White riot: race, institutions, and the 2016 U.S. election

Abstract

The 2016 election highlights two major—and closely related—gaps in the American politics subfield. First, Americanists who study contemporary politics have avoided questions about whether institutions are durable, in effect treating state legitimacy as a solved problem. In fact, as this election shows, institutions are more fragile, and questions about durability more important, than Americanists tend to assume. A focus on the institutional treatment of ethnoracial minorities reveals ongoing issues of incomplete democratization and troubling legitimacy in American politics. Second, the 2016 election shows that ethnic and racial politics are central, not peripheral, to American politics—and should be central to Americanist political science as well. Trump's success in appealing to rural white voters with an explicitly ethnonationalist stance makes clear that ethnic politics are not solely or even primarily the property of ethnoracial minorities. Rather, they play a central role in most important developments in American politics. The paper offers suggestions for solving these gaps in the study of American politics.