Lexington Books The Political Blame Game in American Democracy (Bloomsbury Studies in Political Communication)

The Political Blame Game in American Democracy looks at the forces that have developed over the past fifty-plus years and created a dysfunctional political system in the United States. It argues that the current level of partisan polarization is actually the culmination of a number of forces at work during the past few decades. These include a perception by each party that the other is using unfair political tactics; the subsequent creation of a culture of blame, with each party blaming the other for the dysfunction; a decline in political norms, leading to childlike behavior by politicians and political candidates; and a culture of payback in which the opposition argues that their opponents are responsible for the decline. These four factors culminated in the 2016 presidential campaign, where they were exemplified by Donald Trump, and have continued to have a significant ongoing impact on the political landscape of the United States. Review Powell and Hickson provide an insightful look at the dysfunction of today's American politics and how we got here. The Political Blame Game should be useful to scholars and students interested in how politics morphed from the art of compromise into a no-holds-barred brawl.--Barry P. Smith, Mississippi University for Women This book is a captivating journey into American politics focused on the people, events, and policies that gave rise to the adversarial and often malicious infighting that dominates today's political landscape.--Matt Morse, University of Connecticut About the Author Mark Hickson III is professor of communication studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Larry Powell is professor of communication studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.