If you have read what political scientists have to say about the relationship between campaign contributions and elections, you probably know that the answer is “it’s complicated.” But with presidential nominations, it is especially unlikely that having the most campaign money will matter. When billionaire Michael Bloomberg announced that he […] Read more »
So you want to be an autocrat? Here’s the 10-point checklist
Two autocrats: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, left, and Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, right, in Budapest, Hungary, Nov. 7, 2019. AP/Presidential Press Service Shelley Inglis, University of Dayton Democracy is in trouble, despite popular uprisings and dynamic social movements in Lebanon, Hong Kong and across Europe and Latin America. Scholars […] Read more »
Would Republicans pay a price if they vote to impeach the president? Here’s what we know from 1974.
With the House likely to vote to impeach President Trump, what electoral repercussions (if any) would House or Senate Republicans face from their votes on whether to impeach the president or remove him from office? If some members of the GOP break ranks, would their constituents reward or punish them […] Read more »
This Week in Impeachment: Why Can’t Republicans Agree on What Happened with Ukraine?
According to a durable truism of American politics, Republicans find it much easier than Democrats to unite around a single political message. Not all nuggets of conventional wisdom are reliably accurate, but this one has substantial truth behind it: the collective self-definition of the Republican Party as the agent of […] Read more »
The Democracy Doomsayers Consider 2020
… “Joe Scarborough once came on MSNBC with a copy of a piece we’d written and said that we were ‘laughable,’” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard University professor who has spent the last several years arguing that American democracy is facing challenges similar to those that brought down Latin American […] Read more »
Trump’s Impeachment and Opinion Formation in the Digital Age
As the impeachment process is speeding forward in a highly polarized Washington D.C., the assumption is that the mass media will exert tremendous political and societal influence on the proceedings. The full impact of the media, however, remains an open question given longstanding political science research as well as the […] Read more »