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Department of Political Science

Larry M. Bartels

Professor
University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Law
May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science
Co-Director, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions

Bartels’ scholarship and teaching focus on public opinion, electoral politics, public policy, and political representation. His books include Democracy Erodes from the Top: Leaders, Citizens, and the Challenge of Populism in Europe, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (with Christopher Achen), and Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (2nd edition). He is also the author of numerous scholarly articles, and of commentaries in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other prominent outlets. Bartels has received the Warren E. Miller Prize for contributions to the study of elections, public opinion, and voting behavior, the Career Achievement Award from the Society for Political Methodology, and Vanderbilt’s Earl Sutherland Prize for Career Achievement in Research. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

 


Representative publications

  • Democracy Erodes from the Top: Leaders, Citizens, and the Challenge of Populism in Europe (Princeton University Press, 2023, 2024).
  • “Measuring Political Inequality.” In Noam Lupu and Jonas Pontusson, eds., Unequal Democracies: Public Policy, Responsiveness, and Redistribution in an Era of Rising Economic Inequality (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
  • “House Republicans Were Rewarded for Supporting Donald Trump’s ‘Stop the Steal’ Efforts” (with Nicholas Carnes). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023).
  • “Ethnic Antagonism Erodes Republicans’ Commitment to Democracy.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020).
  • View Curriculum Vitae