02 SEP 2016 by ideonexus
Abuse of Science in Politics
North Carolina provides a recent example of science-based policy. The science itself was a study of voting habits among the population of the state. In 2013, North Carolina passed new voting restrictions. To inform those restrictions, the legislature commissioned a study on voting habits by race, and then wrote into law a series of restrictions that specifically targeted African Americans. (Last month, a Federal Court struck down these restrictions, claiming that “the new provisions target ...21 APR 2014 by ideonexus
Is the United States is an Oligarchy?
Each of our four theoretical traditions (Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic
Elite Domination, Majoritarian Interest Group Pluralism, and Biased Pluralism) emphasizes
different sets of actors as critical in determining U.S. policy outcomes, and each tradition has
engendered a large empirical literature that seems to show a particular set of actors to be highly
influential. Yet nearly all the empirical evidence has been essentially bivariate. Until very
recently it has not been pos...Folksonomies: politics governance
Folksonomies: politics governance
Plays on our suspicion of authority meme, but is it just an emergent phenomenon?