American Affairs

American Affairs is a quarterly publication focused on public policy and political ideas. It was established to create a space for individuals who think that traditional political parties are not addressing the critical issues our nation faces today. Outdated beliefs and expectations from past decades limit our political conversations. The extreme partisanship in our politics often hides a deeper conformity and lack of critical thinking in our discussions. In contrast, American Affairs aims to foster a more meaningful dialogue about the core challenges and divisions of our era.

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Democracy Means Agreeing with Me: Electrification Past and Present

2 weeks ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Emmet Penney |Julius Krein

REVIEW ESSAYDemocracy in Power:A History of Electrification in the United Statesby Sandeep VaheesanUniversity of Chicago Press, 2024, 400 pagesThe American grid is in trouble. For years, our country has been retiring reliable power plants and building unreliable wind and solar resources. Moreover, most of the country’s power gets allocated in complex power markets where decisions are made beyond the public eye.
Renewing the Democratic Party

2 weeks ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Richard D. Kahlenberg |Julius Krein

The Democratic Party has lost its way. A party whose very purpose has been to fight for working families has forfeited their trust and confidence. The losses are most obvious among white working-class voters. In 1960, John F. Kennedy won white working-class (noncollege) voters but lost white college graduates by two to one.
China’s Past, America’s Present: Revisiting Wang Hui

2 weeks ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Jacob Dreyer |Julius Krein

Late last October, we were in the basement of an obscure academic building in Berlin’s southwestern suburb of Dahlem, a group of twenty or thirty people assembled to hear Wang Hui talk about nationalism; my friends at the Berggruen Institute Europe had organized a residency in Venice and Berlin for him, to engage with European thought before the Trump victory that everybody saw coming.
Economic Security Is National Security: The Future of the Defense Production Act

2 weeks ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Joel Dodge |Julius Krein

The Defense Production Act of 1950 (DPA) is one of America’s oldest and most important industrial policy laws, reemerging in recent years as a vital tool for addressing urgent national crises. Yet for decades, the DPA was rarely used outside of the Department of Defense, and was hardly the subject of major policy debates or headline news. That changed over the last five years, as both presidents Trump and Biden increasingly came to rely on the law for a number of emergent needs.
The Limits of Consumption Deepening: Why Consuming More Makes Us Poorer

2 weeks ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Philip Pilkington |Julius Krein

Today’s consumer capitalist societies present us with a paradox: We are told year in and year out that living standards are rising, but many people—especially younger people—can feel their quality of life decline as time goes on. This feeling is palpable and can be seen in the hardest of the quality of life indices, such as the suicide rate and the rates of drug addiction and overdose.
Solving America’s Chip Manufacturing Crisis

2 weeks ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Kenneth Flamm |William B. Bonvillian |Julius Krein

In the previous issue of American Affairs, we argued that the demise of leading-edge chip manufacturing in the United States has created an acute defense industrial base crisis with major geopolitical implications. Recently departed Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has characterized the former U.S. chip manufacturing champion’s problems as resulting from a fundamental qualitative shift in the economics of leading-edge chip manufacturing for which Intel—and U.S. national security interests—were unprepared.
Rewriting the Californian Ideology

2 weeks ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Nadia Asparouhova |Julius Krein

In January of this year, JD Vance, a former venture capitalist, took the oath of office as vice president of the United States. His, and President Donald Trump’s, inauguration marked a critical inflection point in the relationship between tech and public institutions. Tech has been building up to this moment for a while.
Democracy’s Demons

2 weeks ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | David Polansky |Julius Krein

REVIEW ESSAYThe Reactionary Spirit:How America’s Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the Worldby Zack BeauchampPublicAffairs, 2024, 272 pagesHayek’s Bastards:Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Rightby Quinn SlobodianZone Books, 2025, 272 pagesFollowing her defeat in the 2016 general election, Hillary Clinton published a book titled What Happened.
The Lessons of Liberation Day

1 month ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Julius Krein

When American politicians start talking about “liberation,” it is usually not a good sign, at least in recent decades. Prior to President Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcements on April 2, many of my generation associated the term with the George W. Bush administration’s insistence that Americans would be “greeted as liberators” after the invasion of Iraq. The latter proved to be a catastrophic blunder.
Reconfiguring Real Estate Ownership for Better Urban Governance

Feb 20, 2025 | americanaffairsjournal.org | Chris Lehman

American cities are more productive than ever. They facilitate world-changing innovation in information technology, life sciences, and finance, generating enormous wealth. Despite this, they are plagued by serious problems. Crime, low school quality, poor governance, and high housing costs combine to create a quality of life that is significantly lower than pre-tax incomes and overall economic activity would suggest.