Not Another Politics Podcast

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

One of the defining discussions of the Trump presidency centers on the fate of our democracy. In the aftermath of his populist presidency, and as we transition to the Biden era, we’re wondering whether the future is bright or dim.

There’s no better scholar to put this question to than the University of Chicago Professor and co-author of “Why Nations Fail”, James Robinson. We look forward and backward with Robinson to diagnose the health of our democracy.

In November, Kamala Harris could be elected the first woman to ever serve as president or vice president. Why are women so underrepresented in the highest levels of government? And what does this imply about the women who do reach those levels?

In this episode, we discuss a paper from Professors Christopher Berry at the University of Chicago and Sarah Anzia at UC Berkeley that attempts to indirectly assess discrimination against women in the electoral process by testing whether the women who are elected perform better once in office.

We discuss their study, alternative explanations of their findings, and implications for the 2020 presidential election and a potential Biden-Harris administration.

Link to paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00512.x

Every Presidential election, we talk about “getting out the vote”. But what really works and what doesn’t in terms of getting people to go to the polls? And how will the coronavirus pandemic alter those efforts? We speak to one political scientist who has conducted more studies into “get out the vote” campaigns than any other.

Professor Donald Green from Columbia University shares his research about what works in terms of getting out the vote, and how we expect things to be different this years due to COVID-19.