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adam hilton

Visiting Lecturer of Politics

Mount Holyoke College

  • Biography
  • Book Project
  • Publications and Media
  • Teaching
  • Contact
  • CV
  • Biography
  • Book Project
  • Publications and Media
  • Teaching
  • Contact
  • CV
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    • Biography

      Examining American political development through the lens of parties, movements, and political entrepreneurs

      As of July 2019, I will be an assistant professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where I have been a visiting lecturer since 2016. I have a PhD from the Department of Political Science at York University, Toronto. My current research focuses on the intersection between institutional and non-institutional forms of politics, specifically the relationship between movements, interest groups, and political parties, and the agency of political entrepreneurs in transforming them. My work falls within the American Political Development (APD) approach and cross-examines the "exceptional" features of US politics in historical-comparative perspective. My current book project, under contract with Penn Press, examines the paradoxical development of the Democratic Party's ideology and organization since the end of the 1960s.

    • Book Project

      From New Deal to Neoliberalism: The Democratic Party in the Age of Inequality

      Description

      My book, From New Deal to Neoliberalism: The Democratic Party in the Age of Inequality (University of Pennsylvania Press), examines the paradox of modern Democratic liberalism’s embrace of greater civic equality while simultaneously retreating from a redistributional policy agenda to address rising economic inequality. This development, I argue, is the result of the emergence of what I call the advocacy party, a new form of party organization that is institutionally hollow and ideologically shaped by a loose network of contending advocacy groups. Far from constituting a pluralist heaven, however, the advocacy party, while very successful in advancing a progressive agenda for civic equality, fails to adequately represent their poorest and most marginalized constituents. As a result, the Democratic Party has become home to a brand of progressive neoliberalism, marrying meaningful victories for out-group claims for full civic status and recognition with pro-growth, market-friendly social and economic policies. My book traces the emergence and consolidation of the advocacy party from the protracted conflicts between 1960s social movement activists and their intraparty opponents in the waning days of the New Deal order. The terms on which this conflict was resolved left the Democratic Party organizationally hollowed out, unable to control its nomination process and open to greater movement and interest group influence at the grassroots.

    • Publications and media

      Peer-Edited and Scholarly Publications

      • "The Path to Polarization: McGovern-Fraser, Counter-Reformers, and the Rise of the Advocacy Party," Studies in American Political Development (forthcoming).
         
      • “The Politics Insurgents Make: Reconstructive Reformers in American and British Postwar Party Development,” Polity (forthcoming).
         
      • "Is it Time to Break with the Democrats? A Response to J. Phillip Thompson," New Labor Forum 27 (1), 2018.
         
      • “Organized for Democracy? Left Challenges Inside the Democratic Party,” in Leo Panitch and Greg Albo, eds, Socialist Register 2018: Rethinking Democracy (London: Merlin Press, 2017).
         
      • “Searching for a New Politics: The New Politics Movement and the Struggle to Democratize the Democratic Party, 1968-1978,” New Political Science 38 (2), 2016.
         
      • “The View from the Top: Robert Caro’s Portraiture of Lyndon Johnson,” New Political Science 37 (1), 2015.

      Public Scholarship

      • "Twilight of the Superdelegates," Jacobin Magazine, 13 September 2018. 
         
      • “The Democratic Party’s latest reform commission just met. It’s likely to slash the power of superdelegates,” Washington Post, 12 December 2017.
         
      • “Donna Brazile Reveals the Obvious,” Jacobin Magazine, 15 October 2017.
         
      • “Searching for New Politics,” Jacobin Magazine 20 (Spring), 2016.
         
      • “Bernie and the Search for New Politics,” Jacobin Magazine, 24 June 2015.

      Works in Progress

      • From New Deal to Neoliberalism: The Democratic Party in the Age of Inequality (under contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press).
         
      • The Politics Insurgents Make: Party Transformations from TR to Trump (Book Project)
         
      • “The Other Right to Work: Full Employment and the Limits of Postwar Liberalism” (article for Journal of Policy History)
    • Teaching

      Mount Holyoke College

      July 2016 - Present

      Visiting Lecturer: American Politics; 2016 Election in Real Time; Parties and Movements in American Politics; US Elections; American Political Development; Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?

      York University, Toronto

      September 2010 - April 2016

      Course Director: Race and Inequality in the Postwar American City

      Teaching Assistant: The Future of Work; Classics in Western Political Thought; Canadian Political Economy

    • Contact

      Adam Hilton, Visiting Lecturer in Politics, Mount Holyoke College

      108 Skinner Hall
      Mount Holyoke College
      50 College St.
      South Hadley, MA
      01075
      T/Th 4-5 PM
      413 538 2325
      413 538 2325
      ahilton@mtholyoke.edu
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