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Headlines decried the fragility of American democracy during the 2020 elections, but extensive institutional structures steered officials in both political parties to certify the results of the election, and independent judges have validated their decisions. Political battles over election laws and procedures are not themselves signs of democracy's demise, because legal and administrative guardrails contain the degree to which voting rights are threatened. These formidable institutional structures blunted former president Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and limited the scope and impact of new state legislation to restrict access to voting. The guardrails of elections operated as designed, but Trump's unfounded charges of fraud coupled with state restrictions are corroding the credibility and fairness of elections. We examine the scope and function of election law and administration to understand how they protected American democracy in the contentious 2020 election.

Following E. E. Schattschneider's observation that "a new policy creates a new politics," scholars of "policy feedback" have theorized that policies influence subsequent political behavior and public opinion. Recent studies observe, however, that policy feedback does not always occur and the form it takes varies considerably. To explain such variation, we call for policy feedback studies to draw more thoroughly on public opinion research. We theorize that: (1) feedback effects are not ubiquitous and may in some instances be offset by political factors, such as partisanship and trust in government; (2) policy design may generate self-interested or sociotropic motivations, and (3) feedback effects result not only from policy benefits but also from burdens. We test these expectations by drawing on a unique panel study of Americans' responses to the Affordable Care Act. We find competing policy and political pathways, which produce variations in policy feedback.

Objectives. We examined the potential economic, policy, and political influences on the decisions of the 50 US states to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

Theories of political economy offer rich intellectual resources for scholars today who hope to explain some of the most striking real-world changes of contemporary American politics, including the dramatic widening of economic inequality since the 1970s, the financial and economic breakdowns since 2008, and the government policies that contributed to these developments. Yet few scholars in American politics have been making use of these resources. This article reviews research on the politics of inequality within the United States and situates it more explicitly within an intellectual framework for the study of political economy. The article traces the decline of political economy research within mainstream scholarship on American politics and reviews the upsurge of interest in the politics of inequality. It develops a typology of distinct frameworks for analyzing the American political economy and for bringing greater intellectual organization to a growing but disparate body of research.

Theories of political economy offer rich intellectual resources for scholars today who hope to explain some of the most striking real-world changes of contemporary American politics, including the dramatic widening of economic inequality since the 1970s, the financial and economic breakdowns since 2008, and the government policies that contributed to these developments. Yet few scholars in American politics have been making use of these resources. This article reviews research on the politics of inequality within the United States and situates it more explicitly within an intellectual framework for the study of political economy. The article traces the decline of political economy research within mainstream scholarship on American politics and reviews the upsurge of interest in the politics of inequality. It develops a typology of distinct frameworks for analyzing the American political economy and for bringing greater intellectual organization to a growing but disparate body of research. Adapted from the source document.