Paul Pierson was quoted in The Washington Post:
Hacker and Pierson — professors of political science at Yale and the University of California at Berkeley, respectively — make clear that they’re not claiming our politics are orchestrated by all-powerful plutocrats, like “Bond villains in a hidden lair inside a volcano.” But they offer a strong case that the Republican Party’s dependence on its top donors explains much of its trajectory in recent decades, culminating in the rise of Trump.
The authors have a knack for synthesizing complicated academic studies and explaining them concisely for popular audiences. They make particularly good use of political scientist Daniel Ziblatt’s work on the historical role played by European conservative parties in nascent democracies. Hacker and Pierson posit that the Republican Party, like elite-aligned parties in other times and places, faces a “Conservative Dilemma”: how to persuade ordinary citizens to vote for the party that represents the interests of society’s richest and most powerful members?
The full article is available here.
