Politics

Slumming It

Heated response to “slum ethnography” is as old as the genre itself.

  • Claude S. Fischer

The Bill of Rights in the Modern Age

Technology, business, and government are changing the 482 words in the U.S. Constitution.

  • Michael Dearing

Money Is Not the Only (or the Biggest) Source of Voter Distrust

Rates of participation in politics are still at or near historic lows after decades of skyrocketing campaign spending.

  • Andrew Mayersohn

The Rise of Outside Spending

The "independent" expenditures in the midterm elections are record-breaking 

  • Andrew Mayersohn

An Afterthought on Indyref

Overnight, the hopeful, broad-based, grassroots independence movement gave rise to the righteous wronged.

  • Stephen Phelan

Rethinking Privacy

A little surveillance can do us a lot of good.

  • William H. Simon

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Conservatives are Driving Americans Away from Religion

Religiously-inflected politics of personal morality alienated more recently-born moderate and liberal Americans from the church.

Trench Democracy in Public Administration #3: An Interview with Jamie Verbrugge

Participatory Innovation in Unlikely Places.

Fighting Inequality in the New Gilded Age

Restoring genuine democracy must go beyond campaign finance.

  • K. Sabeel Rahman

“The Industry of Ideas”: Measuring the Impact of Think Tanks

Investigating money in politics is a little like studying dark matter.

  • Andrew Mayersohn

The Moral Siege

The militarization of Jewish supremacism in Israel.

  • Assaf Sharon

Righting the GOP

On Rick Perlstein’s The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan

  • Mark Schmitt

A Short History of Women in Politics

It is worth pausing to reflect on how women’s participation in politics has changed over the course of American history.

  • Claude S. Fischer

Why Haven’t We Talked to Putin?

There is no evidence that U.S. leaders have tried to engage Putin and his inner circle about the crisis in Ukraine.

  • Eugene Rumer

A Business Can Exercise Religion, but Hobby Lobby Still Gets It Wrong

Why did the Supreme Court extend religious exercise rights to for-profit corporations?

  • Kiel Brennan-Marquez

The Neoliberal Bailout

Sure, the system worked—we avoided another Great Depression. But it worked much better for some than for others. 

  • Jonathan Kirshner

Saving Social Security

A gimmick-free plan for long-term solvency

  • Peter A. Diamond
  • Peter R. Orszag

Three Assumptions that Led to Kerry’s Failure in the Middle East

The conflict doesn’t need more architects.

  • Assaf Sharon

What Does the McCutcheon Decision Say about Democracy?

Our civics has encouraged us to think of voting as special. Roberts’s opinion suggests we have misled ourselves.

  • William Hogeland

Does Big Data Threaten Political Inequality?

A response to Archon Fung and Anthony Fowler.

  • Andrew Mayersohn

Is Get-Out-the-Vote Bad for Democracy?

How efforts to increase voter turnout exacerbate inequality.

  • Anthony Fowler

How Feasible is a Social Democratic America?

The case for optimism, even in the face of rising inequality.

  • Daniel DiSalvo

Thinking Inequality

Americans want action on inequality in a notably American way.

  • Claude S. Fischer

What Journalism Can and Can’t Do for Politics

The most consequential and controversial questions in politics are not amenable to fact-checking.

  • Andrew Mayersohn
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