ABSTRACT
Part of this failing has to do with the way the discipline is divided into fields and subfields. Those studying American politics and those studying other countries-known as comparativists-frequently work in a parallel fashion rather than interact with each other directly. In the field of American politics, there is a further tendency to categorize research as “behavioral” or “institutional.” As a result, the best scholars of public opinion and voting behavior often miss opportunities to interact with those studying legislatures and bureaucracies, and vice versa. To take one subfield as an example, in my view it would be enlightening to recast studies of public policymaking as examinations of representation, bringing in ideas from pluralism to budgeting to the spatial model to understand it.
