The potency of right-wing populism was visible again last week in the success of right-wing parties in the Austrian election. Conventional wisdom has a ready explanation for populism’s success: the declining economic fortunes of the working class. As the story goes, people who are frustrated with modern economies that require […] Read more »
Why High-Profile Events Like Mass Shootings Often Don’t Lead To Policy Change
… The idea that events should change policy is appealing. After each incident of gun violence in the U.S., someone retells Australia’s story. Twelve days after a mass shooting there in 1996, the legislature took up anti-gun measures, including a buyback program and various restrictions on the types of guns […] Read more »
Trump is a real-world political science experiment
President Donald Trump is a Republican. But often, and more so than any president in memory, he lacks a consistent political ideology. … “We’ve never had a federal elected official, let alone the leader of a party or the president of the United States, who is so easily moved from […] Read more »
Persuading voters is hard. That doesn’t mean campaigns should give up.
Political professionals in both parties are busy strategizing about how to persuade voters. Democratic operatives are fiercely debating how to win back working-class voters in key swing states. Meanwhile, the Republican Party establishment is puzzling over how to beat back populist primary challengers. Will either be successful? At first glance, […] Read more »
The Health of American Democracy: Comparing Perceptions of Experts and the American Public
Given widespread concern about the possible erosion of democracy in the United States, Bright Line Watch has conducted expert surveys since early 2017 asking thousands of professional political scientists to identify the dimensions of democracy they see as most important and to rate how well the U.S. is performing on […] Read more »
Authoritarian Warning Survey: In U.S., consistently high threat levels across all categories
Our September 2017 survey results demonstrate consistently strong concerns about American democracy over the past month, although slightly lessened compared to August. From August to September, ratings improved on every dimension except civil liberties. However, democracy experts still see American political behavior in 2017 as firmly outside the norm for […] Read more »