UW political scientist Rebecca Thorpe’s book “The American Warfare State: The Domestic Politics of Military Spending,” has been honored by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation — the second award the well-received book has earned.


UW political scientist Rebecca Thorpe’s book “The American Warfare State: The Domestic Politics of Military Spending,” has been honored by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation — the second award the well-received book has earned.

In the Iowa caucuses, expectations are nearly as important as votes and front-runners must watch their backs, say University of Washington professors who are closely watching this year’s presidential race. The 2016 Iowa caucuses will be held Monday, Feb. 1, pitting Democratic leader Hillary Clinton against Sen. Bernie Sanders and Gov. Martin O’Malley and Republican mogul and mouth Donald Trump against Sen. Ted Cruz among a lineup of largely ineffective opponents. We asked political scientists Mark A. Smith and John…

Mark A. Smith is a University of Washington professor of political science and adjunct professor of comparative religion. He is the author of “Secular Faith: How Culture Has Trumped Religion in American Politics,” published in September by University of Chicago Press. He answered a few questions about his book for UW Today. What’s the concept behind this book? My book’s overarching theme is that Americans have much more in common politically than you’d expect from observing how the media covers…

UW historian Michael Honey and filmmaker Errol Webber have produced a documentary about the life of Methodist minister and civil rights activist Rev. James Lawson that will be screened in Tacoma on Oct. 28, Seattle on Oct. 29

Foreign policy looms large as the 2014 midterm elections approach. But traditional conservatives and their tea party counterparts may bring different concerns and motivations to the November ballot, according to a University of Washington political scientist. While traditional conservatives seem most motivated by concern over American security, Christopher Parker, UW professor of political science, suggests that those identifying as tea party conservatives have somewhat more mixed motivations, linked with agitation over the Obama presidency and stemming from a feeling of…

UW political scientist Karen Litfin spent a year traveling to 14 ecovillages worldwide in researching her book “Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community.”

UW political scientist Rebecca Thorpe discusses her new book, “The American Warfare State: The Domestic Politics of Military Spending.”

University of Washington political scientist John Wilkerson has matched data visualization with the study of lawmaking to create a new online tool for researchers and students called the Legislative Explorer. Think of it as big data meeting up with How a Bill Becomes a Law. “The goal was to get beyond the ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ narrative and let users discover the lawmaking process for themselves,” said Wilkerson, UW professor of political science and director of the UW’s Center for American Politics…

Economic inequality will be the topic when activists, academics and policymakers meet the public for a conference presented by the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies titled “Working Democracy: Labor and Politics in an Era of Inequality.”

Angela Day, UW doctoral student in political science, discusses her book, “Red Light to Starboard: Recalling the Exxon Valdez Disaster.”

New research argues that the tea party owes more to paranoid politics of the John Birch Society and others than traditional American conservatism. “True conservatives aren’t paranoid,” says political scientist Chris Parker. “Tea party conservatives are.”

Political science and law scholars from the UW and elsewhere file a brief saying the Supreme Court should fully uphold the Voting Rights Act in a case out of Shelby County, Alabama.