Textbooks are large, expensive, heavy volumes and I used to co-author one. When I taught with it, I found that what my students needed most was not a 30-page textbook chapter on each topic, but instead a short basic summary to lay the groundwork for more interesting and in-depth primary-source political science material.

After my time as textbook co-author was over, I faced a decision about whether to assign another one in my introductory U.S. politics class. I decided instead to experiment with writing a single-page guide to the fundamentals of topics that would ordinarily take up a textbook chapter: The U.S. Constitution and Founding, Congress, the presidency, public opinion, interest groups, civil rights, and so on. Students reacted positively, and the result is the Basicsplainer.

Here are my rules for writing Basicsplainers. Each must be a single page or less. Each assumes no prior knowledge of the subject matter. Each includes background material on the subject, with references where appropriate. Finally, each is written from the point of view of a scholar, and should point the reader toward at least one scholarly debate or idea. For more in-depth discussion, the reader can follow this thread further in either a classroom setting or on their own.

Basicsplainers are not the equivalent of encyclopedia entry – or, what is the same thing, a Wikipedia page. I do not make an attempt to be comprehensive in these short documents. Instead, I seek to present an organized and understandable account of what I believe are the most important elements of the subject. In this age, the main problem is not that there is too little information available. The problem is that there are too few tools to synthesize and make sense of it all.

Nor do Basicsplainers seek to make an argument. Their only claim is that the material presented is among the most important basic material required to make sense of the topic. For scholarly arguments, readers can seek out cited scholarly material. For arguments about politics, there are ample resources available online and in print.

This site contains the Basicsplainers that parallel the subjects covered in a standard introductory U.S. politics textbook (on the Core Topics in U.S. Politics page). They are: the bureaucracy, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, congressional elections, federalism, interest groups, political participation, political parties, presidential elections, public opinion, the American political tradition, the Constitution, the federal courts, the media, and the presidency. In addition to this group of sixteen topics, I will add new Basicsplainers to the site (on the Specialized Topics page) at the rate of one or two a month, prioritizing topics that are most relevant to understanding current political events.

In light of the COVID-19 crisis, all content on this site is free. If you’d really like to support the project, you could buy a $15 annual subscription, a price that compares very favorably to a textbook.

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