
Biography
Rebecca U. Thorpe is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on U.S. political institutions and state development, with an emphasis on the growth and fortification of American empire, mass suburbanization & urban gentrification, and the rise of expansive U.S. prison complex. Her first book, The American Warfare State: The Domestic Politics of Military Spending (University of Chicago Press, 2014), examines the development and persistence of a permanent U.S. military complex and growth in presidential power to launch military actions. She is currently working on a second book project examining how state interventions shaped the racial and spatial dimensions of poverty, violence and incarceration in post-World War II American society.
Her work has received national recognition, including the American Political Science Association's Richard Neustadt Award for best book on executive politics in 2015, the D. B. Hardeman Award presented by the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation for the best book on the US Congress in 2016, and APSA’s Heinz Eulau Award for the best article in Perspectives on Politics in 2016.
Thorpe received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Maryland in 2010. She was a Research Fellow at The Brookings Institution from 2008-2009. During the 2009-2010 academic year she worked on Capitol Hill as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow.
Research
Selected Research
- Thorpe, Rebecca U. Review of "Republic in Peril: American Empire and the Liberal Tradition," by Hendrickson, David C. In Journal of American History, Vol. 105, Issue 4, March 2019.
- Hendrickson, David C. "Republic in Peril: American Empire and the Liberal Tradition." Journalof American History, Vol. 105, Issue 4, March 2019.
- Thorpe, Rebecca U. Review of "The Workfare State: Public Assistance Politics from the New Deal to the NewDemocrats," by Eva Bertram. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Response toEva Bertram’s review of The American Warfare State: The Domestic Politics of MilitarySpending. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 2014. In Perspectives on Politics, March 2018.
- Rebecca U. Thorpe. "US Empire in the Age of Trump.” Class, Race and Corporate Power,. 2018. Vol. 6: Issue 1, Article 3.
- Walker, Hannah L., Rebecca U. Thorpe, Emily K. Christensen, and J. P. Anderson. "The hidden subsidies of rural prisons: Race, space and the politics of cumulative disadvantage." Punishment & Society, vol. 19, no. 4, 2017, pp. 393-416.
- Rebecca U. Thorpe. “Democratic Politics in an Age of Mass Incarceration.” Democratic Theory and MassIncarceration, edited by Albert Dzur, Ian Loader & Richard Sparks (Oxford University Press, 2016)).
- Thorpe, Rebecca U. "Perverse Politics: The Persistence of Mass Imprisonment in the Twenty-first Century." Perspectives on Politics, vol. 13, Issue 3, Sept. 2015, pp. 618-637.
- Rebecca U. Thorpe. " The American Warfare State: The Domestic Politics of Military Spending." Chicago IL, University of Chicago Press, 2014.
- Thorpe, Rebecca U. "Urban Divestment, Rural Decline and the Politics of Mass Incarceration." The Good Society, Vol. 23, no. 1, 2014, pp. 17-29.
- Jim Gimpel, Frances Lee, and Rebecca Thorpe. “The Geographic Distribution of the Federal Stimulus of 2009." Political Science Quarterly, 2012-2013.
- Jim Gimpel, Frances Lee, and Rebecca Thorpe. “The Wellsprings of Candidate Emergence: The Distinctive Origins of Statewide Candidates." Political Geography, February 2011.
- Thorpe, Rebecca U., W. McIntosh, M. Evans and S. Simon.,"Legal Mobilization and US Supreme Court Decision Making in Property and Civil Rights Cases, 1978-2003,” (with ). Property Rights and Neo- Liberalism: Cultural Demands and Legal Actions, edited by W. McIntosh & L. Hatcher (Ashgate Press, 2010).
- Rebecca Thorpe. “The Role of Economic Reliance in Defense Procurement Contracting.” American Politics Research, June 2010.
- W. McIntosh, M. Evans, S. Simon, and B. Thorpe. 2010. “Legal Mobilization and US Supreme Court Decision Making in Property and Civil Rights Cases, 1978-2003,” in Property Rights and Neo-Liberalism: Cultural Demands and Legal Actions, edited by W. McIntosh & L. Hatcher.
- Thorpe, Rebecca U. Review of "General Ashcroft: Attorney General At War," by Baker, Nancy V. In Law & Politics Book Review,Vol. 16, No. 9, September 2006.