Theda Skocpol in Conversation with Edwin Amenta on Sociology, Political Science, Higher Education, and U.S. Politics

Edwin Amenta; Theda Skocpol

doi:10.60923/issn.1971-8853/23285

Authors

Edwin Amenta University of California, Irvine https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7019-1656

Edwin Amenta is a Professor of Sociology and (by courtesy) Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. He is a scholar of political sociology, historical sociology, social movements, and social policy. He is the author of Bold Relief: Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern U.S. Social Policy (1998), When Movements Matter: The Townsend Plan and the Rise of Social Security (2006), Professor Baseball: Searching for Redemption and the Perfect Lineup on the Softball Diamonds of Central Park(2007), Rough Draft of History: A Century of US Social Movements in the News (2022, with Neal Caren), and, most recently, Changing Minds: Social Movements’ Cultural Impacts (2025, with Francesca Polletta).
Theda Skocpol Harvard University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3866-8108

Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University. She received her PhD in Sociology at Harvard in 1975. She was first known for her landmark scholarship on comparative revolutions and is now best known for her extensive work on politics and policy in the United States. Among her books, some of them multiple-award-winning, are States and Social Revolutions (1979), Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (1992), and Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (2003), The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (2012, co-authored with Vanessa Williamson), and Rustbelt Union Blues: Why Working Class Voters Are Turning Away from the Democratic Party (2023, with Lainey Newman). She was awarded the John Skytte Prize in Political Science in 2007 and has served as President of the American Political Science Association and the Social Science History Association. She has been an institution builder in two disciplines. She was instrumental in founding the American Sociological Association sections on Political Sociology and Comparative and Historical Sociology. She helped found the APSA’s Politics and History section and is a founder of the Princeton (University Press) Studies in American Politics: Historical, Comparative, and International Perspectives. Her political activism began with her volunteering as an undergraduate at Michigan State to go South to support the civil rights movement. Later, she founded the Scholars Strategy Network, which spans the United States and seeks to bring social science findings into public political debates.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.60923/issn.1971-8853/23285

Keywords:

Historical institutionalism, Comparative and historical sociology, Higher education, Authoritarianism, Patrimonialism

Abstract

In this interview, Theda Skocpol discusses with her former student Edwin Amenta issues ranging from the academic, to the political, and to the personal. A highly renowned and decorated scholar, Skocpol addresses her shift from being a broadly comparative scholar, with her path-breaking initial work on comparative revolutions, to focusing her scholarly attention on politics and policy in the United States. She argues that it was not as big a leap as it might seem. She also discusses her institutional shift from sociology to political science, but indicates that this move was not an intellectual turn from sociology and notes that she could never have had the career she has had without first gaining a PhD in sociology. Skocpol shares her views on the current crisis in U.S. higher education in part from her perspective of having been dean of Harvard University’s Graduate School. She also discusses her Madison Lecture from just before the 2024 election that returned Donald Trump to the White House, including her prescient predictions of his authoritarian moves, as well as what was unexpected. In the process, she situates the administration’s moves away from democracy and identifies it as a kind of lawless patrimonialism. Based on her wide-ranging research, she suggests strategies for the U.S. Democratic Party to regain power. This interview took place on the morning of November 4, 2025, Election Day in the United States.

References

Hanson, S.E., & Kopstein, J.S. (2024). The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers Our Future. Cambridge, UK: Polity.

Pierson, P., & Schickler, E. (2024). Partisan Nation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Skocpol, T. (1979). States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China. New York & Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Skocpol, T. (1992). Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Skocpol, T. (2025). Rising Threats to U.S. Democracy: Roots and Responses. PS: Political Science and Politics, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096524001033

Skocpol, T., & Williamson, V. (2012). The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024). https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf

Theda Skocpol in Conversation with Edwin Amenta on Sociology, Political Science, Higher Education, and U.S. Politics

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