Subfield Coordinator: Gabe Lenz
The study of American politics at Berkeley brings together faculty and graduate students who seek to tackle the most important questions confronting the field using diverse methodological approaches.
Among other topics, the faculty’s research agenda encompasses the quality and meaning of representation in contemporary American politics, the political implications of rising economic inequality, the politics of immigration and of minority group representation, the meaning of American national identity, the sources and implications of party polarization, the development of American bureaucratic government and of the American welfare state, and the balance of power among Congress, the Presidency, and the Courts. Our program strives to train students to have a diverse methodological toolkit, including quantitative, historical/developmental, game theoretic, behavioral, and institutional approaches.
The Institute of Governmental Studies and Survey Research Center support several workshops and colloquia that foster this diverse intellectual community, including the American Politics Research Workshop, the Positive Political Theory seminar series, the Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration Colloquium, the American Political Development working group, and the Quantitative Methods Workshop. These research units also provide funding for graduate student research projects and for faculty-student collaboration. Faculty work closely with students to help each student carve out a research agenda that fits his or her interests, while addressing a substantively important problem.
