas, pour la plupart, directement vécus et les accompagnent généralement d’une description et d’une interprétation. Et, d’autre part les processus de politisation : se saisissant de faits mis en actualité, ces processus les problématisent, en sorte que l’actualité concerne chacun et par conséquent aussi l’État, tout en donnant lieu à des interprétations dont les divergences suscitent des commentaires, des polémiques et des divisions.

Luc Boltanski et Arnaud Esquerre fondent leurs analyses sur les milliers de commentaires mis en ligne par des lecteurs du quotidien Le Monde en septembre et octobre 2019 ; et les milliers de commentaires postés sur deux chaînes de vidéos d’actualités passées mises en ligne en janvier 2021 par l’Institut national de l’audiovisuel. Chemin faisant, ils reconstituent la norme du dicible en comparant les commentaires publiés et les commentaires rejetés par les instances de modération. Ils cartographient les processus de politisation à notre époque, tels le féminisme, l’écologie, l’immigration, les religions, le nationalisme, l’Europe, etc. Et, à partir de ces matériaux, ils réfléchissent à la formation de l’opinion politique et à la manière dont en sont affectées nos vies quotidiennes dans la démocratie d'aujourd’hui.

Radoslaw Zubek, Associate Professor of European Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford - "Coalition bargaining and legislative instutions"

Previous work shows that robust legislative oversight institutions strengthen the ability of multi-party governments to enforce policy agreements. This raises the question of whether coalitions choose such institutions strategically. In a joint article, Tom Fleming (UCL) and Radoslaw Zubek introduce a formal bargaining model in which parties negotiate over legislative procedures as well as policy compromises and the allocation of ministerial posts. This model suggests that coalition partners' incentives for creating strong oversight institutions are shaped by the relative priority they place on policy and office benefits, their relative bargaining power, and the existence of outside options during coalition formation. We provide initial evidence of the model's empirical plausibility by analyzing the evolution of committee oversight procedures in the Irish parliament (Dail Eireann) over more than 100 years. These findings open interesting avenues for future work on how parties shape legislative institutions in parliamentary democracies

Katharina Pistor, Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School - "The Laws of Capitalism"

Why is capitalism, a system that is made in law, so resilient to legal governance aimed at taming its worst excesses? The puzzle is not just a riddle on the nature of law or its (in-)ability to solve social issues. Its purpose is to explain why capitalism remains inequitable even after repeated attempts to tame it, is oblivious to climate change, and structurally incapable of correcting itself. To solve this puzzle, I offer three laws of capitalist law: (1) Subjective rights that are freed from corresponding legal obligations; (2) Decentralized access to the centralized means of coercion; and (3) Legal arbitrage that is not only condoned but inherent to capitalist law.

Her work spans comparative law and corporate governance, law and finance, and law and development. She is the co-recipient of the Max Planck Research Award (2012), a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg and the European Academies of Science and a Fellow at the European Corporate Governance Institute. Her most recent book is The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality (Princeton UP, 2019).

Elizabeth Popp Berman is Associate Professor of Organizational Studies and (by courtesy) Sociology at the University of Michigan "Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy"

Her new book, Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy, has just been published by Princeton University Press; her previous book, Creating the Market University: How Academic Science Became an Economic Engine, won several awards from the American Sociological Association and the Social Science History Association. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and has broad interests in the sociology of science, economic sociology, and higher education.

ERIK JONES, Director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute
"Two Models for the Politicization of European Integration: Postfunctionalism, Anti-Establishment Politics, and the Italian Case"

He uses Italy’s relationship with the European Union over the past three decades to explore the difference between two models for the politicization of European integration. The paper draws the causal mechanism for one model from the postfunctionalist argument made by Hooghe and Marks (2009, 2018). It draws the causal mechanism for the other (anti-establishment) model from the writings of Stefano Bartolini (2005) and Peter Mair (2007, 2013). Although the two models can exist simultaneously, it is possible to test for predominance using the strategy for ‘fair causal comparison’ set out by Miller (1988). The evidence suggests that both mechanisms are present in Italy, but the anti-establishment mechanism is more important. This finding contributes both to our theoretical understanding of the politicization of Europe and to our empirical understanding of the Italian case

ANN MORNING, Associate Professor of Sociology at New York University "an ugly word: rethinking race in Italy and the USA"

Ann Morning is an Associate Professor of Sociology at New York University as well as the Academic Director at 19 Washington Square North, the home of NYU Abu Dhabi in New York. Trained in economics, political science, and international affairs as well as sociology, her research interests include race, demography, and the sociology of science, especially as they pertain to census classification worldwide and to individuals’ concepts of difference. She is the author of The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference (University of California Press 2011), and co-author of An Ugly Word: Rethinking Race in Italy and the United States (Russell Sage Foundation 2022, with Marcello Maneri). Morning was a 2008-09 Fulbright research fellow at the University of Milan-Bicocca and a Visiting Professor at Sciences Po in 2019. She was a member of the U.S. Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations from 2013 to 2019 and has consulted on racial statistics for the European Commission and the United Nations. Morning holds her B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Yale University, a Master’s of International Affairs from Columbia University, and her Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University.

She presented her research during the General Seminar of the CEE "an ugly word: rethinking race in Italy and the USA".

Chloe Alexandre, Florent Gougou, Simon Persico (Sciences Po Grenoble, Pacte) "What unites and divides the environmental movement? Ideological consensus and conflict amongst French climate activists"

Le mouvement écologiste a franchi une étape supplémentaire ces dernières années, avec la naissance de nouvelles organisations utilisant de nouveaux répertoires et rassemblant un nombre sans précédent de partisans et d'activistes à travers le monde. Pourtant, plusieurs enjeux continuent de diviser ce mouvement. Comment les militants contemporains du climat se positionnent-ils face à ces débats ? Quelles valeurs définissent le mouvement écologiste et quels conflits idéologiques divisent les militants du climat qui y participent ? Afin de répondre à ces questions, cet article commence par rappeler sept grands débats idéologiques qui divisent le mouvement écologiste depuis ses origines : 1. Décroissance vs Productivisme ; 2. Écocentrisme vs Anthropocentrisme ; 3. Démocratie contre Autoritarisme ; 4. Néo-malthusianisme contre égalitarisme ; 5. Responsabilité individuelle contre action gouvernementale ; 6. Collapsologie vs Eco-optimisme ; 7. Technophobie vs. Techno-modernisme 8. Écoféminisme post-colonial vs. Valeurs occidentales traditionnelles vs. enquête ponctuelle auprès de plus de 10 000 répondants proches du mouvement climatique. Nous montrons que, dans un contexte de consensus élevé entre les répondants sur la plupart des questions environnementales, deux principales dimensions conflictuelles façonnent l'espace idéologique de l'activisme climatique français. Le premier et le plus puissant oppose les militants « verts clairs » aux plus radicaux. La deuxième dimension du conflit concerne la place laissée à la liberté individuelle par rapport au contrôle étatique.

Chloe Alexandre, Florent Gougou, Simon Persico (Sciences Po Grenoble, Pacte) présentent les résultats de leurs recherches qui confirment également l'alignement croissant du conflit environnemental sur le clivage gauche-droite.

Isabelle Guinaudeau, Sciences Po Bordeaux, Centre Emile Durkheim, CNRS: Unequal mandate representation? Group targeting and citizens’ responses to electoral pledges and their realisations

Isabelle Guinaudeau is a political scientist, CNRS researcher working on party competition and comparative politics.

She presents under the SGCEE her current research.

Shamus Khan, Professor of Sociology and American Studies at Princeton University "Sexual Citizens: A study of sexual assault on campus"

Shamus Khan presents at the CEE's General seminar the book "Sexual Citizens" co-written with Jennifer S. Hirsch. They draws upon their book an intimate portraits of life and sex among today’s college students.

It's an entirely new way to understand sexual assault. The result of their reflexion transforms the understanding of sexual assault and provides a new roadmap for how to address it.

Natascha Zaun, Assistant Professor in Migration Studies at the European Institute at LSEWhen populist governments become assertive: The role of politicisation in explaining deadlock of EU asylum policymaking

Natascha Zaun specialises in EU and international migration governance and EU policymaking.

She presents during the general seminar of the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics her paper about the case of the deadlocked Dublin IV negotiations.

Brenda Van Coppenolle, Department of Government, University of Essex: Deliberating Constitutions: Lotteries in Constituent Assemblies, Denmark in 1848

Brenda Van Coppenolle, lecturer in the Department of Government, University of Essex, answered during the general seminar of the Center of european studies to the following questions:

How are constitutions drafted, and how does the structure of deliberation affect the final document?

Indeed, Brenda Van Coppenolle, Jens Carstens (Sciences Po, CEE) and Jan Rovny(Sciences Po, CEE & LIEPP) highlight the need to better understand the tools of deliberative democracy. Caterina Froio (Sciences Po, CEE) was the chair.

Bernhard Ebbinghaus, University of Oxford: Europe’s Social Model facing the Covid-19 Employment Crisis: Innovating Job Retention Policies to Avoid Mass Unemployment.

The Professor Bernhard Ebbinghaus, a visiting professor from the University of Oxford (Department of Social Policy & Intervention)analyzed during the general seminar of the Center of european studies an Europe facing multiple challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic, including the problem of securing jobs and income.

Cécile Laborde, Université d’Oxford, Nuffield Chair en Théorie Politique Laïcité, séparation et progressisme: l’Inde et la théorie politique comparée 

La laïcité, en Europe et en Amérique du Nord, est comprise comme un principe de séparation entre l’Etat et les religions. Cette définition toutefois ne rend pas pleinement compte de la logique constitutionnelle et politique à l’œuvre dans bon nombre d’Etats laïques non-occidentaux. En Inde, l’Etat intervient activement dans la sphère religieuse et reconnait officiellement les groupes religieux. Ces tendances interventionnistes condamnent-elles l’Inde à n’être qu’un Etat imparfaitement laïque, comme le jugeait Donald Smith dans India as a Secular State?

Dans cette conférence, l’auteure montre que la laïcité indienne ne saurait être mesurée à l’aune d’un simple principe de séparation. La laïcité à l’indienne aspire à des idéaux progressistes plus généraux : la liberté personnelle (pour les femmes et les dalits) et l’égalité de statut (pour les minorités religieuses). Elle est compatible, en principe, avec une intervention ciblée de l’Etat dans la sphère religieuse, au nom de ces idéaux. La compréhension de cette laïcité est utile à la fois dans une perspective de théorie politique comparée (le global secularism) et pour saisir l’originalité profonde du constitutionalisme indien.

Mais elle éclaire aussi des enjeux contemporains cruciaux, autour du déploiement de la rhétorique de la laïcité par les nationalistes hindous au pouvoir. C’est parce que le BJP adhère à une vision séparationniste plutôt que progressiste qu’il réussit à présenter son idéologie nationaliste comme le rétablissement d’une laïcité authentique. C’est ce que l’auteure entend démontrer en analysant le discours nationaliste hindou sur les droits des minorités, les droits des femmes, et sa défense de l’hindouisme comme culture plutôt que comme religion.

Chris Bickerton, University of Cambridge, Department of Politics and International Studies & Carlo Invernizzi Accetti, City College of New York "Technopopulism The New Logic of Democratic Politics"

Technocratic appeals to expertise and populist invocations of 'the people' have become mainstays of political competition in established democracies. This development is best understood as the emergence of technopopulism—a new political logic that is being superimposed on the traditional struggle between left and right. Political movements and actors—such as Italy's Five Star Movement and France's La République En Marche—combine technocratic and populist appeals in a variety of ways, as do more established parties that are adapting to the particular set of incentives and constraints implicit in this new, unmediated form of politics. In the first book-length treatment of the phenomenon of technopopulism, we combine theoretical and historical approaches, offering a systematic definition of the concept of technopopulism, while also exploring a number of salient contemporary examples. This book* provides a detailed account of the emergence of this new political logic, as well as a discussion of its troubling consequences for existing democratic regimes. It ends by considering some possible remedies that go beyond the simplistic idea that in the right 'dose' populism and technocracy can counter-balance one another.

Elisabeth Ivarsflaten, University of Bergen & Paul Sniderman, Stanford University "The Struggle for Inclusion: Muslim Minorities and the Democratic Ethos"

The politics of inclusion is about more than hate, exclusion, and discrimination. It is a window into the moral character of contemporary liberal democracies. The Struggle for Inclusion* introduces a new method to the study of public opinion: to probe, step by step, how far non-Muslim majorities are willing to be inclusive, where they draw the line, and why they draw it there and not elsewhere. Those committed to liberal democratic values and their concerns are the focus, not those advocating exclusion and intolerance.

Notwithstanding the turbulence and violence of the last decade over issues of immigration and of Muslims in the West, the results of this study demonstrate that the largest number of citizens in contemporary liberal democracies are more open to inclusion of Muslims than has been recognized. Not less important, the book reveals limits on inclusion that follow from the friction between liberal democratic values. This pioneering work thus brings to light both pathways to progress and polarization traps.

Frédéric Mérand, Centre d’études et de recherches internationales de l’Université de Montréal (CÉRIUM) "Un sociologue à la Commission européenne"

Proposant une sociologie du travail politique, ce livre rend compte de quatre années d’observation au sein du cabinet d'un commissaire européen. De 2015 à 2019, Pierre Moscovici et son équipe ont été confrontés à la crise grecque, aux faiblesses de l’Union économique et monétaire, aux scandales d'évasion fiscale et à la menace populiste italienne. Entre les luttes partisanes et les jeux diplomatiques, entre les tenants de la rigueur et les architectes d’un gouvernement économique, ils ont mené la politique de la zone euro. Frédéric Mérand a accompagné « les Moscovici » dans leurs réunions, de Bruxelles à Strasbourg, de Washington à Athènes. À la cantine ou dans les couloirs du Berlaymont, le siège de la Commission,l'auteur les a interrogés sur leurs stratégies et leurs espoirs. Frédéric Merand a aussirecueilli leurs peurs et leurs déceptions. Les observations qui en découlent permettent de comprendre comment on « fait de la politique » dans l'Union européenne. Au cours de ce récit ethnographique, la France n'est jamais loin. Décodant la trajectoire européenne d'un commissaire socialiste français, d'abord sous François Hollande puis Emmanuel Macron, Un sociologue à la Commission européenne explore les dynamiques qui parfois rapprochent Bruxelles et Paris, mais souvent les éloignent.

Paul Pierson, University of California, Berkeley "Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality"

Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality situates Donald Trump’s ascendance in the broader currents of American political development. Unlike many variants of "right-wing populism" the American version represents a curious hybrid of populism and plutocracy. Although American right-wing populism has real social roots, it has long been nurtured by powerful elites seeking to undercut support for modern structures of economic regulation and the welfare state. Steeply rising inequality in the United States generated an acute form of what Daniel Ziblatt has termed "the conservative dilemma." Over the past few decades, the Republican Party rejected a path of economic moderation. Instead, it chose to construct an apparatus for stoking political outrage, particularly in forms that accentuate and intensify racial divisions. American political institutions offered a distinctive opportunity for a populist figure to draw on this fury to first capture the nomination of the GOP, and from that position to ascend to the White House. Yet the administration’s substantive agenda constituted a full-throated endorsement of the GOP economic elite’s long-standing demands for cuts in social spending, sharp tax reductions for the wealthy, and the gutting of consumer, worker and environmental protections. The chasm between Trump’s rhetoric and his actions justifies a more skeptical assessment of the breadth and depth of American populism, one that acknowledges how its contours were shaped by the nation’s unusual political institutions, its intensifying political polarization and the out-sized influence of the wealthy. While Trump lost the 2020 election, these structural conditions remain. So do the distressing incentives these conditions create for one of the nation's two major political parties.