Polarization and the Politics of Personal Responsibility

Mark D. Brewer is Professor of Political Science at the University of Maine, where he teaches broadly in American politics and government and in the Honors College. Brewer's research focuses on American political parties and electoral behavior and religion and politics in the US. He is currently at work on a project examining the place of populism in American politics. Brewer lives in Orono, ME with his wife and four children. Jeffrey M. Stonecash studies political parties and their role in organizing the electorate to represent differing political views within American society. He is presently working on a book about the presumed rise in the incumbency effect in recent decades. The focus is why academics devoted so much attention to an increase that evidence suggests did not occur and how the resulting research affected our understanding of American politics.