Sam Rosenfeld

Associate Professor of Political Science and Director, Public Affairs and Policy Research Initiative, Colgate University

Areas of Expertise:

Connect with Sam

(202) 487-9103

@sam_rosenfeld

About Sam

Rosenfeld's research focuses on political parties and American political development. Major themes in his work include the interaction between social movements and formal politics; the relationship between party politics and constitutional government; institutional reform; and the history of American social policy.

Contributions | No Jargon Podcast | In the News | Publications

Contributions

What History Teaches about Partisanship and Polarization

Key Findings Brief, July 2018

In the News

Opinion: "The Republican Party Has Devolved Into a Racket," Sam Rosenfeld (with Daniel Schlozman), The New York Times, September 18, 2023.

Opinion: "How Feminists Became Democrats," Sam Rosenfeld, Politico, February 3, 2018.

Opinion: "Can Steve Bannon Realign American Politics?," Sam Rosenfeld, The New York Times, December 8, 2017.

Opinion: "Two Cheers for Polarization," Sam Rosenfeld, Boston Review, October 25, 2017.

Opinion: "There's No Going Back," Sam Rosenfeld, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, May 2, 2016.

Publications

"Fed by Reform: Congressional Politics, Partisan Change, and the Food Stamp Program, 1961-1981" Journal of Policy History 22, no. 4 (2010): 474-504.

Traces the impact of the congressional committee system and congressional reform on the food stamp program in the 1960s and 1970s.

Making Sense of Our Hollow PartiesMaking Sense of Our Hollow Parties (with Daniel Schlozman), University of Akron, 2017-11-09.

Diagnoses the paradox of simultaneous weakness and strength, that modern parties present, as "hollowness." Offers an analysis of contemporary party pathologies in the context of parties' intellectual and institutional developments over two centuries.

The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era (The University of Chicago Press, 2017).

Offers a history of the construction of an ideologically defined party system in America. Details why bipartisanship was seen as a problem in the postwar period and how polarization was then cast as the solution.