WATTENBERG, Martin P(aul) 1956–

PERSONAL: Born June 6, 1956, in Washington, DC; son of Leonard (an engineer) and Frances Anna (a statistician; maiden name, Marans) Wattenberg. Education: Hampshire College, B.A., 1977; University of Michigan, Ph.D., 1982. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES: Home—240 Nice Ln., No. 105, Newport Beach, CA 92663. Office—School of Social Sciences, University of California, 2285 Social Plaza, Irvine, CA 92697; fax: 949-824-8762. E-mail—mpwatten@uci.edu.

CAREER: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, teaching assistant, 1978–82; University of California—Los Angeles, assistant professor of political science, 1982–83; University of California—Irvine, assistant professor, 1983–86, associate professor and associate director of public policy research organization, 1986–91, professor of political science, 1991–. University of Michigan, lecturer, summer, 1982. Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ, consultant, 1985.

MEMBER: American Political Science Association, American Association for Public Opinion Research, Institute for Contemporary Studies (academic associate, 1984–86).

WRITINGS:

The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952–1980, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1984, new edition published as The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952–1996, 1998.

The Rise of Candidate-Centered Politics: Presidential Elections of the 1980s, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1991.

(With Robert L. Lineberry and George C. Edwards II) Government in America: People, Politics, and Policy, 5th edition, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1991, 12th edition, Pearson Longman (New York, NY), 2006.

(Editor, with Russell J. Dalton) Parties without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

(Editor, with Matthew Soberg Shugart) Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: The Best of Both Worlds?, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2001.

Where Have All the Voters Gone?, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2002.

Contributor to political science journals. Associate editor, Social Science Journal, 1984–87.

SIDELIGHTS: Martin P. Wattenberg has published numerous scholarly studies about voting trends and political parties in the United States and other Western democracies. Among his books are Parties without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies, Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: The Best of Both Worlds?, and Where Have All the Voters Gone?

In Parties without Partisans Wattenberg and coeditor Russell J. Dalton look at political parties in eighteen nations, tracing the changes they have undergone since the early 1950s until the late 1990s. The book examines the changing role of political parties in these democracies and seeks to discover whether they have declined in importance over the years. According to Thomas Poguntke, reviewing Parties without Partisans for West European Politics, "there cannot be a shadow of doubt that this volume represents a milestone in the debate about the role of political parties in advanced democracies at the beginning of the twenty-first century."

Mixed-Member Electoral Systems is a study of democracies where political power is divided among the parties based on either proportional representation or on other criteria. Among the nations examined in detail are Germany, which has a clear relationship between percentage of votes received and seats held by each political party. Similar structures are found operating with various levels of success in New Zealand, Hungary, Italy, and Japan. "The book," wrote Joseph M. Colomer in West European Politics, "provides a useful classification of some electoral system elements in two dimensions."

Wattenberg looks specifically at the United States in his book Where Have All the Voters Gone? He cites the fact that, of all the world's major democracies, the United States has the least voter turnout of any industrialized nation except for Switzerland. Wattenberg explores why this is so, drawing on a variety of studies to determine just who does not vote and why. He finds that the young, minorities, and the less educated are least likely to register and vote. Reviewing Where Have All the Voters Gone? for Library Journal, Robert F. Nardini concluded that Wattenberg's "book is a lucid presentation of new and prior research on an important problem." Jack Beatty, in a review posted at Atlantic Unbound, called Wattenberg's book an "X-ray of the body politic and its phantom limbs."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, October, 1991, p. 354; June, 2003, review of Where Have All the Voters Gone?, p. 1830.

Library Journal, September 15, 2002, Robert F. Nardini, review of Where Have All the Voters Gone?, p. 79.

New York Times Book Review, May 13, 1984, p. 24.

Perspectives on Political Science, spring, 2003, Lawrence J. Grossback, review of Where Have All the Voters Gone?, p. 116.

Political Science Quarterly, fall, 2003, Hugh Heclo, review of Where Have All the Voters Gone?, p. 491.

Prairie Schooner, fall, 2003, review of Where Have All the Voters Gone?, p. 491.

Times Literary Supplement, October 19, 1984, p. 1177.

West European Politics, January, 2002, Thomas Poguntke, review of Parties without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies, p. 225; April, 2002, Josep M. Colomer, review of Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: The Best of Both Worlds?, p. 226.

ONLINE

Atlantic Unbound, http://www.theatlantic.com/ (November 27, 2002), Jack Beatty, "The War for Nonvoters."