Since he won a surprise victory in the 2016 presidential election, scholars have devoted considerable attention to explaining the rise and fall of Donald J. Trump. Carter A. Wilson builds upon this growing literature by defining “Trumpism” while emphasizing the political, economic, and societal conditions that gave rise to Trump and the policies that he promoted.
— Political Science Quarterly
Wilson’s Trumpism: Race, Class, Populism and Public Policy is an important and distinctive contribution to the literature on the Trump presidency. What distinguishes it is the wide-ranging focus on public policy. In fact-based empirical analyses of labor, health, education, welfare, tax and regulatory policies, Wilson methodically demonstrates the deleterious effects of Trump’s public policies on American workers of all classes and colors.
— Robert C. Smith, author of Questions of Character: The Presidency of Donald J. Trump
Carter Wilson examines the connections between Trumpism, populism, and public policy, arguing convincingly that this network is centered on reinforcing an oligarchy of wealth and entitlement. He explains that the oligarchy is not a traditional one, but one based on “corporate insurgency”, an extreme anti-government ideology with policy prescriptions most damaging to the white working class. This is an impressively integrative contribution to our understanding of how ideas, personalities, and elections affect public policy.
— Bryan D. Jones, University of Texas