Not Another Politics Podcast

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 democratic health.If you’ve listened to our show before, you can probably guess that we fall more into the empiricists camp, but we wanted to bring on someone who could challenge our assumptions.Andrew Sabl is a political scientist from the University of Toronto and the author of “The Two Cultures of Democratic Theory: Responsiveness, Democratic Quality, and the Empirical-Normative Divide” in which he argues that the empiricists need to pay more attention to what they’re measuring and why.

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 politically selected appointments give us a more functional government?In this episode, we’re doing things a bit different. The Center for Effective Government at the University of Chicago, headed by our very own William Howell, has developed a series of primers that each focus on the available scholarship about the pros and cons of a particular governmental reform. Each primer is written by a scholar who has also done research in that area. On this episode, we speak with David Lewis from Vanderbilt University who wrote a primer on this question: should we have more politically appointed bureaucrats or 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 for Effective Government at the University of Chicago, headed by our very own William Howell, has developed a series of primers that each focus on the available scholarship about the pros and cons of a particular governmental reform. Each primer is written by a scholar  who has also done research in that area. On this episode, we speak with Sanford Gordon from the Politics Department at NYU who wrote a primer on this question: is it better to elect or appoint judges?

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, Christopher Berry and Ethan Bueno de Mesquita explore the facts and theories around why women are elected less than men in U.S. politics. In this episode, we speak with Ashworth, a Professor in the Harris School of Public Policy.

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.