Christopher Sebastian Parker

About

Christopher Sebastian Parker is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His specialization includes American Politics, Identity, Race, Ethnicity, and Public Opinion. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2001. Professor Parker's research explores significant themes in American political life, with a focus on social change, racial dynamics, and reactionary politics. His first book, Fighting for Democracy: Black Veterans and the Struggle Against White Supremacy in the Postwar South, examines the role of black veterans in the civil rights movement and has received the American Political Science Association's Ralph J. Bunche Award. His second book, Change They Can't Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America, investigates the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of the Tea Party movement, earning the APSA award for the best book in Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. He is also working on a forthcoming book titled The Great White Hope: Donald Trump, Race, and the Crisis of American Democracy, which analyzes the causes and political consequences of Trump's election. Professor Parker's scholarly articles have been published in prominent journals such as the Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, and others. His work has been featured in major media outlets including The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN.com, and MSNBC, among others. He is actively engaged…

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Pathology
• Internal medicine
• Law
• Medicine
• Political economy
• Endocrinology
• Clinical psychology
• Genetics

Selected publications

• Status Threat: Moving the Right Further to the Right?

  Daedalus · 2021 · 60 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Over the last few years, right-wing movements have proliferated among Western democracies. Although much of the growth has taken place across the “pond” in Europe, this phenomenon is not confined to that continent. As recent events make clear, the United States is another major case. In this essay, I offer a theory of the emergence of reactionary movements, fueled by status threat, using the United States as a case. To demonstrate the explanatory range of the theory (and measure), I foc…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Trump-ing Foreign Affairs: Status Threat and Foreign Policy Preferences on the Right

  Perspectives on Politics · 2019-08-21 · 26 citations

  articleSenior author

  President Trump is often at odds with the conservative establishment over a range of issues, not least of which is foreign policy. Yet it remains unclear whether supporting “Trumpism” is commensurate with coherent foreign policy views that are distinct from conventionally conservative positions. We evaluate whether the foreign policy views of Trump’s supporters, both in the voting public and among activists, differ from those of other Republicans. We use the 2016 ANES to examine Republican prima…

  PublisherDOI

• The Great White Hope

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021 · 20 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Donald Trump has polarized the country more than any other time in the last 75 years. What are the forces that pushed him into the Oval Office? Further, what are the implications, if any, of his election? Drawing on prior work on the Tea Party movement, when we put Trump’s victory in historical context of reactionary movements of the past, his election is simply an extension of a process that began with the Know Nothing Party of the 19th Century. We demonstrate that Trump’s rise, like the format…

  PublisherDOI

• Status threat: The core of reactionary politics

  Political Psychology · 2024-05-13 · 19 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  Abstract In recent years, reactionary movements have overtaken the politics of western democracies and developing countries alike. Using the United States is a case in point, we offer a theory of what motivates reactionary movements. While controlling for conventional individual‐level accounts of reactionary psychological dispositions, we offer a fresh explanation: status threat . We argue that status threat, a reaction to rapid sociocultural change on the part of dominant groups, pushes some me…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Separate but Unequal: Ethnocentrism and Racialization Explain the “Democratic” Peace in Public Opinion

  American Political Science Review · 2024-05-27 · 12 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Why are democratic publics reluctant to use force against fellow democracies? We hypothesize that the democratic peace in public opinion owes, in large part, to racialized assumptions about democracy. Rather than regime type per se doing the causal work, the term “democracy” inadvertently primes the presumption that target countries are predominantly white. This implicit racialization, in turn, explains the reluctance of the American public to support aggression against fellow democracies, most…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Matt A. Barreto

  15 shared

• Rachel Blum

  14 shared

• Sarah J. Tabrizi

  University College London

  12 shared

• Marina Papoutsi

  University College London

  9 shared

• Kate Fayer

  9 shared

• Rachael I. Scahill

  9 shared

• Jessica Lowe

  Malaghan Institute of Medical Research

  8 shared

• Eileanoir B. Johnson

  University College London

  8 shared

Awards & honors

• American Political Science Association's Ralph J. Bunche Awa…
• American Political Science Association's award for the best…

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