Seth Masket

Seth Masket is an American political scientist. He is a professor of political science and director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver. He studies political parties, state legislatures, and campaigns and elections. He also regularly contributes to Politico and is the author of the Substack newsletter "Tusk".

Education and Early Work

Masket is a 1987 graduate of Calabasas High School. He received a bachelors degree in political science at the University of California, Berkeley in 1991 and a masters degree in political management from the George Washington University in 1996. He received a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA in 2004, under the supervision of John Zaller. Prior to entering his doctoral program, he worked for several years as a writer int he White House Office of Correspondence during President Bill Clinton's first term. He was also a law and justice policy aide to Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian in San Jose, California, and did research and writing for several California political consulting firms.

Career

Research

Masket's published work has largely focused on political party nominations at the state and federal level. His 2009 book No Middle Ground: How Informal Party Organizations Control Nominations and Polarized Legislatures examined the sources of party polarization in the California Assembly. It looks at the relatively weak parties of the cross-filing era in California (1913-59), the growth of partisanship in the mid-20th century, and also includes detailed interviews with modern informal party leaders. The book argues that the very strong polarization in the California legislature is driven in large part by informal local party networks around the state, which advantage ideological extremists in primaries while discouraging moderates. This book stemmed from Masket's doctoral research at UCLA.

In a second book, The Inevitable Party: Why Attempts to Kill the Party System Fail and how They Weaken Democracy, Masket examines party reform efforts in a variety of states. Chapters focus on such examples as the creation of the direct primary in Wisconsin, campaign finance reform in Colorado, the nonpartisan legislatures in Nebraska and mid-20th century Minnesota, and the 2003 gubernatorial recall in California. The book ultimately argues that efforts to undermine parties often fail, resulting in both stronger parties and less accountable politicians.

Masket's third book, Learning From Loss: The Democrats 2016-2020, captures a national political party in the process of deciding why it lost one presidential election and how it should use that interpretation to plan for the next one. The book uses a range of different research approaches, but much of it involves detailed interviews with Democratic activists in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, and Washington, DC, between 2017 and early 2020 as they seek to interpret recent political events and pick presidential candidates for 2020.

Administration

Masket was chair of the University of Denver's Department of Political Science between 2012 and 2017. In 2017, he founded the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver, and is currently its first director. This is an interdisciplinary university center that supports a broad range of research on American politics and hosts civic dialogues on ongoing political concerns.

Masket was the Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance at the Library of Congress during the summer of 2018, and the Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt University in 2024-25.

Public Engagement

Masket ran a personal blog, Enik Rising, from 2007 to 2013, covering a range of topics from political science to food to science fiction. In 2012, he launched the academic group blog Mischiefs of Faction with co-founders Hans Noel, Gregory Koger, and Jennifer Victor. He maintains a newsletter "Tusk" on modern U.S. political parties.

Selected Works

• Learning from Loss: The Democrats 2016-2020, Cambridge University Press, 2020.
• Political Parties, W.W. Norton Publishers, 2021 (with Hans Noel).
• “A Theory of Political Parties: Groups, Policy Demands, and Nominations in American Politics,” Perspectives on Politics, 2012 (with Kathleen Bawn, Marty Cohen, David Karol, Hans Noel, and John Zaller).
• “One Vote out of Step? The Effects of Salient Roll Call Votes in the 2010 Election,” American Politics Research, 2012 (with Brendan Nyhan, Eric McGhee, John Sides, and Steven Greene).
• “Did Obama’s Ground Game Matter? The Influence of Local Field Offices During the 2008 Presidential Election,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 2009.
• “Partisan Webs: Information Exchange and Party Networks,” British Journal of Political Science, 2009 (with Gregory Koger and Hans Noel).
• “Where You Sit is Where You Stand: The Impact of Seating Proximity on Legislative Cue-Taking,” Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 2008.
• “It Takes an Outsider: Extra-legislative Organization And Partisanship In The California Assembly, 1849-2006,” The American Journal of Political Science, 2007.

Selected Awards

• University Distinguished Scholar, 2015-16, University of Denver.
• Best Journal Article, APSA State Politics and Policy Section, 2015 (with Eric McGhee, Nolan McCarty, Steve Rogers, and Boris Shor).
• Heinz I. Eulau Award for best article in Perspectives in Politics, APSA, 2013 (with Kathleen Bawn, Marty Cohen, David Karol, Hans Noel, and John Zaller).
• Best Conference Paper, APSA State Politics and Policy Section, 2012 (with Boris Shor).
• Emerging Scholar Award, APSA Political Organizations and Parties Section, 2008.

References

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