In an article entitled “What to read on Trump(ism),” Huffington Post contributor Cas Mudde listed UW Political Science Professor Christopher S. Parker’s book Change They Can’t Believe In as one of the 14 key books to read to better understand “the rise of Donald Trump and Trumpism, i.e. his unique form of radical right politics.” Mudde, who is an Associate Professor at the University of Georgia, noted his criticism of U.S. political science “for being blind of the right eye” in an earlier article arguing:
[The] scholars of American politics have been ill-prepared for three of the main political developments in American politics this century: the role of neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration, the rise of the Tea Party, and the current success of Donald Trump.
Simultaneously, Mudde promised “to provide a list of the limited scholarship” that is available in a follow-up article, which was posted on September 23rd, 2016. This list includes Professor Parker’s 2013 book about the Tea Party, which he co-authored with Professor Matt Barreto (UCLA). As Mudde notes, “the rise of the Tea Party […] features little in the current debate on Trump [even though] both phenomena play on very similar attitudes and frustrations.” Change They Can’t Believe In is “the most empirical account” of the historical roots of the Tea Party, as Parker and Barreto “interpret the Tea Party primarily as a reactionary response to recent changes in American society, most notably related to majority-minority relations.”
Check out the full list and read more about Professor Parker’s book.