Campus Directory

Division Social Sciences Division

Department/College/Unit Politics Department

Title Professor

Affiliation Faculty

Other UCSC Campus Affiliation Legal Studies

Faculty Type Regular Faculty

Areas of Expertise Politics
United States Politics and Government
Political Science

Primary Office Location Merrill College Academic Building
117

Office Hours Spring 2024: Thursdays 12:30-2:30 (117 Merrill)

Mail Stop Merrill/Crown Faculty Services

Biography, Education and Training

B.A. Haverford College, 1982
PhD Cornell University, 1988
Congressional Fellow, American Political Science Association, 1993-4.

Summary of Expertise

American politics and political history. U.S. military policy. The Senate and Congress.

Research Interests

Daniel Wirls’ research interests range across American politics, institutions, public policy, and political history. He has published work on the founding period and the early Senate, antebellum representation in the Senate and House, the Seventeenth Amendment, Cold War and post-Cold War military policy, and contemporary political transformations. His most recent books are The Senate: From White Supremacy to Government Gridlock (University of Virginia Press, 2021); The Federalist Papers and Institutional Power in American Political Development (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015) and Irrational Security: The Politics of Defense from Reagan to Obama (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).

Teaching Interests

Congress, the President, and Court in American Political Development
The Politics and Policies of American Defense
Congress: Representation and Legislation
American Political Development
Politics: Power, Principle, Process, and Policy

Selected Publications

• The Senate: From White Supremacy to Government Gridlock (University of Virginia Press, 2021)
• The Federalist Papers and Institutional Power in American Political Development (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015)
• Irrational Security: The Politics of Defense from Reagan to Obama (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010)
• The Invention of the United States Senate (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004)
• Buildup: The Politics of Defense in the Reagan Era (Cornell University Press, 1992)