Samuel Bagg is associate professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina, where he teaches political theory. His work reimagines democratic ideals and practices in light of realistic expectations about social inequality and political power. His first book, The Dispersion of Power: A Critical Realist Theory of Democracy (2024), argues that democracy is best understood not as maximizing collective self-rule, but as a way of protecting public power from capture by elites. He has co-edited Democracy and Competition (2026), which rethinks what kinds of competition actually serve democracy. His research has appeared in journals including the American Political Science Review and the Journal of Politics.