politics
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An Interview with Senator Jon Tester: The Media Ecosystem in Today’s Democracy
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Former U.S. Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) has devoted his life to public service as a music teacher, a Big Sandy school board member, and a leader in the Montana State Senate and U.S. Senate. But if you ask Tester what he does for a living, he will say first and…
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Why Our Brains Tune Out Climate Change
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In 2018, Climate Outreach, a leading climate-communications non-profit, released a handbook for scientists working under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on how to effectively communicate climate change to the public. The handbook suggests that good science alone is not enough to motivate people to take action against climate…
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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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An interview with the former head of NATO: defense policy for students
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The following is an edited transcript of part of an interview conducted by Thomas Krasnican and Nick Paraiso, first-year students at the Harris School of Public Policy for their UC3P original podcast series, Thank You For Your Service. The full interview can be found here or at their iTunes page.…
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Healthy Civilian-Military Affairs: A Critical Component of Success in War
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Common measurements of the likelihood of success of military or national security endeavors tend to be quantitative factors such as budget size, number of personnel, level of technological advancement, or functionality of equipment. However, sociological factors can also be a significant indicator of military success. In an article published in…
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How Do Electoral Gender Quotas Impact Government Spending?
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Over the past few decades, an increasing number of countries have established gender quotas for elected positions. Typically, these quotas are enacted to address underrepresentation of women in political offices. According to data collected by the United Nations (UN), women represented just “22.8 percent of all national parliamentarians” in June…
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Elite Misperceptions: Examining Asymmetry in Partisan Political Participation
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Do politicians truly represent the populations they serve? Recent research may provide an answer. David E. Broockman and Christopher Skovron’s recent paper asserts that there is a systemic incongruity between true public opinion and elected officials’ perceptions of public opinion. Using a survey that sampled over 3,500 state representatives across seven…
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How Fear of the Future Causes Political Gridlock
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Gridlock can occur even when the same political party controls both houses of the U.S. Congress, as we have seen through the beginning of the Trump presidency. Gridlock bogs down the wheels of bureaucracy and makes it difficult to agree even on legislation that is beneficial to both parties. A…
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Covering Policy in the Trump Era: A Conversation with Matthew Yglesias
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NPR recently released a poll that found only half of respondents were aware that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) had led to a decrease in the number of individuals without health insurance — arguably the legislation’s chief accomplishment. Yet very few people — only 14 percent of those polled —…
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What Will Economic Policy Look Like Under Trump? A Conversation with Austan Goolsbee
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While there is obviously a great deal of speculation regarding specifics, the general contours of President-elect Trump’s economic plan seem to include large tax cuts, particularly for wealthy individuals and corporations, aggressive deregulation of the financial and fossil fuel industries, a more protectionist stance on trade issues, and perhaps some…
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More Than Numbers: How Qualitative Research Can Win Elections
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This piece was first published on April 3, 2013. You led a new initiative this election with the Obama campaign: online focus groups. How do you think this provided you a leg-up in the campaign? We had something called the online community, which was an ability to check in with…