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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

If you found a hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk, would you spend it differently than a hundred dollars made at work? This same question applies to politicians. Governments collect revenues from a variety of sources, does where the money comes from change how it’s spent? In a paper looking at taxes and royalties from natural resources in Columbia, University of Chicago Professor of Public Policy Luis Martinez shows how the source of revenue seems to determine whether it is wasted...

There are two classic questions in political science research: how does representation work and how should it work? They’re crucial questions when it comes to designing a functioning democracy. In fact, researchers have been trying to answer these questions for decades. On this episode, we dive into one of the formative papers on the subject from Warren Miller and Donald Stokes which was published in 1963. How does this paper shape the way we think about representation, and how much progress...

When we talk about polarization on this podcast it’s almost always in the context of congress or the presidency. But are state legislatures polarizing as well? And, if they are, what can that tell us about the state of our democracy? In a new paper, Princeton political scientist Nolan McCarty shows that not only are state legislatures polarizing, but they’re polarizing faster and more intensely than congress.

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...

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.

We often talk about the rise of affective polarization in the United States, but rarely are the trends we observe domestically placed in an international context. What about Norway, Canada, New Zealand, Japan? What are the trends in global affective polarization, and can those trends teach us anything about what’s driving the increase in the US? On this episode, we speak with Stanford political scientist Matthew Gentzkow about his first of its kind paper doing a cross-country analysis of the...