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Democracy Under Siege: The Demise of Successful United States Federal Campaign Finance Reform

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Stryker R, Neff O. Democracy Under Siege: The Demise of Successful United States Federal Campaign Finance Reform. Studies in American Political Development (2026): 1–24. https://doi.org/ 10.1017/S0898588X25100308

Private funding of U.S. federal elections is at record levels, with most money contributed by a few very wealthy individuals and organizations. Cross-partisan majorities of the American public consistently express concern, and proposed campaign finance reforms are introduced as frequently in Congress recently as earlier in time. Despite these facts, and that successful twentieth century reforms often were preceded by corruption scandal, that these continue today, that there remain political entrepreneurs for reform, that reformers continue to use corruption framing, and that the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision left some reform strategies open, no proposed campaign finance reforms to curb moneyed interests’ influence have been enacted since the 2002 BCRA. We address this puzzle through comparative process tracing of forty reform efforts receiving consideration in a congressional committee from 1907 to 2024. We identify three ideal-type reform trajectories—scandal as agenda-setter, the Supreme Court as agenda-setter, and a multiple legislative trajectories type—through which campaign finance reforms through 2002 sometimes were successful. We then show how and why a combination of changes in the political, media, and legal environments doomed reform efforts post-2002 and especially post-2010 to almost certain failure. We draw implications for federal political discourse and policy-making more generally.

Why Don’t South Asians in the U.S. Count As “Asian”?: Global and Local Factors Shaping Anti-South Asian Racism in the United States*

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Kurien, P. and Purkayastha, B. (2024), Why Don’t South Asians in the U.S. Count As “Asian”?: Global and Local Factors Shaping Anti-South Asian Racism in the United States*. Sociol Inq, 94: 351-368. https://doi.org/10.1111/soin.12592

In a 2020 U.S. survey, more Asian Indians than Chinese indicated that they were worried about post-Covid-19 hate crimes. Yet, post-Covid violence against people of Asian background has been viewed as being directed against “Chinese-looking” individuals. This is just one example of how South Asians are overlooked in discourses about Asian Americans. This theoretical paper provides an expansion of the racial formation framework to explain this exclusion. We demonstrate how global factors, including the foreign engagements of the United States shaped the development of the Asian American group and category, and why, even though Asian Americans can be brown, yellow, white, or black, an East Asian phenotype is viewed as denoting an “Asian” body in the United States. We also discuss how the racialization of religion shapes anti-South Asian racism, a factor largely ignored in the literature on racial formation and Asian Americans. We end by calling for the inclusion of South Asians in Asian American literature to challenge many of the reigning paradigms regarding Asian America and anti-Asian racism.

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Community picket lines and social movement unionism on the U.S. docks, 2014–2021: Organizing lessons from the Block the Boat campaign for Palestine

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Fox-Hodess, K., & Ziadah, R. (2025). Community picket lines and social movement unionism on the U.S. docks, 2014–2021: Organizing lessons from the Block the Boat campaign for Palestine. Critical Sociology, 0(0).

This paper examines community-initiated picket lines in solidarity with Palestine at the ports of Oakland, Long Beach, Seattle, and Port Elizabeth in 2014 and 2021 which sought to enable dockworkers to participate in effective de facto work stoppages for political ends despite a restrictive legal context. Using a comparative case study approach, the analysis highlights key contextual factors – including urban proximity, terminal accessibility, and union political history – that shaped the ability of campaigners to block vessels from the Zim shipping line. The research also identifies crucial organizing variables, including the capacity of community groups to mobilize large picket lines, the role of “bridge-builders” linking unions and community actors, and sustained research, education and outreach efforts. Findings provide critical insights into identifying promising targets for action and instituting effective organizing practices for labor and community activists seeking to jointly advance social justice goals at the workplace within a legally constrained environment.

“Let them eat kale!”: Appeals to class-based resentment in American conservative opposition to climate change solutions

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Loredana Loy, Rachel Wetts, “Let them eat kale!”: Appeals to class-based resentment in American conservative opposition to climate change solutions, Social Problems, 2026;, spag003, https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spag003

How do conservative media commentators provoke public opposition to climate change solutions in the US? We provide evidence that appeals to class-based resentment against cultural elites are one prominent strategy to urge publics to reject climate mitigation strategies, particularly individual-level changes in diet and consumption. Analyzing media coverage of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 1988–2021 across liberal, centrist, and conservative American outlets (N = 1788), we examine how commentators discuss the consumption of meat and animal products as contributors to climate change and dietary transition as a climate mitigation initiative. We find conservative rhetoric around this topic features class-based populism and ridicule of plant-based diets and vegetarianism as displays of cultural capital. Rather than relying on spreading misinformation or promoting scientific counter-claims, conservative commentators discredited these proposals by associating them with a rejected out-group, using moral and emotional language to stoke anger, resentment, but also humor. These findings suggest conservative rhetoric about dietary change as a climate solution appeals to class-based resentment, a strategy that may be becoming more prevalent as the Democratic Party becomes the party of highly-educated Americans. Our findings shed light on the important but often overlooked role of identity appeals in contemporary strategies of climate obstruction.

Correction to: Defining and Explaining Modes of Protesting: A Comparative‑Historical Analysis of Argentina and Chile

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Rossi, F.M., Somma, N.M. & Donoso, S. Defining and Explaining Modes of Protesting: A Comparative-Historical Analysis of Argentina and Chile. St Comp Int Dev (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-025-09480-4

We propose a novel conceptualization of predominant national “modes of protesting” to explain how the act of protest expresses historically specific forms of organizational intermediation. Using an original survey of demonstrators, we show that in the 2020s protesting in Argentina is primarily a collective and organic dynamic, while in Chile, it is commonly fragmented and privatized. To explain this contrast, we present historical narratives that focus on the length of the authoritarian regime and how the double transition to neoliberal economy and liberal democracy was pursued in each country, having the different sequence and timing of these processes diametrically opposite effects in the national modes of protesting. The collapse of the authoritarian regime and a division in democratic elites on the direction taken by the double transition may explain Argentina’s collective and organic national mode of protesting. The scattered sequence of pendular reforms that divided the political establishment in two projects and the disconnected timing of authoritarian repressive periods and neoliberal reforms may explain the preservation of a resilient movement-based tradition that had deeply penetrated Argentine society. Instead, in Chile, the modification of the national mode of protesting was a result of a constant sequence of reforms and a connected timing of authoritarianism and neoliberalism that destroyed 1970s organic networks, and a neoliberal democracy that kept the population weak and territorially fragmented, while a cohesive and insulated political establishment neutralized any reformist impetus. We discuss how the concept of modes of protesting opens a research agenda with implications for many countries and world regions.