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Paul Starr

 Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, and Stuart Professor of Communications and Public Affairs, Princeton University

Photo: November 2018 (Abigail Starr)

Recent book and journal articles

Defining the Age: Daniel Bell, His Time and Ours, edited with Julian Zelizer (Columbia University Press, 2021). Read the "Introduction" and "Daniel Bell's Three-Dimensional Puzzle."

  • "Escaping Policy Traps: Strategic Options in Overcoming Entrenchment," Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. A comparative analysis of options for overcoming entrenchment in energy, platform monopolies, and health care. Forthcoming, special issue on Entrenchment and Health Equity. May 2023.
  • Postindustrial Limits to Professionalization" [why high-tech is low in professionalization] in Gil Eyal and Tom Medvetz, The Oxford Handbook of Expertise and Democracy. Forthcoming 2023.
  • "The Re-Emergence of 'People of Color,'" The DuBois Review: Social Science Research on Race (online First View, June 13, 2022).
  • "The Relational Public," Sociological Theory (June 2021), 1-24.
  • "The Flooded Zone: How We Became More Vulnerable to Disinformation in the Digital Era," in W. Lance Bennett and Steven Livingston, eds., The Age of Disinformation (Cambridge University Press [Social Science Research Council], 2020).

    Recent journalism

  • How 'Fair Maps' Went Foul," The American Prospect, December 6, 2022.
  • Winners from the Midterms? The Supreme Court's Right Wing," The American Prospect, November 14, 2022.
  • "How American Politics Turned Deadly," The American Prospect, August 4, 2022.
  • "What We Have at Stake in Ukraine," The American Prospect, May 24, 2022.
  • "The Center-Right and Our Future," The American Prospect, December 9, 2021.
  • "Reckoning with National Failure: The Case of Covid," Liberties (Spring 2021), 1(3): 72-95.
  • "The Precarious Greatness of the Biden Strategy," The American Prospect, March 19, 2021.
  • How Neoliberal Policy Shaped the Internet--and What to Do About It Now," The American Prospect (Fall 2019), 48-54.[Download PDF]
  • "The Battle for the Suburbs," New York Review of Books, September 26, 2019.

    Some older general reflections

  • "Who Are We Americans Now?" The American Prospect(Winter 2017), 19-23.
  • Center-left Liberalism," Oxford Companion to American Politics (2012).

    Critical evaluations: "Transforming American Medicine: A Twenty-Year Retrospective," Special issue, Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law (2004). Reviews of The Creation of the Media.

    Last modified, December 10, 2022