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May 2018 Vol. 55 No. 9

This early effort to explain Donald Trump’s political success provides concise answers to how Trump’s ability to eschew political norms of candidate behavior and campaigning, while being marginalized by party elites, allowed him to win the US presidency. If explanatory brevity is desired, this book fits the bill. It does a solid job identifying the causal factors for Trump’s success but lacks theoretical development. Attempting to employ a political culture framework is especially challenging. Though Ashbee (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark) cautions that political culture is not used as an independent variable, instead associating it with political processes and attitudes shaping political debate, the use of the term is perhaps misleading. Another problem is the use of class to explain both socioeconomic factors and the rural-urban divide in the US without acknowledging the problematic nature of class variables in American politics. This factor marks the European rather than American perspective that underlies the work. Its strength is identifying Trump’s success as a rejection of neoliberalism and tying this to similar national movements. In doing so, however, he makes a stronger case for American exceptionalism than the work concedes.

--K. Casey, Northwest Missouri State University

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