Race, Racism, and the Crisis of Democracy in Political Science
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6233206 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robbie Shilliam (0000-0002-9966-8574, Johns Hopkins University), Lester K Spence (0000-0003-4483-8641, Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA; email: [email protected]), Lester Spence |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 195-211 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-17 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Annual Review of Political Science (BOOK_SERIES) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1094-2939 • E-ISSN: 1545-1577 |
| Publisher | Annual Reviews (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1146/annurev-polisci-061523-103553 |
| OpenAlex | W4409760296 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 63 |
Over the past decade, autocratization has increased worldwide, and the United States itself has seen its own democracy erode. While political scientists have begun to study both phenomena in earnest, with exceptions, they have been unable to fully wrestle with either. We suggest that this incomplete understanding is the result of the discipline's problematic racial history. At the time of its founding in the late nineteenth century, political science provided a eugenicist justification for the very hierarchies and segregations that are now under scrutiny. Race was understood to be the quintessential subject of social scientific inquiry. After World War II, political scientists rejected eugenics and instead focused on defending democracy against totalitarianism. In doing so, they relegated racism to an ideological/irrational phenomenon and thus as extraneous to the core concern of the discipline. In this Annual Review of Political Science article, we refract the discipline's contemporary and historical concerns with democracy through the lens of racial politics to better equip scholars with tools to examine and critically diagnose contemporary politics
Anti-racism · Criminology · Democracy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Race (biology · Racism · Sociology · Gender Studies · Law · Political Science Research and Education · Public Administration
The Internationalization of Black Power
The Effect of White Social Prejudice on Support for American Democracy
A Right Restricted
Racial Reparations against White Protectionism
Black Lives Matter, American political development, and the politics of visibility
The Strange Fruit of American Political Development
Reinvigorating American Political Development Scholarship through Du Bois's Black Reconstruction
Frontlash
Imperial Realism
From modernization theory towards the ‘clash of civilizations’
The Revolution Will Not Be Theorised
The Black Fantastic in International Relations
Civil Liberties vs. Security
Can Black Lives Matter within U.S. Democracy
Historicising representations of 'failed states
The Science of Politics
Interwar International Relations Research
Reflections on the State of Political Science
What is a Political Theory
Leadership and Modernization
The Changing Norms of Racial Political Rhetoric and the End of Racial Priming
Toward an Inclusive Populism? On the Role of Race and Difference in Laclau’s Politics
Political Competition and Right-Wing Terrorism
Checks and Balances, Veto Exceptionalism, and Constitutional Folk Wisdom
American’ is the Eye of the Beholder
Crises, Race, Acknowledgement
Anti-Black Political Violence and the Historical Legacy of the Great Replacement Conspiracy
Populism and the American Party System
From Black Lives Matter to EndSars
Racialized Burdens
Why Democracies Survive
Whitewashing American Exceptionalism
How Great is the Current Danger to Democracy? Assessing the Risk With Historical Data
What We Do and Do Not Know about Democratic Backsliding
Democracy's Third Wave
Hidden in plain sight
The Supreme Court and the Dynamics of Democratic Backsliding
Africa and the Black Diaspora
Walter Bagehot and Liberal Realism
The American Commonwealth
The Decline of Political Theory
Political Theory and African Politics
The Negro in the Political Life of the United States
The Reconstitution of Political Theory
Antidote to Backsliding
Teaching Political Science in a World at War
The Theory of Apartheid
Political Theory as a Vocation
The New Revolution in Political Science
Areas for Postwar Research
Social Science in the Cold War
The Political Theory of German Fascism
I. Politics, Science, and Ethics
The Political Theory of Pluralist Democracy
American Democracy-After War
Racial Orders in American Political Development
Progress in Political Research
Systematic Political Theory
Activating Animus
From Race Relations to Comparative Racial Politics
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |