There is a fact of our political discourse so agreed upon that nobody thinks to question it: affective polarization…democrats and republicans disliking each other...has been getting worse, much worse. But what if that belief is actually based on polls measuring the wrong thing? That’s the argument made by Northwestern Political Scientist James Druckman in his paper “What Do We Measure When We Measure Affective Polarization?”

How do we know if our democracy is healthy? For political scientist, the answer often comes down to things we can measure like responsiveness to voter’s wishes. But is that really the right thing to measure? There are two camps in this debate. The empiricists want to focus on what and how we can measure things like the health of our democracy, often focusing on indicators like responsiveness, while the normative theorists want to focus on what we even mean…and what we should mean…by...

When it comes to our federal bureaucracy, there are two schools of thought. One says that an insulated group of career bureaucrats have created a deep state that corrupts the performance of government. The other says that our bureaucracy is dysfunctional because there is too much turnover or positions left vacant. Both rest on an underlying feature of our democracy: many of the positions in the federal bureaucracy are appointed by the President and approved by Congress. But, could having less...

There is a long running debate in political science: do we get better judges by letting the public vote in elections or by giving our leaders the power to appoint them? One side says that judges should be insulated from the influence of politics involved in elections, focusing entirely on the rule of law. The other side says that our judges should be accountable to the public for the decisions they make in office. Who is right? In this episode, we’re doing things a bit different. The Center...

Despite making up roughly half of the U.S. population, women only make up about one-quarter of representatives and senators. And this trend is not just national—it holds true globally as well. What explains why women are underrepresented in politics? If women are just as likely to win elections as men do, then why are they less likely to run for office? In a recent paper, "Modeling Theories of Women's Underrepresentation in Elections," University of Chicago Professors Scott Ashworth,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...