Not Another Politics Podcast

When citizens directly appeal to their government, are their concerns ignored or taken seriously? It’s an important question for understanding norms around accountability, especially in authoritarian regimes. To find some answers, University of Chicago Professor of Public Policy Shaoda Wang helped develop a clever field experiment evaluating how Chinese regulators respond to citizen appeals about companies violating pollution standards. The experiment is fascinating on its own, but it also provides a wealth of data about the effectiveness of citizen appeals, how corporations respond when complaints are public or private, and even the incentives companies follow when it comes to adhering to pollution standards.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Why is populism on the rise across the globe? One story says this movement is driven by anti-elite and anti-establishment sentiment, that they just want to throw the bums out. Another says it’s driven by identity politics, an anti-immigrant pro-nativist ideology. Both stories don’t leave room for much hope. But what if there was another story that not only gives us some hope but supplies a clear solution.A new paper by economist Giacomo Ponzetto from the Barcelona School of Economics provides us just that story. It’s called “Do Incompetent Politicians Breed Populist Voters? Evidence from Italian Municipalities”, and it looks at home simply increasing the effectiveness of local government may decrease support for populist candidates.Paper link: https://bse.eu/research/working-papers/do-incompetent-politicians-breed-populist-voters-evidence-italian Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the runup to the 2020 election, the academic journal Nature made the unprecedented decision to endorse Joe Biden for President. During an era when trust in science has never seemed more crucial, this decision led many to wonder if explicitly political statements increase or decrease public trust in science.Luckily, one PhD graduate from the Stanford School of Business designed a well-crafted experiment to find an answer. Using the Nature endorsement as a test case, Floyd Zhang wrote a paper that helps us explore the effects of public trust when scientific journals make endorsements. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Paper link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3273001 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Paper: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1952717 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Paper link: https://ideas.repec.org/a/now/jnlpip/113.00000063.html  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The popular narrative these days is that democracies around the globe are backsliding. If we turn to countries like Hungary, Poland, and Venezuela, this threat certainly is true — authoritarian dictators have contributed to democratic decline. But what does the global picture reveal? Does the claim hold true? A new paper by Anne Meng and Andrew Little investigates this question, by analyzing more objective indicators such as incumbent performance in elections.Anne Meng is an associate professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. Link to paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4327307  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On this show, we focus a lot on ideological polarization but it’s important to remember that politics is about more than ideology or even policy victories. It’s about distribution and redistribution of goods and services in return for party support, votes. This view of politics is called clientelism, and it often goes overlooked.One of the landmark papers on clientelism is from Tariq Thatchil, a political scientist at The University of Pennsylvania. It won the award for best paper in the APSR in 2018, and it’s called “How Clients Select Brokers, Competition and Choice in India’s Slums”. Their investigation prompts a re-thinking of the dynamics of clientelism and perhaps even holds some lessons for how to re-think the ideological view of politics as well.https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5310a4d8e4b05a56d51f81c8/t/5b4cbc711ae6cf1a9051724e/1531755638231/Auerbach_Thachil_APSR.pdf Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For better or worse, one of the biggest stories in US politics today is the detection of election fraud, or in many cases the lack of election fraud. But determining whether fraud happened in an election can be difficult, even while proving the validity of elections for some has become increasingly important. Wouldn’t it be incredible if we could just plug a set of data from an election into a toolkit that could give us an answer if fraud occurred? Well, one political scientist from the University of Michigan, Walter Mebane believes he may have developed just such a toolkit. It’s called “election forensics”. Much like machine learning algorithms, when tested in the field it does seem to perform fantastically well, but figuring out exactly how it works can be a complicated web to untangle. We give it a shot on this episode. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As we approach the anniversary of the January 6th attack on the US Capitol, we wanted to reflect on where we are as a country and whether politics are really as polarized as they seem. Our co-host Will Howell recently joined another University of Chicago podcast called Big Brains to discuss these very questions. We're going to share that episode with you this week, we hope you enjoy it, and look forward to being back with a new episode in a few weeks. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.