The Next Four Years: what should we expect for America?

Contributor(s): Professor Desmond King, Mark Landler, Professor Paula D. McClain, Professor Theda Skocpol | What will the next administration's international and domestic priorities be? A roundtable discussion with leading experts on American politics.

Meet our speakers and chair

Desmond King is Andrew W Mellon Professor of American Government and Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. He specializes in the study of the American state in US executive politics, race and politics in American political development, and the financial bases of US politics. He is a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), and is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (FAAAS), the Academia Europaea (MAE), the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA), the National Academy of Social Insurance (FNASI) and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS).

Mark Landler (@MarkLandler) is the London bureau chief of The New York Times. In 27 years at The Times, he has been bureau chief in Hong Kong and Frankfurt, White House correspondent, diplomatic correspondent, European economic correspondent, and a business reporter in New York. He is the author of Alter Egos, a comparative study of the foreign policy of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Paula D. McClain is James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Professor of Public Policy and Dean of The Graduate School and Vice Provost for Graduate Education at Duke University. A Howard University Ph.D., her primary research interests are in racial minority group politics, particularly inter-minority political and social competition, and urban politics. Her 1995 book Can We All Get Along?: Racial and Ethnic Minorities in American Politics, co-authored with Joseph Stewart, Jr., won the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America Award for Outstanding Scholarship on the Subject of Intolerance.

Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University. She has authored many books, articles, and reports, won many awards, and been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences. Her ongoing research focuses on U.S. conservatives and the Republican Party, the politics of health care policy, and citizen reactions to the Obama and Trump presidencies.

Peter Trubowitz (@ptrubowitz) is Professor of International Relations and Director of the US Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Associate Fellow at Chatham House.

More about this event

The LSE's United States Centre (@LSE_US) is a hub for global expertise, analysis and commentary on America. Our mission is to promote policy-relevant and internationally-oriented scholarship to meet the growing demand for fresh analysis and critical debate on the United States.

This event forms part of LSE’s Shaping the Post-COVID World initiative, a series of debates about the direction the world could and should be taking after the crisis.