Withering Government
Can Capitalism Save Democracy?
Semuhi Sinanoglu, Lucan Way & Steven Levitsky
Journal of Democracy, July 2025, Pages 5-15
Abstract:
While capitalism today is widely seen as a threat to democracy, the free market plays a central role in fostering pluralism. A strong and autonomous private sector is critical to the creation of a robust opposition and an independent civil society that are central to democratic resilience. At the same time, even rich and powerful private sectors in high-income countries may be vulnerable to government pressure with regulatory coercion -- a fact that makes these countries potentially susceptible to democratic backsliding. Indeed, state capture of business -- to a greater degree than business capture of the state -- represents the most direct threat to democratic survival.
"Trust Me, I Am Not Like Them": Political Signaling In A Credibility Crisis
André Quintas & Erwin Dekker
George Mason University Working Paper, June 2025
Abstract:
Why is current political competition marked by extreme and anti-establishment rhetoric? The standard explanation -- what we call the "polarization hypothesis" -- is that voter preferences have shifted. We offer a different view. We argue that political extremism is a signaling device born from a low degree of credibility of political parties and institutions and competitive pressures in democratic systems. We call this "the signaling hypothesis". Political competition is usually analyzed as occurring along policy dimensions. However, in recent years, amid a growing credibility crisis of mainstream institutions, the credibility dimension has gained greater importance. While newcomers may find it difficult to compete on traditional policy grounds under normal conditions, during a credibility crisis they gain an additional margin of competition. To leverage this, they adopt extreme behavior and challenge established norms, to signal their outsider status to attract disillusioned voters and enhance their own credibility. We develop this theory and compare it to the polarization hypothesis. We suggest that the signal hypothesis better explains contemporary political competition in Western democracies, which we demonstrate using developments in French politics in the past decade and a half.
The Effect of Increased Women’s Legislative Representation on Women’s Well-being
Robin Grier, Kevin Grier & Florence Muhoza
European Journal of Political Economy, September 2025
Abstract:
We analyze the causal effects of large and sustained increases in female legislative representation on several measures of women’s well-being. Across all our outcome variables, we find no significant results. These null results continue to hold when we use different criteria for defining a significant increase or allow for differences in treatment effects based on the country’s political regime. We conclude that, at least on average, this increased representation does not significantly increase measures of women’s well-being.
Proving Her Strength: The Partisan and Gendered Implications of Legislative Obstruction
Nicole Huffman, Lauren Olson & Ryan Vander Wielen
Legislative Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why do some legislators continue to obstruct despite public support for compromise? We suggest that legislator gender and voter partisanship are key but often overlooked determinants of how voters process obstructive behaviors by legislators. Since Republicans value masculinity more than Democrats, and obstruction is a masculine behavior, we theorize that Republicans are more likely to reward obstructive behavior, especially from women legislators who are presumed to be less masculine. Using a conjoint experiment, we find evidence supporting our theory. Republicans evaluate women legislators more negatively until the perceived obstructiveness of their behavior increases. Meanwhile, perceived obstructiveness has no gendered effects among Democrats. These results suggest that Republican women should be more likely to endorse obstruction, which we find evidence of by analyzing email newsletters issued by members of the US House and Senate from 2009 to 2020. These findings explain partisan and gendered asymmetries in obstructive behaviors that counter conventional notions that women are disproportionately consensus builders.
Constituency Juries: Holding Elected Representatives Accountable through Sortition
Bruno Leipold
Perspectives on Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article proposes the creation of constituency juries to enhance accountability and check oligarchy in representative governments. Constituency juries would be made up of randomly selected citizens from an electoral constituency who exercise oversight over that constituency’s elected representative. Elected representatives would be required to give a regular account of their actions to the constituency jury, and the jury would have the power to sanction the representative. In addition to this general model of constituency juries, I offer a more specific institutional design that shows how the general model can be operationalized and realistically incorporated into existing representative governments. In contrast to lottocratic proposals that replace elections with sortition, constituency juries are a promising way to combine the two to address the oligarchic tendencies of elections in representative government.
The State and the Emergence of the First American Party System: Roll Call Voting in the New York State Assembly during the Early Republic
Benjamin Rohr & John Levi Martin
American Sociological Review, August 2025, Pages 726-754
Abstract:
Prevailing theories about the nature and development of the democratic party system fail to account for the important case of the United States. Using a novel dataset on legislators and roll call votes in the New York State Assembly after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, we show that, contrary to existing accounts, legislative parties had already formed at this early stage. Yet these parties did not arise from the translation of social cleavages such as economic or social class into political oppositions, as sociologists might expect, nor were they merely networks of powerful elites disconnected from the polity, as political scientists and historians have suggested. Instead, these parties coalesced around formal issues -- structural questions like the procedures for election and appointment, questions whose answer would determine the rules of the game for future contests. Parties emerged, we argue, not because of an inherent need to adjudicate conflicts between sectors of the polity, but because of the organizational affordances of the modern democratic state. Our findings suggest the formation of party systems is an integral part of the formation of the modern state.
Overcoming the Federal Talent Gap: Evidence from Special Governmental Employees and Other Pathways
Christos Makridis
Stanford Working Paper, June 2025
Abstract:
The federal government continues to face persistent challenges in recruiting and retaining skilled talent, particularly in high-demand technical fields such as artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity. While compensation gaps are often cited, growing evidence suggests that institutional rigidities and non-pecuniary disincentives-ranging from opaque hiring procedures to limited flexibility-constrain the public sector's ability to attract and retain expertise. This paper has two goals. First, it provides a comprehensive review of federal hiring authorities. Second, it examines the role of Special Government Employees (SGEs) as a flexible mechanism for integrating external expertise into federal agencies, drawing on a detailed case study of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), established via executive order in 2025 and reliant extensively on SGEs and alternative hiring mechanisms to circumvent conventional personnel constraints. By analyzing both structural hiring frameworks and recent administrative reforms, this paper identifies underutilized levers for talent acquisition and retention within the federal workforce and offers policy-relevant insights for modernizing civil service institutions.
Reform Drift: How Incumbent Protection Undermines Descriptive Representation in Local Government
Joseph Loffredo, Michael Hankinson & Asya Magazinnik
MIT Working Paper, July 2025
Abstract:
Institutional reforms designed to enhance democratic representation often place implementation in the hands of incumbents. We examine how incumbents use this control to protect their interests by leveraging the California Voting Rights Act of 2001, which prompted hundreds of jurisdictions to switch from at-large to district elections to improve minority representation. Using a state-of-the-art redistricting simulation algorithm, we show that adopted council maps overwhelmingly placed incumbents alone in their districts -- 63% of cities' plans ranked in the 99th percentile or higher for avoidance of incumbent pairings. This pattern was especially pronounced in smaller, whiter cities with lower turnout and more competitive elections. Crucially, incumbent protection deters challenger entry and reduces Latino electoral success. In Latino-opportunity districts, a lone incumbent decreases the probability of a Latino being elected by 19 percentage points. Our findings show how reforms can be blunted by those empowered to implement them, ultimately reinforcing existing power structures.
A Measure of Congressional Committee Influence
Stefani Langehennig, Ryan Bell & Scott Adler
Legislative Studies Quarterly, August 2025
Abstract:
In this article, we develop a temporally dynamic measure of each congressional committee's influence across nearly all areas of U.S. federal law. Our measure is derived from the United States Code, which provides detailed information on the evolution of public law across time and issue areas. We categorize sections of the U.S. Code by Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) policy topic areas and then construct a committee-level influence score based on committees' authorship and revision of each section. Spanning the 104th through 115th Congresses (1995–2018), our measure demonstrates that there are dominant committees that consistently exercise control over enormous portions of federal law, a handful of committees expand their influence over time, while others ebb and flow in their influence.