Show Notes
Why do politicians frequently focus on deeply polarizing issues instead of pursuing broadly beneficial reforms?
In this special episode, Anthony sits down with Wiola Dziuda and Ethan Bueno de Mesquita to discuss their paper “Partisan Traps”. They examine why some politicians may benefit from convincing voters that policymaking is about zero-sum partisan solutions and that opportunities for reforms benefiting voters across the political spectrum are rare. The team explores how politicians can shape voters’ beliefs, how those beliefs can in turn influence politicians’ incentives, and when policymaking can fall into a self-fulfilling trap in which voters remain loyal to—and keep reelecting—parties that deliver no beneficial reforms.
More from Not Another Politics Podcast
The "power of the purse"—Congress’s constitutional authority to control public spending—is often cited as the ultimate check on executive power. But how effectively does legislative funding actually translate into policy influence in modern Washington?
Across universities today, raw GPAs treat an A in advanced econometrics the same as an A in introductory film studies. Standard grading systems inadvertently penalize students who challenge themselves and reward those who course-shop.
Do Democrats and Republicans really misunderstand each other as much as we think?
While we take a quick summer break, we wanted to re-release an episode that felt timely, given the rise of right-wing populism around the world. More than 25 percent of countries around the world are currently governed by populists, from Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, to Donald Trump in the United States. Based on these findings, populism is at an all-time high, and taking a significant economic toll, according to a recent paper by Christoph Trebesch and his co-authors.
Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, we've been told a simple story: red states are radically out of step with public opinion. But what if that's not actually the reality? On this episode, we speak with Natalie Hernandez, Yale PhD candidate in Political Science, about her upcoming APSR paper, "Asymmetric Representation: Post-Roe Abortion Policy and Public Opinion in the U.S. States." Using a massive dataset of 155,000 respondents, Hernandez finds policies in Democratic-controlled states are actually furthest from the average voter, and what happens when Democratic lawmakers prioritize wealthy donors and national activists over the median citizen.