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Suzanne Mettler

Academic Director, Scholars Strategy Network and John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions, Cornell University
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About Suzanne

Mettler’s current research investigates the sources of the rural-urban political divide and how it is affecting American democracy. Her scholarship also examines how changes in U.S. social welfare and educational policies have evolved since the 1970s, the impact for inequality and Americans’ attitudes about government and participation in politics. In particular, she has probed the impact of spending programs in the tax code, federal financial aid policies for college students, and the Affordable Care Act.

In the News

Guest on PBS News Hour, April 20, 2024.
Quoted by William A. Galston in "What Drives Political Polarization," The Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2023.
Quoted by Jennifer Szalai in "Trump vs. The Bureaucrats," The New York Times, January 11, 2025.
Quoted by Serge Schmemann in "Democracy is Not Facing a Global Extinction Event," The New York Times, January 11, 2025.
Interviewed in "History Rhymes, Democracy Wobbles," Harvard Radcliffe Institute, February 25, 2021.
Opinion: "Four Deadly Threats to American Democracy Are Raging All at Once," Suzanne Mettler (with Robert C. Lieberman), The Los Angeles Times, November 17, 2020.
Opinion: "A Plot Against an Embattled Governor? Militias Disrupting Elections? It Happened in the 1850s—And Holds a Lesson for Today," Suzanne Mettler (with Robert C. Lieberman), TIME Magazine, October 14, 2020.
Opinion: "Republicans Are Relying on the Affordable Care Act to Respond to the Pandemic," Suzanne Mettler (with Lawrence R. Jacobs and Ling Zhu), The Washington Post, April 27, 2020.
Opinion: "Getting By With Less and Less," Suzanne Mettler (with Ryan LaRochelle), Central Maine Today Media , January 21, 2020.
Opinion: "The Welfare Boogeyman," Suzanne Mettler, The New York Times, July 23, 2018.
Opinion: "Outside of Washington, There is a New Vital Center in Health Care Reform," Suzanne Mettler (with Lawrence R. Jacobs), Health Affairs Blog, July 31, 2017.
Opinion: "Why Public Opinion on ObamaCare Should Worry Us All," Suzanne Mettler (with Lawrence R. Jacobs), The Hill, June 21, 2016.
Opinion: "Equalizers No More: Politics Thwart Colleges' Role in Upward Mobility," Suzanne Mettler, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 3, 2014.
Opinion: "College, the Great Unleveler," Suzanne Mettler, Opinionator, New York Times, March 1, 2014.
Opinion: "We are the 96 Percent," Suzanne Mettler (with John Sides), New York Times, September 24, 2012.
Opinion: "Obama’s Forgotten Triumphs," Suzanne Mettler, Salon, October 15, 2011.
Opinion: "Our Hidden Government Benefits," Suzanne Mettler, New York Times, September 19, 2011.
Opinion: "20,000 Leagues under the State," Suzanne Mettler, Washington Monthly, June 28, 2011.

Publications

"Sequential Polarization: The Development of the Rural-Urban Political Divide, 1976–2020" (with Trevor E. Brown). Perspectives on Politics 22, no. 3 (2024): 630 - 658.

Examines the growing political divide between rural and urban Americans, exploring two key processes: the political-economic transformation that benefited urban areas while marginalizing rural ones, and the nationalization of policy goals. Finds that rural areas, especially those with economic stagnation, lower education levels, higher evangelical presence, and higher levels of anti-Black racism, increasingly shifted support to the Republican Party, deepening the rural-urban political divide.

"Policy Threat, Partisanship, and the Case of the Affordable Care Act" (with Suzanne Mettler and Ling Zhu). American Political Science Review 117, no. 1 (2023): 296-310.

Proposes a framework to examine how policy feedback is influenced by the presence of policy threats and partisan polarization. Argues that a policy threat can increase salience and trigger loss aversion, thereby expanding policy feedback even in a polarized environment. Using the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a case study following Republican control of Congress and the White House, the findings suggest that policy threats can strengthen support for some groups while diminishing it for others, sometimes reducing partisan polarization and ultimately increasing overall support for the policy.

Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy (with Robert C. Lieberman). (St. Martin's Press, 2020).

Examines five pivotal moments in U.S. history when democracy was under siege: the 1790s, the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Depression, and Watergate. Explores how past generations confronted these challenges and offers insights into how America might renew its democratic principles today.

The Government-Citizen Disconnect (Russell Sage Foundation, 2018).

Explores the paradox between Americans' growing distrust of the federal government and their increasing reliance on government social programs. Sheds light on how this paradox shapes the current political landscape and weakens democratic governance.

Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream (Basic Books, 2014).

Offers an impassioned call to reform a higher education system that has come to exacerbate, rather than mitigate, socioeconomic inequality in America.

The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2011).

Explores the proliferation of social welfare policies invisible to most citizens because they are channeled through the tax code or subsidies to private organizations. Shows the challenges inherent in efforts to reform such policies, many of which primarily advantage vested interests and the affluent Americans; and suggests strategies helping citizens form views about these policies and take action to change them. The book’s introduction was featured in Salon.com.

"Eliminating the Market Middle-Man: Redirecting and Expanding Support for College Students" in Reaching for a New Deal: Ambitious Governance, Economic Meltdown, and Polarized Politics in Obama's First Two Years, edited by Theda Skocpol and Lawrence R. Jacobs, (Russell Sage Foundation, 2011), 105-138.

Examines how policymakers in 2009-10 achieved a twenty-year goal of terminating bank-based student lending and replacing it with direct lending, while enhanced Pell Grants and aid to community colleges fell short.

"The Transformed Welfare State and the Redistribution of Political Voice" in The Transformation of American Politics: Activist Government and the Rise of Conservatism, edited by Paul Pierson and Theda Skocpol, (Princeton University Press, 2007), 191-222.

Offers a broad overview of changes in U.S. social programs since World War II, and explores the impact on attitudes about government and social spending.

"American Political Development from Citizens’ Perspective: Tracking Federal Government’s Presence in Individual Lives over Time" (with Andrew Milstein). Studies in American Political Development 21, no. 1 (2007): 110-30.

Tracks shifts in federal social policies from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Presents average benefit rates in real terms and in terms of percentages of the U.S. population covered. Demonstrates persistence of programs for American seniors, the atrophy of direct programs for younger Americans, and the expansion of policies channeled through the tax code.

Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (Oxford University Press, 2005).

Shows how the generous education and training benefits for veterans of World War II not only enlarged opportunities for socio-economic advancement, but also promoted more active civic engagement among the beneficiaries. Contrasts the “virtuous circle” between generous social provision and vibrant democracy in the post-war era to the more anemic links in recent decades.