Welcome to Narrowing The Field, an email course from the Brookings Institution.

As a non-profit, non-partisan public policy research organization, the Brookings Institution brings together more than 300 leading experts in government and academia from all over the world to provide the highest quality research, policy recommendations, and analysis on a full range of public policy issues.

The U.S. electoral process is one of these policy issues, and Elaine Kamarck is one of the leading experts on the history, present, and future of this process. Her book Primary Politics forms the basis of this timely course on how we pick our presidential candidates.

Each Sunday starting January 12, you’ll get an email in your inbox, covering a new theme in the course. On the syllabus:

• Lesson 1: How 1968 changed the way parties pick their candidates
• Lesson 2: What is a caucus; what is a primary?
• Lesson 3: Who are the delegates and how do they matter to picking the nominee?
• Lesson 4: What happens at the conventions, and how is the VP picked?
• Lesson 5: Is there a better way to pick presidential candidates?

We hope you enjoy, and learn from, this course.

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