Larry M. Bartels is University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Law and May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science at Vanderbilt University. His research and teaching focus on electoral politics, public opinion, and public policy, primarily in the United States. His books include Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (2nd edition), Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (with Christopher H. Achen), Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice, and, most recently, Democracy Erodes from the Top: Leaders, Citizens, and the Challenge of Populism in Europe. He is also the author of over 50 scholarly articles and book chapters, and of dozens of commentaries on public affairs in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other prominent outlets.
Bartels’s research has helped to revitalize scholarly and public interest in the political causes and consequences of economic inequality. He has also made significant contributions to the study of partisanship, electoral change, political representation, and democratic stability, among other topics. His current projects include a book on the politics of social change in the U.S. over the past six decades (with Katherine J. Cramer) and a study of social spending in OECD countries. He earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in political science from Yale University (1978) and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1983). He taught at the University of Rochester for eight years and at Princeton University for 20 years before joining the Vanderbilt faculty in 2011. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.