When it comes to passing actual legislation, putting it forward and getting it all the way through the process, it can be difficult to measure exactly which legislators are effective. Not to mention which types of legislators tend to be more effective, moderates or extremists? And does majority-party membership increase effectives?In an innovative new paper, “Effective Lawmaking Across Congressional Eras”, University of Pittsburgh professor of political science Max Goplerud proposes a new measure of legislative effectiveness that may help us to answer some of these complex questions.

When we talk about the interpretation and ultimately implementation of policy we’re not talking about Congress so much as the Administrative State. But what happens when those who work in those agencies decide through their positions to not only sabotage a policy they’re meant to carry out, but perhaps the whole agency?In a recent paper titled “Administrative Sabotage” Rutgers law professor, David Noll, looks at the history of how agencies sabotage themselves and discuses what this means for a democracy and for the power of the Presidency.  

When we talk about policy choices around redistribution there is an assumption so obvious that most people never question it. That politicians are more responsive to the desires of the rich, and that policy preferences of the poor don’t hold as much sway. But what if that assumption was wrong?In a recent paper by Boston University Economist Raymond Fisman titled “Whose Preference Matter For Redistribution: Cross-Country Evidence” uses cross-sectional data from 93 countries to see how much a government redistributes lines up with how much redistribution citizens of different socioeconomic statuses actually want. The findings are surprising.

Hello listeners! Our team took some end of the year time off, but we know your holiday travel wouldn’t be complete without some in-depth political science research. So, we’re release some episodes we think are going to be very relevant as we move into an election year. And thanks to everyone who listened to our podcast this year. We don’t make money off this show, it’s a labor of love to make important scientific research interesting and accessible…but your support is crucial to helping us to continue that mission. The data shows that the number one way podcasts grow is through word of mouth. If you could please just tell a friend, a family member, co-worker to listen to our show it would help us immensely. Thanks again and please enjoy the holidays.

Hello listeners! Our team took some end of the year time off, but we know your holiday travel wouldn’t be complete without some in-depth political science research. So, we’re release some episodes we think are going to be very relevant as we move into an election year. And thanks to everyone who listened to our podcast this year. We don’t make money off this show, it’s a labor of love to make important scientific research interesting and accessible…but your support is crucial to helping us to continue that mission. The data shows that the number one way podcasts grow is through word of mouth. If you could please just tell a friend, a family member, co-worker to listen to our show it would help us immensely. Thanks again and please enjoy the holidays.

The recent crisis in the Israel and Palestine conflict has added fuel to the already heated debate over free speech in our politics and on college campuses. Does the scientific literature having anything to tell us about the health of public discourse in these domains?A recent paper by Harvard Ph.D. candidate Yihong Huang titled “Breaking the Spiral of Silence” holds some answers. It looks at how the attention we pay, or don’t pay, to who stays silent in a debate can exacerbate self-censorship.

There is a political puzzle that has become prominent in the last few decades, especially with the recent turmoil over the Republican led Speaker of the House: how do a small group of extremists manage to get their way despite being a minority of members?In a recent paper, “Organizing at the Extreme: Hardline Strategy and Institutional Design” University of Chicago Political Scientist Ruth Bloch Rubin takes that question head on. Her conclusions could tell us a lot about the bargaining strategies of extremists, when and why they work, and how those strategies may create sticky organization practices and structures.

We often say on this podcast that the American electorate is not polarized but the elites are, and that this polarization causes policy gridlock. But what if it’s the other way around? Is it possible that gridlock in government is actually causing polarization and a turn toward extremist candidates?That’s the assertion of a paper called “From Gridlock to Polarization” by Barton Lee, the Chair of Political Economy and eDemocracy at ETH Zurich. Lee uses a large-scale online experiment to show how voters become more willing to vote for extremist candidates. It leads to some fascinating implications for how we should think about the consequences of ineffective government.Paper link:https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4521276

When political commentators talk about polarization, they often mean a partisan ideological divide: the left vs the right, republicans vs democrats, progressives vs conservatives. But what if there is a different dichotomy driving our political disagreements that is orthogonal to ideological differences? That’s what University of Miami political scientist Joseph Uscinski argues in a recent paper, “American Politics in Two Dimensions: Partisan and Ideological Identities versus Anti-Establishment Orientations. Using two national surveys from 2019 and 2020, he shows that anti-establishment and anti-elite sentiments may be more of a driving force in our politics than partisan ideology. Paper link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ajps.12616

If there is one thing the right and left seem to agree on it’s that money distorts our politics. It allows the rich to shape policy, choose who gets elected, and escape consequences. But what if this common belief isn’t as true as you think?On our second live episode, we look back to famous paper in the political science literature, “Why Is There so Little Money in U.S. Politics?” by Stephen Ansolabehere, John Figueiredo and James Snyder. Their provocative paper asks an often-overlooked question: if political money is so effective, why isn’t there more of it?This episode was recorded live at the University of Chicago Podcast Network Festival.

One of Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign promises is to upend the modern civil service through an executive order called “Schedule F”. Democrats and Republicans have been fighting over this administrative state since its conception, but why is this area of government so divisive and what power does it really hold?The history of the civil services’ origins is one that holds many lessons about the rise of presidential power, the fall of the party system, and the polarization of politics. And there is no better expert on these topics than University of Virginia political scientist, Sidney Milkis. His 1993 book “The President and the Parties” is one of those books that seems to always be relevant but, with increased conservative focus on the administrative state, it is especially worth revisiting today.

It’s one of the most common refrains in political discourse today: social media is the source of polarization. It’s a difficult proposition to empirically study because companies like Meta and X don’t share their data publicly. Until now.In a landmark series of papers, three in Science and one in Nature, Princeton political scientists Andy Guess and a massive team of researchers were given unique access by Meta to study how the platform and algorithms affected users’ attitudes and behaviors during the 2020 election. The findings are surprising and fascinating, even as the project itself raises intriguing questions about how to conduct research on a company in partnership with that very same company.

There is no political topic that can get people’s blood boiling quite like partisan gerrymandering. Many even go so far as to call it an afront to our democracy. But what do we know about how effective it is and what the data shows about its outcomes?In a new paper, “Widespread Partisan Gerrymandering Mostly Cancels Nationally, But Reduces Electoral Competition” Princeton political scientist, Kosuke Imai, uses a novel methodological approach to try and document the effect of partisan gerrymandering. What he finds is surprising and may lead people who participate in it to re-think whether it’s worth the effort.Link to paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2217322120

The assumption in political science has always been that electing challengers can lead to a downturn in performance. It takes time to do all the hiring involved in establishing a new government, and there is always a learning curve about processes and procedures. But a surprising new paper shows the opposite might be true.In “Electoral Turnovers”, Boston University economist Benjamin Marx uses a vast new data set to show that ousting the incumbent always seems to lead to improved performance, especially economic performance.Paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4039485

The common refrain in political coverage today says that each side of the aisle is living in an information bubble. There is a partisan knowledge gap between the facts Democrats know and the facts Republicans know. May believe this gap could be the downfall of our democracy. But what if that gap isn’t as large as we think?In a new paper by independent researcher, Gaurav Sood, titled “A Gap In Our Understanding? Reconsidering the Evidence for Partisan Knowledge Gaps” he finds that the way we study knowledge gaps is flawed, and that differences in factual knowledge may not be as high as supposed.Paper Link: https://www.gsood.com/research/papers/partisan_gap.pdf

There’s a long tradition in political science of using voter rationality to test the health of our democracy. But could this myopia be misguided? Are there any situations where irrational and uninformed voters could actually generate a healthier democracy?We’re taking a short summer break to catch up on some incredible episodes we have in the works. But in the meantime, we’re going to re-share some of our prior conversations that we think are the most vital and fascinating. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you soon with new episodes of Not Another Politics Podcast.

Partisan misinformation. Many people think it comes from the news people watch. When it comes to cable news, Fox and CNN have pretty partisan viewers. So, what would happen if Fox viewers tuned into CNN for a month? Would they suddenly adopt different views more aligned with CNN?We’re taking a short summer break to catch up on some incredible episodes we have in the works. But in the meantime, we’re going to re-share some of our prior conversations that we think are the most vital and fascinating. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you soon with new episodes of Not Another Politics Podcast.

As the Supreme Court debates whether to end affirmative action, concerns about the power of implicit racial bias to shape who gets ahead in America are as salient as ever. But what do we know about the extent and power of this racism to drive voting decisions? Is there a scientific way to measure it?In a new paper “Disfavor or Favor? Assessing the Valence of White Americans’ Racial Attitudes” political scientist Tim Ryan provides a new framework for how perceived racial attitudes line up with voting. It takes on the faults of our existing racial bias literature and provides striking evidence about how to characterize white American’s racial attitudes. Ryan is a professor at The University of North Caroline at Chapel Hill. You can find the paper at this link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3701331 

We’ve become deeply familiar with stimulus checks in the last few years, but what isn’t clear is what affect these transfers may have on elections. Could stimulus checks be enough for citizens to change their votes to the party handing out the money and if so, is this a way for politicians to buy votes?Northwestern Professor of economics Silvia Vannutelli explores these questions in a paper titled “The Political Economy of Stimulus Transfers”. She looks at stimulus payments in Italy in 2014 and uncovers some surprising findings. Not only did these transfers appear to “purchase” some votes, but the effect seem to persist into the future.

We all know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but if we’re being honest we all do it on occasion anyway. Could it be that we also elect our politicians just based on how they look? Of course, there’s the old idea of looking “presidential”, but how much power does that really have to sway an election?A famous paper by University of Chicago behavioral scientist Alexander Todorov provides us with some surprising insights. Just by flashing two faces of competing politicians for mere seconds, participants were able to accurately judge the outcomes of elections based on how competent they thought the politicians looked. It’s a curious finding that raises more questions than it answers, and we dig into both on this episode.  

When citizens directly appeal to their government, are their concerns ignored or taken seriously? It’s an important question for understanding norms around accountability, especially in authoritarian regimes. To find some answers, University of Chicago Professor of Public Policy Shaoda Wang helped develop a clever field experiment evaluating how Chinese regulators respond to citizen appeals about companies violating pollution standards. The experiment is fascinating on its own, but it also provides a wealth of data about the effectiveness of citizen appeals, how corporations respond when complaints are public or private, and even the incentives companies follow when it comes to adhering to pollution standards. 

Why is populism on the rise across the globe? One story says this movement is driven by anti-elite and anti-establishment sentiment, that they just want to throw the bums out. Another says it’s driven by identity politics, an anti-immigrant pro-nativist ideology. Both stories don’t leave room for much hope. But what if there was another story that not only gives us some hope but supplies a clear solution.A new paper by economist Giacomo Ponzetto from the Barcelona School of Economics provides us just that story. It’s called “Do Incompetent Politicians Breed Populist Voters? Evidence from Italian Municipalities”, and it looks at home simply increasing the effectiveness of local government may decrease support for populist candidates.Paper link: https://bse.eu/research/working-papers/do-incompetent-politicians-breed-populist-voters-evidence-italian

In the runup to the 2020 election, the academic journal Nature made the unprecedented decision to endorse Joe Biden for President. During an era when trust in science has never seemed more crucial, this decision led many to wonder if explicitly political statements increase or decrease public trust in science.Luckily, one PhD graduate from the Stanford School of Business designed a well-crafted experiment to find an answer. Using the Nature endorsement as a test case, Floyd Zhang wrote a paper that helps us explore the effects of public trust when scientific journals make endorsements.

Paper link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3273001

Paper: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1952717

Paper link: https://ideas.repec.org/a/now/jnlpip/113.00000063.html 

The popular narrative these days is that democracies around the globe are backsliding. If we turn to countries like Hungary, Poland, and Venezuela, this threat certainly is true — authoritarian dictators have contributed to democratic decline. But what does the global picture reveal? Does the claim hold true? A new paper by Anne Meng and Andrew Little investigates this question, by analyzing more objective indicators such as incumbent performance in elections.Anne Meng is an associate professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. Link to paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4327307 

On this show, we focus a lot on ideological polarization but it’s important to remember that politics is about more than ideology or even policy victories. It’s about distribution and redistribution of goods and services in return for party support, votes. This view of politics is called clientelism, and it often goes overlooked.One of the landmark papers on clientelism is from Tariq Thatchil, a political scientist at The University of Pennsylvania. It won the award for best paper in the APSR in 2018, and it’s called “How Clients Select Brokers, Competition and Choice in India’s Slums”. Their investigation prompts a re-thinking of the dynamics of clientelism and perhaps even holds some lessons for how to re-think the ideological view of politics as well.https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5310a4d8e4b05a56d51f81c8/t/5b4cbc711ae6cf1a9051724e/1531755638231/Auerbach_Thachil_APSR.pdf

For better or worse, one of the biggest stories in US politics today is the detection of election fraud, or in many cases the lack of election fraud. But determining whether fraud happened in an election can be difficult, even while proving the validity of elections for some has become increasingly important. Wouldn’t it be incredible if we could just plug a set of data from an election into a toolkit that could give us an answer if fraud occurred? Well, one political scientist from the University of Michigan, Walter Mebane believes he may have developed just such a toolkit. It’s called “election forensics”. Much like machine learning algorithms, when tested in the field it does seem to perform fantastically well, but figuring out exactly how it works can be a complicated web to untangle. We give it a shot on this episode.

As we approach the anniversary of the January 6th attack on the US Capitol, we wanted to reflect on where we are as a country and whether politics are really as polarized as they seem. Our co-host Will Howell recently joined another University of Chicago podcast called Big Brains to discuss these very questions. We're going to share that episode with you this week, we hope you enjoy it, and look forward to being back with a new episode in a few weeks.

Lately it feels like politicians are favoring smaller groups of their constituents over the majority of them. If you've been skeptical about whether this favoritism exists, there's a new theory that supports it. Some voters who are more vocal or intense about political issues are more likely to get their local politician's attention, and these smaller groups of constituents are more likely to get what they want.In his new book, Frustrated Majorities: How Issue Intensity Enables Smaller Groups of Voters to Get What They Want, University of San Diego political scientist Seth J. Hill uses new empirical evidence to tackle a question that has been floating on the radar: Is democracy broken or are politicians becoming more undemocratic with their approach to win votes?

Paper: https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/doi/10.1162/rest_a_01160/109262/Cross-Country-Trends-in-Affective-Polarization?redirectedFrom=fulltext

We took some time off to enjoy the holiday with our families, but in the wake of the 2024 mid-terms, we’re going to re-share this crucial episode and relevant episode. When it comes to polarization, most people in American politics blame the voters. But much of the political science data suggests most voters are actually moderates. So, where are all the moderate politicians? In a new book, “Who Wants To Run?: How The Devaluing of Political Office Drives Polarization”, Stanford political scientist Andrew Hall argues that the reason we don’t have more moderate politicians is actually quite simple…there just aren’t any incentives for them to run.

This episode was recorded live at the NASPAA conference in Chicago. With the midterms upon us, we decided to look back at a piece of landmark scholarship that may be able to tell us something about the dynamics of personal interactions between representatives and their constituencies. It’s by political scientist Richard Fenno called “U.S. House Members in Their Constituencies: An Exploration”. We often assume that voters cast their ballots based on ideology and policy, but it could it be more personal than that? Fennon took a novel approach to answering that question that he calls “soaking and poking”. We explore what his discoveries can tell us about our current elections and how representatives think about their interactions with their constituents. Paper: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1960097#metadata_info_tab_contents

One theme on our show is trying to make sense of why elites appear to be so polarized when the larger public is more moderate. We almost always study these trends in the U.S. but could we look to another country for insight? A country like the UK perhaps? In her paper “Has The British Public Depolarized Along with Political Elites?” University of Oxford political scientist Jane Green measures the differences between elite and public polarization during the eighties and nineties when the parties actually depolarized. Did elite depolarization lead to public depolarization, and what lessons do this data hold for the US?

There might not be a more controversial political hack than members of Congress being legally allowed to trade stocks. Infamously, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, has been regularly accused of insider trading. Recently the House of Representatives has introduced a bill that would prohibit members of Congress, their spouses, and children, from trading stocks. Although the bill has stalled, it's renewed a really important lingering question: are members of Congress actually advanced investors, and how much are they benefiting from inside information? In a 2014 paper by University of Chicago's Andy Eggers and Stanford University's Jens Hainmueller titled, Political Capital: Corporate Connections and Stock Investments in the U.S. Congress, they look at a wide data set of investments made by hundreds of members of Congress between 2004 and 2008, to see whether or not they're getting an unfair advantage. The results may surprise you.

For years, political scholars and pundits have claimed that primary elections are exacerbating polarization and with the 2022 midterm elections approaching this year has been no different. With many extremist candidates on both sides of the aisle, it certainly feels like this claim should be true, but does the political science back that up? To find an answer we turn to Harvard political scientist James Snyder and his 2010 paper “Primary Elections and Partisan Polarization in the U.S. Congress”. The findings are surprising and may have some key insights for how we should think about primary elections in the U.S.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been an era of misinformation. From social media to cable news, the spread of false or misleading information about COVID vaccines has been rampant. Some social media platforms have moved more aggressively by trying to flag misleading posts with disclaimers. Can fact-checking reduce the spread of misinformation? And perhaps more importantly, can fact-checks change people's minds about getting vaccinated? In a new study, George Washington University political scientist Ethan Porter decided to look at COVID-19 misinformation spanning across ten countries, from Brazil to Nigeria, to the United States. He and his co-authors evaluated factual corrections in these ten countries to see whether or not they changed people's beliefs and whether they got vaccinated.

In our hyper-polarized climate, it is often said that partisans determine their policy positions not based on thought and reason but on opposition to the other party. If I’m a Republican and I hear that Nancy Pelosi supports a particular policy, I’ll reflexively take the opposite stance. There is a literature in political science that suggests this is the case, but could it be wrong? In a new paper, “Updating amidst Disagreement: New Experimental Evidence on Partisan Cues”, our very own Will Howell and Anthony Fowler demonstrate that more robust research designs leads to a completely different conclusion. The American public may be more open to deliberative policy positions than we think; they just need to be given the option.

The midterm elections are fast approaching, and with rampant inflation one of the main concerns for Democrats is the state of the economy. It’s commonly accepted that some voters cast their ballots solely on the price of gas and bread, but does the science back that up? There is a classic paper by political scientist Gerald Kramer from 1971 that can help us answer that question. It systematically evaluates the relationship between changes in the various dimensions of the economy and two party vote share over the better part of a century. On this episode, we discuss that paper, what it can tell us about the Democrat’s chances in the 2022 midterms, and if the possible effects of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Something curious has happened in American politics. Andrew Yang of 2016 presidential election fame has launched a third party, The Forward Party, and he's attracting some attention. A key feature of this party is a belief in ranked choice voting and raising up the possibility that through ranked choice voting, we might recover our our democracy. We're taking a week off to spend time with family, but we wanted to resurrect our discussion with our colleague Andy Eggers, who has written at length on ranked choice voting and the relationship between ranked choice voting and strategic voting. We hope you enjoy it. And we'll be back in two weeks with a brand new episode of Not Another Politics Podcast.

Nearly a decade ago, the Supreme Court effectively removed the "preclearance" process in its Shelby County v. Holder decision. That process had been implemented for decades as part of the Voting Rights Act and required places with a history of racial discrimination to get approval from the Justice Department before changing their voting procedures. When the Shelby decision came down, voting rights advocates and mobilization groups panicked. There were widespread fears that this decision would dramatically reduce voter participation in communities of color. Did they? The University of Rochester's Mayya Komisarchik and Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Ariel White sought to answer that question in their recent paper, "Throwing Away the Umbrella: Minority Voting after the Supreme Court’s Shelby Decision." In this episode, we speak to Komisarchik about the impacts of the Shelby decision and whether our fears about countermobilization and voter suppression tactics have held true.

Advocates for the striking down of Roe by the Supreme Court say this will improve our politics by allowing people’s preferences to be better represented at the State level. But do State and local governments accurately match the preferences of their citizens when responding to their demands? It’s a difficult question to answer, but one paper by NYU political scientist Julia Payson and co-author Gabor Simonovits at Central European University, “Locally controlled minimum wages are no closer to public preferences” provides a possible answer by way of locally set minimum wages. When local governments increase their minimum wages, do they accurately match local preferences? The answer is surprising, and has implications for policies beyond just minimum wage.

There’s long been a belief that the Supreme Court rarely departs from precedent. But as the court appears to intend to strike down Roe, we’re wondering what the data tell us about how consistent the Supreme Court has been at honoring precedent. And, is the Supreme Court more likely to depart from precedent in constitutional cases than other types? To break it all down, we spoke to Washington University law professor Lee Epstein, about her 2015 paper, "The Decision To Depart (or Not) From Constitutional Precedent: An Empirical Study of the Roberts Court", co-authored by William M. Landes and Adam Liptak.

There are many questions surrounding the nature of money in politics, but one of the first order questions we should be asking is who exactly is donating that money? We now have access to more data than ever due to a dramatic increase in small donations through online fundraising platforms. Georgetown University Economist Laurent Bouton digs through this new data set in a recent paper “Small Campaign Donors” to answer all sorts of questions like: do big or small donors give more strategically, has there been an increase in donations to extremist candidates, and are the coasts influencing elections more than the rest of the country by donating more money?

As the academic year draws to a close at The University of Chicago, our hosts are busy attending to the last minute activities of a professor. So, this week we wanted to re-share one of our favorite episodes interrogating a radically different proposal to fix the filibuster rather than abolishing it altogether. The filibuster is still one of the most contentious aspects of our politics today, and how it changes or doesn't change has a powerful impact on the most pressing political issues of the moment.

One of the biggest questions surrounding the conflict in Ukraine is to what extent the shadow of nuclear war affects the degree of involvement by Western countries. Much of the literature in nuclear deterrence theory assumes the incentives of mutually assured destruction are strong enough to avoid a nuclear war, and hence the existence of nuclear capabilities in Russia and the West should not play much of a role in how the conflict progresses. But one paper by a late University of California Berkeley political scientist calls this theory into question. On this episode, we discuss Robert Powell’s “Nuclear Brinkmanship, Limited War, and Military Power”. In it, Powell builds a model that explains how conflicts can lead to nuclear war even under mutually assured destruction, but also how threat of that war changes the dynamics of any conflict from the beginning. Both findings give us a number of insights into the current situation in Ukraine.

When it comes to cable news, Fox and CNN have pretty partisan viewers. So, what would happen if Fox viewers tuned into CNN for a month? Would they suddenly adopt different views more aligned with CNN? UC Berkeley political scientist David Broockman and his colleagues wanted to find out. When they paid Fox News viewers to watch CNN, they found that Fox News viewers became more supportive of vote-by-mail, and less likely to believe that then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden wanted to eliminate all police funding. The findings have made huge waves in the media, so we decided to take our unique microscope to the paper to see if we can get a fuller picture of what these findings tell us.

By now, we've heard a lot about how state-owned Russian television is distorting the truth about the war in Ukraine. But Russian TV doesn't just reach Russian viewers. Some Ukrainians can receive its analog television signals.To understand how this propaganda influences Ukrainians, we turned to New York University political scientist Arturas Rozenas, to talk about his 2017 paper, "Electoral Effects of Biased Media: Russian Television in Ukraine".

We know that lobbyists have the power to influence politics. But not all lobbyists are working on behalf of corporate interest groups. Sometimes, city officials actually hire lobbyists to represent the interests of their constituents in the state legislature. Why would cities do this? This is what New York University political science professor Julia Payson explores in her paper, "The Partisan Logic of City Mobilization: Evidence From State Lobbying Disclosures." She finds that local governments are more likely to depend on lobbyists when there are partisan and ideological mismatches with their state legislators.

Paper link: https://dthompson.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2021/12/Ferrer_et_al_Election_Admin.pdf 

Russia has invaded Ukraine. This horrible global crisis raises questions about Putin’s ultimate ambitions, and how nations can make credible deterrent threats in incredible circumstances. We’re not experts on the Ukraine conflict, but we can dive into the political science research to get some clarity on the underlying dynamics that may be at play. And there’s no better paper to turn to than “Fear, Appeasement, and the Effectiveness of Deterrence” from Alexander V. Hirsch at Caltech.

You've probably heard this one before: college football games and shark attacks influence elections in favor of incumbents. Surprising findings like these are exciting, and seem to tell us a lot about the stability of our democracy and the rationality of voters. If you listen to our podcasts regularly, you’ve probably also heard this one: Anthony Fowler doesn’t think voters are irrational. On this episode, we cover a back and forth of academic papers our co-host had arguing that the original result about college football games was a false-positive, and what lessons we should draw from this exchange.

Link to paper: https://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/beliefs%20qje%201%20web.pdf

Paper: http://davidyyang.com/pdfs/famine_draft.pdf

Paper link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/lsq.12206

We often think of polarization as a single policy spectrum with Democrats to the left and Republicans to the right. But what if this entire framework is wrong, and this error itself is worsening the divides in our country? This is what Michigan State University political scientist Matt Grossman argues in his article: “Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats: The Asymmetry of American Party Politics”. He says that what really divides us isn’t differing policy views but different views of the purpose of government itself. And, perhaps offers us a way out of our current polarization spiral. Grossman is also the host of another fantastic podcast "The Science of Politics", which we highly recommend you give a listen!

We took some time off to enjoy the holiday and our families. We’re going to reshare this crucial episode about how the wealthy retain power in a time of inequality this week, and we’ll be back with a brand new episode next week! Thanks for listening!

If you watch cable news or open your twitter feed it may seem like Americans are more polarized than ever. It certainly feels like everyone is on the far ends of two diametrically opposed ideologies. But, if you look closely at the data, this current conventional wisdom may be wrong. Our very own co-host Anthony Fowler has developed a reputation on our podcast for being the champion of the idea that most voters are actually moderates. On this episode, he puts his data where his mouth is, and shares the findings of his aptly named paper, “Moderates”, laying out the case for why there are more moderates than we think.

There’s a long tradition in political science of using voter rationality to test the health of our democracy. But could this myopia be misguided? Are there any situations where irrational and uninformed voters could actually generate a healthier democracy?That’s exactly what University of Chicago political scientist Ethan BdM examines in his paper “Is Voter Competence Good for Voters?: Information, Rationality, and Democratic Performance”. Using formal models, he lays out the possibility that information and rationality do not always lead to a better democracy and strikes directly at the heart of this foundational literature.Paper link: http://home.uchicago.edu/bdm/PDF/voter_competence.pdf

When it comes to polarization, most people in American politics blame the voters. But much of the political science data suggests most voters are actually moderates. So, where are all the moderate politicians?In a new book, “Who Wants To Run?: How The Devaluing of Political Office Drives Polarization”, Stanford political scientist Andrew Hall argues that the reason we don’t have more moderate politicians is actually quite simple…there just aren’t any incentives for them to run.Link to book: Who Wants To Run?: How The Devaluing of Political Office Drives Polarization  

In 1964, political scientist Philip Converse published one of the most citied papers in the discipline: “The nature of belief systems in mass publics”. It attempted to define just how consistent and sophisticated are the political beliefs of the American public.In our current moment, when democracy seems in the balance of an ideologically polarized society, it’s hard to think of paper with more relevance. But how accurate is it, and how has the paper itself pushed political science, creating a feedback loop, to focus on particular questions instead of others?The podcast is going to try something different this week. We’re going to look back at this foundational paper, discuss its implications for today, and investigate how it has shaped political science.Paper Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08913810608443650 

As the delta variant of the coronavirus continues to surge across the U.S. the question of should we lockdown again is on a lot of people’s minds. But, shouldn’t we stop and look at the data to see if lockdowns work? In a new paper, our very own Anthony Fowler has done just that. And what the data say about the efficacy of state imposed shelter in place orders may surprise you.

The University of Chicago Podcast Network is excited to announce the launch of a new show, it’s called "Entitled" and it’s about human rights. Co-hosted by lawyers and UChicago Law School Professors, Claudia Flores and Tom Ginsburg, Entitled explores the stories around why rights matter and what’s the matter with rights. We’re taking a much needed break at the end of the summer, so we're going to share the first episode of that show with you this week, and recommend you go subscribe! We’ll be back in two weeks with a new episode of Not Another Politics Podcast!

There’s a long standing debate in political science about the problem of strategic voting: when voters cast their ballots not in line with their true preferences, but for the candidate they hate the least whom they think is also most likely to win.In a new paper, University of Chicago political scientist Andrew Eggers shows that a completely different system, ranked-choice voting, could reduce strategic voting and create opportunities for people to vote in line with their true preferences.Paper link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2komhumusf8yfr2/strategic_voting_in_AV_v29.pdf?dl=0 

You’ve probably seen a lot of surveys recently about how many Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen, or that they support the January 6th insurrection on Capitol Hill, or that they don’t trust the vaccine. Do these responses predict their behavior in the real world? Or are they just partisan cheerleading? Northwestern Political Scientist Mary McGrath looks into this question in her paper “Economic Behavior and The Partisan Perceptual Screen.” By combing through data about survey responses and spending patterns before and after presidential elections, she investigates whether partisans truly believe it when they say the economy is getting better when one of their own occupies the White House. If partisans do believe what they say, shouldn’t their financial decisions change accordingly? And if these decisions don’t change, what does that mean for how we should think about survey responses in general? Paper Link: https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.northwestern.edu/dist/b/3288/files/2019/10/2017-McGrath-Partisan-Screen.pdf  

Whether it’s trying to convince you to vote for a particular candidate or get vaccinated, the identity of the person who knocks on your door may matter. So who are the people who volunteer to do this canvassing? Are they likely to succeed? These are all questions that Harvard political scientist Ryan Enos investigates in his paper, “Party Activists As Campaign Advertisers: The Ground Campaign As A Principal-Agent Problem.” Using a rare dataset from Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign, Enos delves into the politics of door to door campaigns, and we try and tease out some lessons for our current efforts to persuade people to get vaccinated. Link To Paper: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/renos/files/enoshershpa.pdf

Infrastructure. It’s one of the hottest topics in politics today. But what does the research say about the effects and politics of infrastructure investment? Political scientist, Jon Rogowski, from the University of Chicago has a surprising paper that shows the long-term economic outcomes of post office developments in the United States. But it also gives us a lot to think about when it comes to who benefits, misses out, or even loses when infrastructure gets political. Paper: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/rogowski/files/post_office_development_ajps_final.pdf 

It seems like extremists politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene receive a disproportionate amount of attention and money. This has led many political actors to believe that extremism is good politics. There’s even some scientific research to back up that claim. But a new paper by Professor of Politics at Princeton, Brandice Canes-Wrone, shows the exact opposite. It shows that, in fact, moderates may have better chances of getting elected than extremists. So, should more politicians take a moderate approach?

The debate about abolishing the filibuster isn’t going anywhere. Proponents say it forces compromise and consensus, while detractors claim it leads to gridlock and minority rule. But is there a third option?   Harvard scholar, Kenneth Shepsle, has a radically different proposal that addresses all these concerns without abolishing the filibuster altogether. We discuss his idea on this episode.

A lot of people are unhappy with the ideological make-up of the Supreme Court. They say it doesn’t reflect the majority of the country. President Biden’s commission tasked with reforming the Supreme Court started meeting for the first time in May of this year. One of the proposals they’re going to consider is setting term limits on Justices. But they’re far from the first group to consider this idea. Adam Chilton is a Professor of Law at The University of Chicago Law School and the author of a paper the proposes a set of Supreme Court reforms involving terms limits, and then runs simulations to show how the make-up of the Court could have been different if their reforms were in place. If we had term limits from the beginning, could we have avoided the problems people have with the Court?

We’ve been doing this podcast for over a year and we’ve covered a lot of research, but each paper is far from the final word on any topic. On this episode, it’s time to do some updating. We’re going to take three recent papers and show how they change or deepen our understanding of prior papers we’ve covered on this podcast.  

Does the ability for minority parties to delay and obstruct legislation force the majority party to only pass bills that are more moderate? It’s a question that informs much of our political debate around dilatory tactics like the filibuster. University of Michigan Political Scientist, Christian Fong, has a paper that models this question and argues that these delay and obstruct abiliities lead to policies that are closer to what the median voter may want. We discuss that paper, the filibuster and the possible strategies of Sen. Joe Manchin on this episode.

There’s a lot of debate in our politics about whether we should have stricter voter ID laws. But both sides are having an argument based almost entirely on assumptions because data on the real effect of these laws are scarce. Not anymore. In a brand new paper, Stanford Political Scientist Justin Grimmer gives us a fresh look at whether stricter voter ID laws decrease turnout during elections. The numbers may surprise you.

This year the U.S. will go through its decennial redistricting process, which is resurfacing our national conversation around gerrymandering. But Stanford Professor of Political Science, Jonathan Rodden, says gerrymandering isn't the least of our problems when it comes to the politics of geography. In his book, "Why Cities Lose", Rodden illustrates how we can still end up with minority majority rule, regardless of gerrymandering, due to the urban-rural divide. So, if the Democrats want to win more legislative seats, should they move to the suburbs?

Are land-use regulations incredibly boring? Not quite. As our guest argues, these seemingly banal policies could be causing modern-day segregation. In a new paper, Jessica Trounstine, chair of the political science department a the University of California Merced, makes a strong case for why land-use policies aren’t as race-neutral as they seem, and why we need to pay more attention to them.

We’re constantly told that we’re trapped in media “echo chambers”, that our media diets mirror our political leanings. But what do the data say? Is it possible that a majority of us have a much more moderate media diet than we assume? A new paper by Andrew Guess, Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton, provides a completely unique data set that complicates our assumptions about America’s “echo chambers” and media diets. Paper: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3rjsnp8k3im7377/AGuess_OMD_AJPS.pdf?dl=0

When was the last time you voted split-ticket in an election? It may not be surprising to hear that our elections have become increasingly nationalized in the last few decades. Most people vote for a single party straight down the ballot. The question is, why?     Daniel Moskowitz, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Harris School of Public Policy, says the answer may be the massive reduction of local news. On this episode, we speak with Moskowitz about why nationalized elections are a problem, the key role of local news, and what we might do to fix things.   Paper: <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/local-news-information-and-the-nationalization-of-us-elections/4AEEA64CB7EC2CF384434AB0482E63F4"> https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/local-news-information-and-the-nationalization-of-us-elections/4AEEA64CB7EC2CF384434AB0482E63F4</a> 

Political scandal is a historically defining aspect of American politics. But, there’s been very little scholarship on the political incentives that surround the production and consequences of scandals. In a recent paper, “Political Scandal: A Theory”, our very own Will Howell and Wioletta Dziuda create a new model of political scandal that makes these incentives clear. On this episode, we discuss how these incentives should reshape the way we think about political scandals.

One of the defining discussions of the Trump presidency centers on the fate of our democracy. In the aftermath of his populist presidency, and as we transition to the Biden era, we’re wondering whether the future is bright or dim. There’s no better scholar to put this question to than the University of Chicago Professor and co-author of “Why Nations Fail”, James Robinson. We look forward and backward with Robinson to diagnose the health of our democracy.

It’s an extraordinarily distressing time for democracy in America. The storming of the Capitol and the votes by some Republican elected officials questioning the results of the 2020 election have many asking what force could act as a check on these increasing anti-democratic tendencies in American political life?   A paper from Milan Svolik, Prof. of Political Science at Yale, may hold some answers. He investigates whether the American public would act as a check on anti-democratic politicians, and reveals how much we truly value democracy when we’re presented with tradeoffs.

It’s been an incredibly divisive year, and we’re constantly told we’re more politically divided than ever. But, as our team takes some time with their families for the holidays, we want to re-share a more hopeful conversation with you that sheds some new light on these seemingly unbridgeable divides in our country. We hope you enjoy it, and we’ll be bringing you brand new episodes after the holiday.

It’s long been thought in political science that giving people resources through government programs will get them more involved in politics. But this has always been a difficult question to answer in a controlled environment. That is until the 2008 Medicaid expansion in Oregon. There was an extensive research initiative done on the roll out of that expansion, and our boss and the Dean of the Harris School of Public Policy, Katherine Baicker, was involved. On this episode, we parse through the results with her to see if we can get a new perspective on this question.

This week, we took some time off for Thanksgiving so we're going to feature another University of Chicago Podcast Network show. It’s called Big Brains. On this episode, they spoke with Professor James Robinson, author of the renowned book Why Nations Fail, about his groundbreaking theories on why certain nations succeed and others fail as well as the future of America’s institutions. We hope you enjoy and we’ll see you soon for a new episode of Not Another Politics Podcast.

Most of America, and a lot of the world, has been singularly focused on the U.S. presidential election. With so much media attention on this one event, could foreign actors be taking advantage of this moment to do unpopular things? In a new paper, economist Ruben Durante from the University of Pompeu Fabra argues that politicians strategically time controversial actions with major news events, when the United States is most distracted.

Last week, the American people elected Joe Biden to be the forty-sixth president of the United States. This was an incredibly contentious and complex election. We decided to get together to try and make sense of what just happened. On this episode, we discuss what message the historic turn out, for both candidates, sends about Trumpism and the increasing left-wing of the Democratic party, why the polls got everything so wrong, again, and what a Biden Presidency will look like given the likelihood of a divided government.

The appointment of Amy Coney Barrett would make the Supreme Court more conservative than it has been in decades. Importantly, it also would be more conservative than the majority of the public. But one piece of political science research suggests that an out-of-step Court will not simply have its way in the years ahead. Judges like to present themselves as arbiters of the law, free from the entanglements of politics. But work from Tom Clark, Professor of Political Science at Emory University, calls that idea into question, and shows why our new conservative Court may still follow public opinion.

On this second edition of the "Just Another Politics Podcast Special", we decide to join our fellow political podcasts in sitting back in our armchairs and sharing our thoughts on the first Presidential debate. The day after the Vice Presidential debate, we recorded a response to what happened and what we think its affect on the 2020 election could be. We think this insightful conversation is worth sharing with you, even if it breaks our usual format. Don't worry, we'll be back next episode with serious-minded research and science that looks at our politics and political system!

On this "Just Another Politics Podcast Special", we decide to join our fellow political podcasts in sitting back in our armchairs and sharing our thoughts on the first Presidential debate. The day after the debate, we recorded a response to what happened and what we think its affect on the 2020 election could be. We think this insightful conversation is worth sharing with you, even if it breaks our usual format. Don't worry, we'll be back next episode with serious-minded research and science that looks at our politics and political system!

Every Presidential election, we talk about “getting out the vote”. But what really works and what doesn’t in terms of getting people to go to the polls? And how will the coronavirus pandemic alter those efforts? We speak to one political scientist who has conducted more studies into “get out the vote” campaigns than any other. Professor Donald Green from Columbia University shares his research about what works in terms of getting out the vote, and how we expect things to be different this years due to COVID-19.

We’re heading into the homestretch of the 2020 election and, as October draws near, we want to take a research focused look at the famed “October Surprise.” It’s a political notion that says, if you want to damage a presidential candidate with a political bombshell you’ve discovered, you should wait until just before the election to release the accusations. But why should candidates wait? What do October Surprises reveal about the politics of scandal? And what can voters can infer from them? A paper by Gabriele Gratton, a professor at The University of New South Wales in Australia, gives counter intuitive insights into when you should drop a bombshell if you want to cause the maximum amount of damage to your political opponent. We discuss how this research could change the way we view “October surprises” and the 2020 election. Link to paper: http://www.restud.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/MS23024manuscript.pdf 

In November, Kamala Harris could be elected the first woman to ever serve as president or vice president. Why are women so underrepresented in the highest levels of government? And what does this imply about the women who do reach those levels?  In this episode, we discuss a paper from Professors Christopher Berry at the University of Chicago and Sarah Anzia at UC Berkeley that attempts to indirectly assess discrimination against women in the electoral process by testing whether the women who are elected perform better once in office.  We discuss their study, alternative explanations of their findings, and implications for the 2020 presidential election and a potential Biden-Harris administration. Link to paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00512.x

How is it that in a Democracy with massive inequality, where the poor have just as much voting power as the rich, do the wealthy continue to get what they want politically? It’s a question that’s troubled political thinkers for a long time.    Political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson have an answer in their new book “Let Them Eat Tweets: How The Right Rules In An Age of Extreme Inequality”. On this episode, we tackle that question and their answer.   Part 1: How did the plutocrats take over the Republican Party: 16:00   Part 2: Are the voters getting duped or do their preferences really align with the wealthy: 20:20   Part 3: Is Donald Trump a natural continuation of Republican strategy?: 34:20

Who shows up to vote in America, and why do they do it? These are two of the most debated and contentious questions in political science. After almost every election, you’ll hear experts and pundits lamenting the lack of voter turnout. But does the research have anything to say about what policies would increase representation? In this episode, our very own Anthony Fowler explains a new report that he co-authored in Brookings that argues we will get better representation but instituting compulsory voting in the U.S. But in a country where we can’t even get everyone to wear a mask, what are the odds that compulsory voting would work here, and what would it’s benefits be?

The dramatic rise of populism in America, embodied in President Trump, presents a real threat to democracy. Our very own professor William Howell argues that the root of the problem lies with ineffective government and that the solution may be to give the President agenda setting power. We delve into his new book “Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy” and explore how giving president’s agenda setting power could break government gridlock and lead us to a more effective government.

One of the most anticipated developments of the 2020 election is who Democratic Presidential nominee, Joe Biden, will pick to be his running mate. One thing is almost certain though, whoever he picks will be a women. And that person very well could be the first female President of the United States. Does the political science scholarship tell us anything about how a woman executive may govern differently? One intriguing paper, "Queens", from Oeindrila Dube at The University of Chicago sheds some revelatory light on this question. Paper: http://odube.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Dube_Harish_Queens_Paper.pdf 

In the last few weeks, the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and many other black people at the hands of police have driven nationwide protests. To be true to the mission of our show, we want to look at this complex moment through the lens of political science research. There’s almost no paper getting more attention at this moment than Princeton Assistant Professor Omar Wasow’s “Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting”. We decided to devote this entire episode to our interview with Omar during which we discuss the substance of the paper, what it can and can’t say about our current moment, and the controversies that have surrounded it. Paper: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/agenda-seeding-how-1960s-black-protests-moved-elites-public-opinion-and-voting/136610C8C040C3D92F041BB2EFC3034C 

One cause for concern during a pandemic that hasn’t gotten much attention is what else politicians might be doing while we’re focused on the virus. What laws are they passing, what regulations are they getting rid of, and could their actions be more in line with their donors than their voters? Professor Jorg Spenkuch from Northwestern University has a fascinating paper that provides insight into these important questions. The data he provides point in the direction that political accountability takes a big hit during disasters. Paper: Natural Disasters, Moral Hazard, and Special Interests In Congress

It may be hard to believe during coronavirus, but the 2020 election will soon be upon us. As usual, news outlets will play a crucial role informing the public about the candidates. But could their decisions actual swing elections? That’s the argument put forward by Prof. Gregory Martin from Stanford University in a recent paper. The data he’s collected shows that the decisions made by reporters and editors may have surprising effects on who voters support. Paper: https://web.stanford.edu/~gjmartin/papers/Milestones%20Jan%202020.pdf 

One of the increasingly prominent concerns around the coronavirus is how we’ll handle voting in the 2020 election. Democrats have called for a blanket vote-by-mail system, while Trump and the Republicans have said that system would disproportionately favor Democrats. But what does the research and data tell us about vote by mail systems? A recent paper from soon to be Asst. Prof at UCLA, Dan Thompson, provides us with the newest and cleanest data available about the effects of vote-by-mail on turn out and partisans differences in elections. The results are surprising, and should completely change the debate over vote-by-mail. Link to paper: https://siepr.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/20-015.pdf

One of the prominent stories of the coronavirus outbreak has been that Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on a shared set of facts about the virus. One believes it is more deadly and dangerous than the other. But groundbreaking research from political scientist Gregory Huber at Yale University call that narrative into question. For years, political scientists have relied on surveys to understand what the American public knows and thinks about what’s happening in politics and the world, like COVID-19 for example. But what if those surveys aren’t actually telling us about people’s true beliefs?

Americans often think of demagogues as a feature of foreign countries with weak or non-existent democracies. But is it possible to still get a demagogue in a functioning and strong democracy? That’s the argument of Mehdi Shadmehr in his paper: “Demagogues and the Fragility of Democracy”. One of the scariest features of this research is that once a country elects a single demagogue they can create a political death spiral that can lead the country into financial ruin. With the long running debate around Trump’s demagoguery in the background, and the 2020 election on the horizon, we discuss Shadmehr’s findings.

Why don’t we prepare better for crises we know are coming? What effect will the coronavirus pandemic have on Trump’s 2020 chances? Should we even be having an election in the midst of a viral outbreak? On this episode, we turn to the best political science research to answer these questions and more about the politics behind COVID-19.

We’re constantly told by journalists and academics that America is too divided. That people no long just oppose members of the opposite party, but actually hate them. That something is broken, not just in our politics but in American life generally. On this episode, we take these issues to one of the leading scholars in the world on polarization, Dr. Shanto Iyengar from Stanford University. We focus specifically on one of his papers, https://pcl.stanford.edu/research/2015/iyengar-ajps-group-polarization.pdf, that argues that affective polarization really has gotten as bad as the experts say, and we discuss what we can do about it.

Do primaries attract more extremist voters who skew elections toward candidates like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump? The common thought has always been that extremist voters, because of their intense passion on issues, are more likely to vote in primaries. But one scholar at UCLA says the real story is far more complicated.   On this episode, we speak with esteemed political scientist Lynn Vavreck about her paper on representation in primary elections, and what her research can tell us about the current democratic primary.   Paper: <a title="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/on-the-representativeness-of-primary-electorates/06414B6E17368D52B3F77EC9C3BF1520" href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/on-the-representativeness-of-primary-electorates/06414B6E17368D52B3F77EC9C3BF1520" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/on-the-representativeness-of-primary-electorates/06414B6E17368D52B3F77EC9C3BF1520</a>

Could racially charged policies cause you to act racist, even if you aren’t actually a racist? That’s the story two political scientists, Stephane Wolton and Torun Dewan from the London School of Economics and Political Science, tell in a recent paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3397918 On this episode, we discuss the possibly hidden story behind symbolic policies like the Trump administration’s border wall and Muslim travel ban, or Europe’s burqa bans. Could these racially charged policies really be about economics?

Do divisive primaries actually affect how candidates will perform in general elections? It's a question political scientist have been trying and failing to untangle, but we found someone who may have an answer. With the 2020 democratic primary getting into full swing, we're kicking off our inaugural episode with prof. Alexander Fouirnaies whose research gives us new insights into the effects of divisive primaries and what we can expect from the 2020 Presidential election. You can find Fouirnaies' paper about primaries here.