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adam hilton

Assistant Professor of Politics

Mount Holyoke College

  • Biography
  • Book Project
  • Publications and Media
  • Teaching
  • Contact
  • CV
  • Mount Holyoke Profile
  • Biography

    Examining American political development through the lens of parties, movements, and political entrepreneurs

    Hello! I am assistant professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. I have a PhD from the Department of Political Science at York University, Toronto. My current research focuses on the relationship between movements, interest groups, and political parties, and the agency of political entrepreneurs in transforming them.

     

    My work falls within the American Political Development (APD) tradition and cross-examines the "exceptional" features of US politics in historical-comparative perspective. My first book, True Blues: The Contentious Transformation of the Democratic Party (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) looks at the question of party power and authority through an examination of the development of the Democratic Party's ideology and organization since the end of the 1960s to the present.

     

    I am also working on an edited book with Jessica Hejny, tentatively titled Placing Parties in American Political Development. The volume brings together many of the most interesting and pathbreaking research on US political parties within the historical institutionalist and APD traditions.

     

    Finally, for my second monographic study, I am conducting research on the role that insurgent presidential candidates have played as agents of change in American politics. Looking at both Democratic and Republican intraparty insurgents since WWII, the book seeks to help us make sense of the outsized impact these individuals can have -- even when they fail to win.

  • Book Project

    True Blues: The Contentious Transformation of the Democratic Party

    Description

    Who governs political parties? Recent insurgent campaigns, such as those of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, have thrust this critical question to the center of political debate for casual observers and party scholars alike. Yet the dynamics of modern party politics remain poorly understood. Assertions of either elite control or interest group dominance both fail to explain the Trump victory and the surprise of the Sanders insurgency and their subsequent reverberations through the American political landscape.

     

    In True Blues, I tackle the question of who governs parties by examining the transformation of the Democratic Party since the end of the New Deal order. Reconceiving parties as contentious institutions, I argue that Democratic Party change has been driven by recurrent conflicts between groups and officeholders to define and control party identity, program, and policy. The outcome of this prolonged struggle was a wholly new kind of party – an advocacy party – which institutionalized greater party dependence on outside groups for legitimacy and organizational support, while also, in turn, fostering greater group dependency on the presidency for the satisfaction of their symbolic and substantive demands. Consequently, while the long conflict between party reformers and counter-reformers successfully opened the Democratic Party to new voices and identities, it also facilitated the growth of presidential power, rising inequality, and deepening partisan polarization.

     

    Tracing the rise of the advocacy party from the late 1960s through the presidency of Barack Obama, True Blues explains how and why the Democratic Party has come to its current crossroads and suggests a bold new perspective for comprehending the dynamics driving American party development.

     

    Copies of can be ordered here and here or from your local independent bookseller.

  • Publications and media

    Editor and Peer-Reviewed Publications

     

    • "Bringing Contention In: A Critical Perspective on Political Parties as Institutions," Studies in Political Economy 102 (2), 2021.
       
    • "Retreating from Redistribution? Trends in Democratic Party Fidelity to Economic Equality, 1984-2020," The Forum 19 (2), 2021.
       
    • "The Path to Polarization: McGovern-Fraser, Counter-Reformers, and the Rise of the Advocacy Party," Studies in American Political Development 33 (1), 2019.
       
    • “The Politics Insurgents Make: Reconstructive Reformers in US and UK Postwar Party Development,” Polity 51 (3), 2019.
       
    • “Organized for Democracy? Left Challenges Inside the Democratic Party,” in Leo Panitch and Greg Albo, eds, Socialist Register 2018: Rethinking Democracy (London: Merlin Press, 2018).
       
    • “Searching for a New Politics: The New Politics Movement and the Struggle to Democratize the Democratic Party, 1968-1978,” New Political Science 38 (2), 2016.
       
    • “The View from the Top: Robert Caro’s Portraiture of Lyndon Johnson,” New Political Science 37 (1), 2015.

    Public Scholarship

     

    • “Democrats Must Work to Rebuild the Party, at State and Local Levels,” Albany Times Union, December 15, 2020
       
    • “Wisconsin Petri Dish: Voting amid the Covid Crisis,” WGBH News, April 13, 2020
       
    • “Sanders is out. Does that mean that ‘the party decides’ after all?” Washington Post Monkey Cage, April 10, 2020
       
    • "Can Bill Weld unseat Trump? Let’s look at the history of challenges to incumbent presidents." Washington Post Monkey Cage, April 29, 2019.
       
    • "Twilight of the Superdelegates," Jacobin Magazine, September 13, 2018. 
       
    • "Is Now the Time to Break with the Democrats? A Debate" New Labor Forum, January 2018.
       
    • “The Democratic Party’s latest reform commission just met. It’s likely to slash the power of superdelegates,” Washington Post Monkey Cage, December 12, 2017.
       
    • “Donna Brazile Reveals the Obvious,” Jacobin Magazine, October 15, 2017.
       
    • “Searching for New Politics,” Jacobin Magazine 20 (Spring Issue), 2016.
       
    • “Bernie and the Search for New Politics,” Jacobin Magazine, June 24, 2015.

    Works in Progress

    • Placing Parties in American Political Development (coedited book project)
       
    • Making Waves: How Party Insurgents Transform American Politics (Even When They Lose) (second book project)
       
    • “Contentious Institutions and Party Orders in American Politics,” Coauthored with Jessica Hejny (working

      paper)

  • Teaching

    Mount Holyoke College

    July 2019 - Present

    Assistant Professor

    American Politics; US Elections; Parties and Movements in American Politics; American Political Development; The Politics of Disruption; The 1%

    Mount Holyoke College

    July 2016 - July 2019

    Visiting Lecturer

     American Politics; 2016 Election in Real Time; Parties and Movements in American Politics; US Elections; American Political Development; Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?

    York University, Toronto

    September 2010 - April 2016

    Course Director

    Race and Inequality in the Postwar American City

     

    Teaching Assistant

    The Future of Work; Classics in Western Political Thought; Canadian Political Economy

  • Contact

    Adam Hilton, Assistant Professor of Politics, Mount Holyoke College

    108 Skinner Hall
    Mount Holyoke College
    50 College St.
    South Hadley, MA
    01075
    T/Th 4-5 PM
    413 538 2325
    413 538 2325
    ahilton@mtholyoke.edu
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