New Books in Public Policy

In A Mass Conspiracy to Feed People: Food Not Bombs and the World-Class Waste of Global Cities (Duke UP, 2021), David Boarder Giles explores the ways in which capitalism simultaneously manufactures waste and scarcity. Illustrating how communities of marginalized people and discarded things gather and cultivate political possibilities, Giles documents the work of Food Not Bombs (FNB), a global movement of grassroots soup kitchens that recover wasted grocery surpluses and redistribute them to those in need. He explores FNB's urban contexts: the global cities in which late-capitalist economies and unsustainable consumption precipitate excess, inequality, food waste, and hunger. Beginning in urban dumpsters, Giles traces the logic by which perfectly edible commodities are nonetheless thrown out—an act that manufactures food scarcity—to the social order of “world-class” cities, the pathways of discarded food as it circulates through the FNB kitchen, and the anticapitalist political movements the kitchen represents. Describing the mutual entanglement of global capitalism and anticapitalist transgression, Giles captures those emergent forms of generosity, solidarity, and resistance that spring from the global city's marginalized residents. David Boarder Giles is a Lecturer in Anthropology at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin university, Australia. His writes about waste, cities, and social movements. He is also one of the producers of Conversations in Anthropology.Blog: https://dhboardergiles.wordpress.com/Twitter: @DHBoarderGilesAmir Sayadabdi is Lecturer in Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington. He is mainly interested in anthropology of food and its intersection with gender studies, migration studies, and studies of race, ethnicity, and nationalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Building on a deep theoretical foundation and drawing on numerous examples, Volden and Shipan examine how policies spread across the American states in Why Bad Policies Spread (and Good Ones Don't) (Cambridge University Press, 2021). The authors argue that for good policies to spread while bad policies are pushed aside, states must learn from one another. The three ingredients for this positive outcome are observable experiments, time to learn, and favorable incentives and expertise among policymakers. Although these ingredients are sometimes plentiful, the authors also note causes for concern, such as when policies are complex or incompatible with current practices, when policymakers give in to underlying political biases, or when political institutions lack the capacity for cultivating expertise. Under such conditions, states may rely on competition, imitation, and coercion, rather than learning, which can allow bad policies, rather than good ones, to spread. Volden and Shipan conclude with lessons for reformers and policymakers and an assessment of the overall argument based on state responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.Craig Volden is a Professor of Public Policy and Politics, with appointments in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics. He is Co-Director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking, and has published numerous articles in such journals as: American Political Science Review; American Journal of Political Science; Journal of Politics; Legislative Studies Quarterly; Public Administration Review; Journal of Public Policy; and Publius: The Journal of Federalism.Host Ursula Hackett is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her Cambridge University Press book America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State won the 2021 Education Politics and Policy Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association. Her writing guide Brilliant Essays is published by Macmillan Study Skills. She tweets @UrsulaBHackett. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Cities around the world are formulating plans to respond to climate change and adapt to its impact. Often, marginalized urban residents resist these plans, offering “counterplans” to protest unjust and exclusionary actions. In Form and Flow: The Spatial Politics of Urban Resilience and Climate Justice (MIT Press, 2021), Kian Goh examines climate change response strategies in three cities—New York, Jakarta, and Rotterdam—and the mobilization of community groups to fight the perceived injustices and oversights of these plans. Looking through the lenses of urban design and socioecological spatial politics, Goh reveals how contested visions of the future city are produced and gain power.Goh describes, on the one hand, a growing global network of urban environmental planning organizations intertwined with capitalist urban development, and, on the other, social movements that themselves often harness the power of networks. She explores such initiatives as Rebuild By Design in New York, the Giant Sea Wall plan in Jakarta, and Rotterdam Climate Proof, and discovers competing narratives, including community resiliency in Brooklyn and grassroots activism in the informal “kampungs” of Jakarta. Drawing on participatory fieldwork and her own background in architecture and urban design, Goh offers both theoretical explanations and practical planning and design strategies. She reframes the critical concerns of urban climate change responses, presenting a sociospatial typology of urban adaptation and considering the notion of a “just” resilience. Finally, she proposes a theoretical framework for designing equitable and just urban climate futures.Bryan Toepfer, AIA, NCARB, CAPM is the Principal Architect for TOEPFER Architecture, PLLC, an Architecture firm specializing in Residential Architecture and Virtual Reality. He has authored two books, “Contractors CANNOT Build Your House,” and “Six Months Now, ARCHITECT for Life.” He is an Assistant Professor at Alfred State College and has served as the Director of Education for the AIA Rochester Board of Directors. Always eager to help anyone understand the world of Architecture, he can be reached by sending an email to btoepfer@toepferarchitecture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, since 2000, the United States has experienced over 700,000 deaths due to drug overdose. Addiction and substance use disorders are at the root of this enormous loss, and about half of people who struggle with substance use disorder will experience some mental health disorder during their life. And vice versa—many individuals struggling with mental health disorders also struggle with various forms of addiction.Carl Erik Fisher, author of The Urge: Our History of Addiction (Penguin Press, 2022), has expertise in law, ethics, and policy related to psychiatry and neuroscience. His personal struggle with addiction in combination with his professional expertise converges to help us understand the forces that have shaped addiction throughout our history. On this episode of POTC, Carl and Yael discuss the social contingencies and historical contexts that lead to addiction, substance use disorder, and co-morbid mental health issues. Join us in this episode to learn more about commonly held beliefs about addiction, prescribers’ blind spots to certain medications, and much much more! Yael Schonbrun is a licensed clinical psychologist who wears a number of professional hats: she a small private practice specializing in evidence-based relationship therapy, she’s an assistant professor at Brown University, and she writes for nonacademic audiences about working parenthood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

We tend to associate Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that decriminalized abortion in 1973, with the choice not to have children. But Roe was equally transformative for Americans' understanding of family--having and raising children also came to be thought of as a choice. In Reproduction Reconceived: Family Making and the Limits of Choice after Roe v. Wade (University of California Press, 2021), Sara Matthiesen highlights the distance between this idea of choice and worsening forms of inequality that have forced far too many to work harder simply to create and maintain a family. In this new and timely work, Matthiesen shows how the effects of incarceration, for-profit and racist healthcare, disease, and poverty have been worsened by state neglect. At its core, Reproduction Reconceived is an urgent historical account: of the myriad labors that families have been made to perform simply to survive, and of the inevitable costs that pile up when family making is seen as a private responsibility rather than a public good.Dr. Nicole Bourbonnais is an Associate Professor of International History and Politics and Co-Director of the Gender Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Her research explores reproductive politics and practice from a transnational historical perspective. More info here. Twitter: @iheid_history and @GC_IHEID Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Have you logged into Facebook recently? Searched for something on Google? Chosen a movie on Netflix? If so, you've probably been an unwitting participant in a variety of experiments—also known as randomized controlled trials—designed to test the impact of different online experiences. Once an esoteric tool for academic research, the randomized controlled trial has gone mainstream. No tech company worth its salt (or its share price) would dare make major changes to its platform without first running experiments to understand how they would influence user behavior. In The Power of Experiments: Decision Making in a Data-Driven World (MIT Press, 2021), Michael Luca and Max Bazerman explain the importance of experiments for decision-making in a data-driven world.Luca and Bazerman describe the central role experiments play in the tech sector, drawing lessons and best practices from the experiences of such companies as StubHub, Alibaba, and Uber. Successful experiments can save companies money—eBay, for example, discovered how to cut $50 million from its yearly advertising budget—or bring to light something previously ignored, as when Airbnb was forced to confront rampant discrimination by its hosts. Moving beyond tech, Luca and Bazerman consider experimenting for the social good—different ways that governments are using experiments to influence or “nudge” behavior ranging from voter apathy to school absenteeism. Experiments, they argue, are part of any leader's toolkit.In this show, Peter Lorentzen interviews economist Michael Luca about this new book on how organizations—including Google, StubHub, Airbnb, and Facebook—learn from experiments in a data-driven world.Michael Luca, a professor of business administration at Harvard University, is an expert on the design of online platforms and the use of data to inform managerial and policy decision-making.Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new digital economy-focused Master's program in Applied Economics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Homeschooling has skyrocketed in popularity in the United States: in 2019, a record-breaking 2.5 million children were being homeschooled, within an increasingly diverse subset of American families.In The Homeschool Choice: Parents and the Privatization of Education (NYU Press, 2021), sociologist Kate Henley Averett examines the reasons why parents homeschool and how homeschooling, as a growing practice, has changed the roles that families, schools, and the state play in children’s lives.Drawing on in-depth interviews, surveys and close ethnographic observation of homeschooling conferences, Averett paints a rich picture of parental decision-making in a period dominated by a neoliberal discourse of school ‘choice’.This book is essential reading not only for those interested in homeschooling, but for anyone concerned about the current state and the future of public education.Kate Henley Averett is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, and an affiliate of the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, at the University at Albany, SUNY.-- Dr Alice Garner, educator and historian, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Americans are deeply polarized on many issues, including science and medicine. Where once was widespread agreement, today the differences are sharp: on one hand, posters announce, “I believe in science!” and on the other hand, dramatic videos show ICU patients affirming their anti-vax beliefs with their final breaths.What is going on?Science is supposed to be based on reason, not faith. We get into a pile of metal – our cars – every day without fear because we trust the engineers, who built cars based on science. Science is characterized by observation, empirical findings, and replication. At least that’s the way it is supposed to be. Not long ago, Americans and most people around the world trusted the integrity of science. But that trust has been in decline for years, to our collective detriment.Why did science lose so much of the public trust?How does that loss relate to the decline of trust in other institutions?What are the trust-related issues for minorities?What can the scientific enterprise do to regain our trust?Fran Kritz is a passionate journalist who has covered health and health policy for decades. Her reporting experience gives her a unique view of the changes in the relationship between the public and its medical and scientific experts. She has written for NPR, the Washington Post, Kaiser Health News, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

I spoke with Eric Protzer (Harvard University) and Paul Summerville (University of Victoria) about their great new book: Reclaiming Populism: How Economic Fairness Can Win Back Disenchanted Voters, published by Polity in 2022.The book provides an original and counterintuitive analysis of what triggered populism around the world. It has received excellent reviews by journalists, policy makers, economists, and academic colleagues. Those who read with interest 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century' and those who disagreed with Thomas Piketty shall read this book.Eric Protzer and Paul Summerville argue that populism is a response to a profound sense that many of the world’s leading economies are unfair. The countries that have been hit by the worst populist upheavals - like the US, UK, France, and Italy – have low social mobility. Unequal economic outcomes would be better tolerated in a society where individual efforts in education and work were fully recognised. The book, based on solid empirical data, demonstrate that illiberal populism strikes hardest when success is influenced by family origins rather than talent and effort. ‘Reclaiming Populism is about 230 pages long and is organised in five chapters: 1 – The Inequality Delusion and Other Scapegoats for Populism; 2 – The Fairness Instinct; 3 – Economic Unfairness and the Rise of Populism; 4 – The Twin Virtues of Equal Opportunity and Fair Unequal Outcomes; 5 – Constraints and Solutions to Economic Fairness.What explains contemporary developed-world populism? A largely-overlooked hypothesis, advanced herein, is economic unfairness. This idea holds that humans do not simply care about the magnitudes of final outcomes such as losses or inequalities. They care deeply about whether each individual’s economic outcomes occur for fair reasons. Thus citizens turn to populism when they do not get the economic opportunities and outcomes they think they fairly deserve. A series of cross-sectional regressions show that low social mobility – an important type of economic unfairness – consistently correlates with the geography of populism, both within and across developed countries. Conversely, income and wealth inequality do not; and neither do the prominent cultural hypotheses of immigrant stocks, social media use, nor the share of seniors in the population. Collectively, this evidence underlines the importance of economic fairness, and suggests that academics and policymakers should pay greater attention to normative, moral questions about the economy.The book is very interesting and accessible to a wide public. For policymakers and scholars in economics, politics and sociology it is a must-read. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

There is a logical flaw in the statistical methods used across experimental science. This fault is not a minor academic quibble: it underlies a reproducibility crisis now threatening entire disciplines. In an increasingly statistics-reliant society, this same deeply rooted error shapes decisions in medicine, law, and public policy with profound consequences. The foundation of the problem is a misunderstanding of probability and its role in making inferences from observations.Aubrey Clayton traces the history of how statistics went astray, beginning with the groundbreaking work of the seventeenth-century mathematician Jacob Bernoulli and winding through gambling, astronomy, and genetics. Clayton recounts the feuds among rival schools of statistics, exploring the surprisingly human problems that gave rise to the discipline and the all-too-human shortcomings that derailed it. He highlights how influential nineteenth- and twentieth-century figures developed a statistical methodology they claimed was purely objective in order to silence critics of their political agendas, including eugenics.Clayton provides a clear account of the mathematics and logic of probability, conveying complex concepts accessibly for readers interested in the statistical methods that frame our understanding of the world. He contends that we need to take a Bayesian approach--that is, to incorporate prior knowledge when reasoning with incomplete information--in order to resolve the crisis. Ranging across math, philosophy, and culture, Bernoulli's Fallacy: Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science (Columbia UP, 2021) explains why something has gone wrong with how we use data--and how to fix it.Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy