The Trump First Term

An insightful and nuanced examination of a controversial and consequential presidency, written by some of the top presidential scholars in the nation.

It was the election result that shocked the world.

In November 2016, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to become the forty-fifth president of the United States, thereby bringing an end to the political power of one family and, in retrospect, beginning the era of his own family’s dominance. At times, Trump’s presidency posed new, sometimes unprecedented, challenges to the constitutional order, while in other respects he continued the trajectory toward greater executive power that had been decades in the making.

In this latest installment in a series that began with the George H. W. Bush years, the nation’s leading scholars of the American presidency assess Donald J. Trump’s first term—what many assumed would be his only term, following his loss to Joe Biden in 2020. Divided into five parts, the authors examine Trump’s first four years in terms of electoral politics, public politics, national institutions, and policy outcomes, with a final section placing Trump in the context of the larger story of American politics.

In addition to the volume editors, the book includes chapters by Kelly Dittmar, John D. Graham, David Patrick Houghton, Nicole Mellow, Molly Reynolds, Brandon Rottinghaus, Theda Skocpol, Candis Watts Smith, Sharece Thrower, Alvin B. Tillery, Jr., and David Yalof.

Ideal for use in the classroom, this volume will be the definitive scholarly resource on Trump’s first term for years to come.

Julia Azari is professor of political science at Marquette University. She is the author of Backlash Presidents: From Transformative to Reactionary Leaders in American History.

Bert Rockman is professor emeritus of political science at Purdue University. He is the author and coauthor of several books, including In the Web of Politics: Three Decades of the U.S. Federal Executive.