Degrees

Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania

Biography

Sidney M. Milkis is the White Burkett Miller Professor in the Department of Politics and Interim Director of the Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy. He was awarded the Cavaliers’ Distinguished Teaching Professorship for 2018-2020, the highest teaching award at the University of Virginia, which recognizes an eminent scholar for outstanding undergraduate teaching.  In 2016-2017, he was named the John G. Winant Visiting Professor of American Government at Oxford University. He has a B.A. from Muhlenberg College and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania. 

His books include: The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System Since the New Deal (1993); Political Parties and Constitutional Government: Remaking American Democracy (1999); Presidential Greatness (2000), coauthored with Marc Landy; The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776-2021 (2022), 10th edition, coauthored with Michael Nelson; Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party, and the Transformation of American Democracy (2009); Rivalry and Reform: Presidents, Social Movements and the Transformation of American Politics (2019), which won a Choice Outstanding Title Award; and What Happened to the Vital Center: Presidentialism, Populist Revolt, and the Fracturing of America (2022), coauthored with Nicholas Jacobs. His most recent book, also coauthored with Jacobs, is Subverting Democracy: Donald J. Trump and the Perils of Presidentialism (2025). 

He is the co-editor, with Jerome Mileur, of three volumes on twentieth century political reform: Progressivism and the New Democracy (1999); The New Deal and the Triumph of Liberalism (2002); and The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism (2005). 

His articles on American government and political history have appeared in Perspectives on Politics, Political Science Quarterly, Studies in American Political Development, PS: Political Science and Politics, the Journal of Policy History, Antitrust Law Journal, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Journal of Supreme Court History, American Political Thought, Social Science Quarterly, and several highly regarded edited volumes.

Milkis is co-founder and co-director of an all-university initiative, Project on Democracy and Capitalism, which is exploring the complex relationship between self-government and markets.  In March 2023, the Project convened a conference, funded by the Hewlett Foundation, titled “Can Democracy and Capitalism be Reconciled?” Through an examination of ideas, history, and policy, this conference explored the philosophical dimensions of the relationship between a free-enterprise system and democracy, probed the historical roots of the relationship, and considered policy proposals to buttress and reimagine democratic capitalism itself. A volume drawn from this conference will be published by Oxford University Press this Fall.