Law & Politics
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Why Do People Forgive Corrupt Politicians?
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The case of Hilario Ramírez, a Mexican politician who, amid a reelection campaign admitted to having stolen from the treasury, “just a bit,” he argued, is more than a simple piece of Latin American political folklore. “Layín”—as Ramírez is also known—was mayor of San Blas, a costal Mexican city, from…
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What Can We Know from China’s First Legal Order of 2021?
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China’s role on the international arena has been rising prominently. Even with a pandemic engulfing the entire globe since early 2020, the country is still attempting to accelerate its global impact. On January 9, 2021, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced that the new Rules on Counteracting Unjustified Extra-Territorial Application of…
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Restricting Immigration Leads US Employers to Move Jobs Elsewhere
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Immigration is a perennial source of debate in the United States. Debates tend to focus on low-skilled immigrants – their legal status, employability, country of origin, and even potential threat to national security. In recent years, however, high-skilled legal immigration has increasingly come under scrutiny. Anti-immigration sentiment can stem from…
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Executive Underreach in the Response to COVID-19
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Here we are, over one year later: trapped inside as news of daily deaths keeps breaching the barricade around our isolated lives. How did it come to this? As we mourn COVID-19’s first anniversary, the history of this pandemic continues to be written, and most believe it is a tale…
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Evading the Taxman: The Effects of Perceived Influence
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Death may be unavoidable, but taxes? Not so much. An estimated $430 billion per year evades capture from tax collecting regimes worldwide. Developing countries are disproportionately harmed by tax evasion, with individual country losses equal to about half of their public health budgets. Generally speaking, tax evasion is any deliberate behavior to avoid…
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A New Path to Victory for Minority Candidates
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Once data from the 2020 Census becomes available, the United States is set to undergo redistricting, which will undoubtedly influence the levels of minority representation in government. Historically, most Black and Latino candidates have been elected in districts where minorities make up a large share of the population, known as…
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Debunked: The Plainspoken Populist
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In 2015, The Boston Globe famously reported that Donald Trump spoke at a fourth-grade level. The future president’s 2016 announcement speech scored a 4.1 on linguistic tests, meaning a fourth-grade student could understand his speech. By contrast, Hillary Clinton scored 7.1. The results came as no surprise: political scientists and commentators have…
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Are We Better Off with Less Social Media? Evidence Says Yes
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Whether social media is good or bad for us remains a widely contested topic. Research shows that the same social media networks that can increase voter turnout can also leave us feeling lonely and depressed. So how do we really know if social media’s benefits justify its costs? The results of…
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Why Are Mexican Political Candidates Getting Killed?
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The 2018 elections were not only the largest in Mexico’s history, but also the most violent. From September 2017 to June 2018, 48 political candidates were killed during their campaigns. Was this violence politically motivated? A consequence of the criminal activity of the drug cartels? Was it a combination of…
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Democrats Can Do More Than Pack the Court
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Democrats are reconsidering their relationship with the Supreme Court. In the wake of the failed Merrick Garland nomination in 2016—and amid a rushed effort to confirm conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett—some in the party are discussing familiar ideas to prevent a 6-3 conservative majority. Judicial term limits and partisan balancing…
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Tackling the Youth Turnout Problem
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Youth voter participation remains an intractable problem for holding truly representative elections in America. Young voters, ages 18 to 29, consistently make up 20% to 22% of the electorate, which is defined as those who are eligible to vote. But due to consistently low rates of turnout, they do not…