The Science of Politics

A diverse young generation is ready to change our politics and culture, but our congressional leadership and presidential options remain geriatric. It's not just the normal politics of aging: the baby boomer generation has maintained extraordinary power and influence throughout its life course. Kevin Munger finds that generational conflict is inevitable as the baby boomers retire but maintain their political influence against much more diverse, less religious, and more liberal rising generations. The institutions boomers built are losing credibility, but we should not expect their power to wane.

Did the Birchers win after all? by Niskanen Center

In this insightful discussion, Josh Clinton, a Political Science professor at Vanderbilt University, and Amnon Cavari from Reichman University, delve into the troubling decline in poll response rates. They reveal how this trend skews public opinion representation, with Democrats more likely to participate than Republicans or Independents. They highlight that the disengaged, often less educated citizens, are missing from surveys, leading to exaggerated perceptions of polarization. The conversation emphasizes the need for refined methodologies to accurately capture the diverse American electorate.

A leaked Supreme Court opinion suggests that Roe v. Wade may be overturned this summer, forthrightly moving abortion policymaking to the states. The states have played an important role in bringing about the decision, setting the stage for the fights to come. Now abortion bills are moving from symbolic politics to real consequences. Rebecca Kreitzer discusses her long work on abortion politics, including the role of women representatives, interest groups, and public opinion, helping us understand how we got here and prepare for what’s to come.

Women are underrepresented in American political institutions, despite the positive track record of women in office and the willingness of voters to support women candidates. Gender differences in political ambition originate in childhood and are difficult to counteract. Mirya Holman finds that girls tend to think of politicians as men and politics as a man’s world—and those perceptions build over time to reduce intended political involvement. In this conversational addition, Holman also talks about her experience as a leader in the field of gender and politics research and the efforts to achieve gender parity in research and practice.

American public policy includes a lot of economistic thinking. Policy analysts weigh costs and benefits, use economic projections and models, and try to calculate the value of almost everything. That may not have been inevitable. Elizabeth Popp Berman finds that a revolution in applied microeconomics brought about a shift in bureaucratic agencies, which led to self-reinforcing requests for more economics trainees and economistic ideas, with governments increasingly asking for a particular form of economic analysis that limited the scope of government action. This economic revolution explains how the Democratic Party moved rightward, foreclosing further left economic alternatives by changing the language and criteria for policymaking.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson seems likely to be confirmed for the Supreme Court, fulfilling President Biden's campaign promise to elevate the first Black woman to the Court. At her nomination hearings, Judge Jackson faced the usual reception colored by partisanship as well as her race and gender. What did we learn from those hearings? Katelyn Stauffer finds that previous nominations of Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor helped soften opposition from ideological opponents among those who shared the nominee’s racial or gender identity. Jessica Schoenherr finds that senators use nomination hearings to represent their constituents, with different postures by same- and opposition-party senators depending on their control over the impending vote. We talk about whether Judge Jackson’s hearings were a charade and the role of descriptive representation in how political leaders and the Court are perceived.

Guest: Erica Frantz, Michigan State University Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows how the incentives and views of dangerous leaders drive world events. The efficacy of the international community's response depends on how regimes like Russia's work. Erica Frantz finds that personalist regimes like Russia are more likely to initiate conflicts and suffer from misperceptions in a close inner circle. Putin’s actions follow authoritarian patterns elsewhere. This conversational edition features research and commentary on the war, the sanctions, the behavior of other regimes like China, the global implications of the rise in personalist authoritarianism, and the direction of research on harder-to-observe countries.

Guests: Adam Zelizer, the University of Chicago; Christian Fong, University of Michigan Studies: “Is Position Taking Contagious?”; “Expertise, Networks, and Interpersonal Influence in Congress.” Policymaking seems dominated by polarized views and misinformation. But what if legislators are willing to listen to and share expertise on policy issues? Adam Zelizer provides informative briefings to state legislators on pending bills and finds that they listen, increasing their co-sponsorship of those bills and bringing along their office mates, as information spreads from one lawmaker to the next. Christian Fong finds that when legislators are assigned to new committees in the middle of a term, the legislators they usually work with start voting with them more often on bills in that committee’s issue area. Lawmakers take cues from the most informed legislators. They may be doing the best they can with limited knowledge and a lot on their plate. Photo credit: iStock

Public opinion tends to move in the opposite direction of policy. But how does the public learn that policy is changing, enabling their adjustment? And does a polarized and inattentive public still react together in response to policy? Stuart Soroka and Christopher Wlezien, the key developers and testers of the thermostatic model, find that television and newspaper coverage provides a good signal of which way national policy is heading. And the public as a whole, not just the most informed or a shrinking middle, receive that signal and respond by adjusting their preferences--favoring more spending when it declines and less when it increases. The result is that they tend to think each side goes too far moving policy in their preferred ideological direction. That’s frustrating to policymakers, but it may represent democracy in action.