Career as researcher
Recurring topics in Jacobs' research include American democracy, health care reform, political communications, and central banking.
American democracy
Jacobs' first book, The Health of Nations, and related studies identified the political and institutional conditions that explain why two broadly similar countries – the U.S. and Britain – designed dramatically different health programs, the National Health Service in 1946 and the Medicare Act of 1965. He used American and British archival evidence to demonstrate that the preferences of citizens along with the organization of interest groups and the administrative capacity of government institutions were critical factors in accounting for the cross-national differences.
Jacobs's 2000 book Politicians Don’t Pander (co-authored with Robert Y. Shapiro) looked at how changes in contemporary American politics and, especially, political parties altered the conditions that had facilitated some level of government responsiveness prior to the 1970s; the result is a more insular policy-making process that is less responsive to the preferences of most citizens. The book demonstrates that the motivations of politicians during the 1980s and 1990s shifted from responding to majority opinion to crafting the words, arguments, and symbols to change public opinion to support the policies political elites and their allies and donors favored. Politicians Don’t Pander received awards from the American Political Science Association, the American Sociological Association, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Jacobs extended his analysis of elite efforts at manipulation with James N. Druckman in the 2015 book Who Governs? Presidents, Public Opinion, and Manipulation. Citing polls and other evidence from presidential archives, they reported that presidents starting with Lyndon Johnson used their private research on public opinion to design arguments and personal images to build personal popularity and win elections in order to defy the policy preferences of most Americans.
Jacobs's investigation of the sources of U.S. international economic and foreign policy confirmed the pattern of government unresponsiveness to the policy preferences of most Americans. In a 2005 study with Benjamin Page published in American Political Science Review, Jacobs' statistical analyses found that the views of business executives (rather than public opinion and policy experts) drove the policy of senior U.S. government officials.
The political polarization of elites is a defining feature of American politics that Jacobs has investigated. His 2009 book Class War? What Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality (with Benjamin Page) examines decades of public-opinion surveys, as well as their own comprehensive Inequality Survey, to make the case that the wide divides among politicians diverge from the attitudes of most Americans who both support government programs to create opportunity that levels the playing field and harbor the conservative values of individualism and self-reliance.
Jacobs' 2024 book Democracy Under Fire is an historical account of the rise of insurgents in American politics, exemplified by the outsider candidacy of Donald Trump. In the book, Jacobs examines how political reforms over the past 250 years ceded power over who is nominated to run for elected office to small cliques of ideologically-motivated party activists, interest groups, and donors. He writes that Trump's rise is not an aberration but a predictable outcome of trends deeply rooted in American history which accelerated in the last few decades. Jacobs points to reforms which could restrain the ambition of politicians who thrive on division and spur broad citizen engagement with tangible policy making.
Jacobs has published books on the passage of Medicare in 1965 and the failure of Bill Clinton’s effort at health reform in 1993-94 as well as the enactment of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 and its survival in the face of determined opposition. His 2015 book on the Affordable Care Act, Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know, co-written with Theda Skocpol, is in its third printing.
Jacobs has used the ferocious battles over the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to examine opportunities to mitigate America’s seemingly insurmountable partisan divide. His 2026 book Against All Odds: How Health Reform Endures (with Ling Zhu and Suzanne Mettler) explains the ACA’s improbable survival from near defeats. The book traces the ACA’s journey from the aggressive efforts at repeal to the eventual decision of congressional Republicans to accept many of its core programs and regulations even as they sharply reduced spending in some areas.
His article "Policy Threat, Partisanship, and the Case of the Affordable Care Act" (with Suzanne Mettler and Ling Zhu) unpacks a startling development: The ACA’s passage and implementation changed public opinion toward supporting the law including among Republicans.
Central banks
One of Jacobs' recent areas of research is the political dynamic of central banks that prevent them from acting as neutral servants of the "public good." His book Fed Power: How Finance Wins (with Desmond King) is an investigation of the Federal Reserve Bank’s bias toward finance in its response to the 2008 financial crisis. Fed Power was updated in its second edition to include the Biden administration. More recently, Jacobs and King convened an international team of researchers to investigate the variations across western countries in how central banks regulate risk, manage access to capital, and respond to the inequality generated by their policies. Picking Winners: Citizenship, Central Banks, and Consumer Finance (2026) demonstrates that central banks and financial regulators are often swayed by deeply resourced financial interests, the values and perspectives of capital over those of wage earners, and institutional designs that are biased to favor those with greater capital and income.
Political communications
Jacobs' book Talking Together: Public Deliberation in America and the Search for Community (co-authored with Fay Lomax Cook and Michael X. Delli Carpini) presents the first national empirical study of how Americans attempted to persuade each other about matters of politics or met in formally organized deliberative forums to discuss community concerns. The research in Talking Together indicated that more than one out of four Americans join organized deliberations – on par with more traditional forms of political engagement such as contacting a government official or attempting to persuade someone to vote for a favored candidate.
Jacobs is a longstanding co-editor of the University of Chicago Press series in American politics.
His research has received a number of awards as well as grants from, among others, the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the McKnight Foundation.
Career as public intellectual
Jacobs is a leading public intellectual, offering non-partisan commentary and programming on American politics and government policy. In 2005, Jacobs founded the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance (CSPG) at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Under his direction, it has become an innovator of research and initiatives to strengthen democratic institutions and civic engagement, with a mission to foster conversations and collaborations across the differences that scar politics in Minnesota and America.
Professor Jacobs developed the Certificate in Election Administration, which is the country’s largest program to offer non-partisan professional training in election administration. The program now offers 10 courses and a webinar spotlighting pressing challenges facing election administrators.
He also runs an iconic leadership development program called the Policy Fellows, which has supported Minnesota's civic culture for 35 years. Its alumni include U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, former U.S. Senator Norm Coleman and many other prominent leaders in government, business, and non-profits.
In addition, CSPG established the "Dialogue Across Difference" series to host dozens of public conversations on state and national politics and public policy. Guests include prominent scholars and public figures including Tom Friedman, Henry Kissinger, Amy Klobuchar, and Nancy Pelosi. More than 100,000 viewers have attended these programs online in addition to the in-person attendees.
Jacobs established the “Conservative Voices” series with Vin Weber to broaden intellectual diversity on campus by including prominent conservative thinkers and policy makers. Guests have included Ramesh Ponnuru (Senior Editor, National Review), Robert Doar (President, American Enterprise Institute), Stephen Hadley (National Security Advisor, George W. Bush), and Stephen Moore (FOX economic commentator and Club for Growth founder).
Jacobs has been widely recognized for his non-partisan work with CSPG, the media, and civic organizations. The Minneapolis University Rotary Club awarded Jacobs its “Citizen of the Year Award” in 2017. The University of Minnesota recognized his community engagement with its “Outstanding Community Service Award” in 2014.
In 2003, he chaired the American Political Science Association's Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, the organization's first formal task force in half a century on the consequences of rising economic inequality for American democracy. The Task Force's report in 2005 spurred increased media attention, research, and teaching on the political effects of rising economic and racial disparities.
For nearly 15 years, Jacobs taught with former Vice President Walter Mondale at the Humphrey School. Their course concentrated on the U.S. Constitution and national security and tracked the pattern across Democratic and Republican administrations of growing presidential power since the Second World War.
Personal life
Jacobs is married to Julie Schumacher, a Regents Professor of English at the University of Minnesota. She is also a novelist, recognized most notably for Dear Committee Members, for which she became the first woman to win the Thurber Prize for American Humor. She has also written 11 other novels as well as numerous short stories, which have been anthologized in the O. Henry Awards and The Best American Short Stories collections. Her most recent book is Patient, Female, a collection of her short stories. They met in an English class during their first year at Oberlin College.
They have two adult daughters, Emma Lillian Jacobs and Isabella Nan Jacobs.
