Undercurrent Events is where I work through the structural dynamics of American democracy — the forces beneath daily headlines that determine what’s actually possible and what isn’t.

The site is organized by ideas, not by date. Explainers define foundational concepts — evergreen reference pages that get updated as the analysis evolves. Essays apply those concepts to specific events and arguments. The homepage is the curated map; the index is the complete catalog.

I’m Lee Drutman — a political scientist, senior fellow at New America, co-founder of Fix Our House, lecturer at Johns Hopkins, and author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America (Oxford University Press, 2020). I’m currently writing a second book, Democracy is People, also for Oxford.

I also co-host Politics in Question, a podcast about the big questions in political science that don’t get asked enough.

Undercurrent Events started as a Substack newsletter in November 2022. This site is its permanent home. The newsletter continues for email delivery — subscribe here.