Not Another Politics Podcast by University of Chicago Podcast Network

05.15.2024

How Good Are We At Spotting Fake News?

If the media is to be believed, the US public has a tenuous at best grasp on accurate political news. They’re either consuming disinformation and fake news on social media or following biasedly inaccurate news outlets. Either journalistic truth is...

05.01.2024

Is Partisan Animosity Directed At Fellow Citizens Or Elites?

There is a fact of our political discourse so agreed upon that nobody thinks to question it: affective polarization…democrats and republicans disliking each other...has been getting worse, much worse. But what if that belief is actually based on polls measuring...

04.17.2024

Should Policy Match Voters' Preferences?

How do we know if our democracy is healthy? For political scientist, the answer often comes down to things we can measure like responsiveness to voter’s wishes. But is that really the right thing to measure? There are two camps in...

04.03.2024

Are Too Many Political Appointments Harming Our Bureaucracy?

When it comes to our federal bureaucracy, there are two schools of thought. One says that an insulated group of career bureaucrats have created a deep state that corrupts the performance of government. The other says that our bureaucracy is...

03.20.2024

Should Judges Be Elected or Appointed?

There is a long running debate in political science: do we get better judges by letting the public vote in elections or by giving our leaders the power to appoint them? One side says that judges should be insulated from...

03.06.2024

Why Women Are Underrepresented in U.S. Politics

Despite making up roughly half of the U.S. population, women only make up about one-quarter of representatives and senators. And this trend is not just national—it holds true globally as well. What explains why women are underrepresented in politics? If...

02.21.2024

What Makes A Legislator Effective?

When it comes to passing actual legislation, putting it forward and getting it all the way through the process, it can be difficult to measure exactly which legislators are effective. Not to mention which types of legislators tend to be...

02.07.2024

Do Conservatives Sabotage The Administrative State?

When we talk about the interpretation and ultimately implementation of policy we’re not talking about Congress so much as the Administrative State. But what happens when those who work in those agencies decide through their positions to not only sabotage...

01.24.2024

Who Gets Heard On Redistribution, The Rich Or Poor?

When we talk about policy choices around redistribution there is an assumption so obvious that most people never question it. That politicians are more responsive to the desires of the rich, and that policy preferences of the poor don’t hold...

01.10.2024

Can We Believe Political Surveys?

Hello listeners! Our team took some end of the year time off, but we know your holiday travel wouldn’t be complete without some in-depth political science research. So, we’re release some episodes we think are going to be very relevant...

12.27.2023

Should It Be Illegal Not To Vote?

Hello listeners! Our team took some end of the year time off, but we know your holiday travel wouldn’t be complete without some in-depth political science research. So, we’re release some episodes we think are going to be very relevant...

12.13.2023

Is There A "Spiral of Silence" On Campus And In Our Politics?

The recent crisis in the Israel and Palestine conflict has added fuel to the already heated debate over free speech in our politics and on college campuses. Does the scientific literature having anything to tell us about the health of...

11.29.2023

The Bargaining Strategies of Extremists

There is a political puzzle that has become prominent in the last few decades, especially with the recent turmoil over the Republican led Speaker of the House: how do a small group of extremists manage to get their way despite...

11.15.2023

Is Gridlock Causing Polarization?

We often say on this podcast that the American electorate is not polarized but the elites are, and that this polarization causes policy gridlock. But what if it’s the other way around? Is it possible that gridlock in government is...

11.01.2023

Partisan Identities vs Anti-Establishment Orientations

When political commentators talk about polarization, they often mean a partisan ideological divide: the left vs the right, republicans vs democrats, progressives vs conservatives. But what if there is a different dichotomy driving our political disagreements that is orthogonal to...

10.18.2023

LIVE: Does Money Distort Our Politics?

If there is one thing the right and left seem to agree on it’s that money distorts our politics. It allows the rich to shape policy, choose who gets elected, and escape consequences. But what if this common belief isn’t...

10.04.2023

Presidential Power, Parties, And The Rise Of The Administrative State

One of Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign promises is to upend the modern civil service through an executive order called “Schedule F”. Democrats and Republicans have been fighting over this administrative state since its conception, but why is this area of...

09.20.2023

Does Social Media Polarize Our Politics?

It’s one of the most common refrains in political discourse today: social media is the source of polarization. It’s a difficult proposition to empirically study because companies like Meta and X don’t share their data publicly. Until now. In a landmark...

09.06.2023

Is Partisan Gerrymandering As Bad As You Think?

There is no political topic that can get people’s blood boiling quite like partisan gerrymandering. Many even go so far as to call it an afront to our democracy. But what do we know about how effective it is and...

08.23.2023

Does Ousting Incumbents Improve The Economy?

The assumption in political science has always been that electing challengers can lead to a downturn in performance. It takes time to do all the hiring involved in establishing a new government, and there is always a learning curve about...

08.09.2023

Do Partisans Really Believe Different Facts?

The common refrain in political coverage today says that each side of the aisle is living in an information bubble. There is a partisan knowledge gap between the facts Democrats know and the facts Republicans know. May believe this gap...

07.26.2023

Is Voter Rationality A Test Of A Health Democracy?

There’s a long tradition in political science of using voter rationality to test the health of our democracy. But could this myopia be misguided? Are there any situations where irrational and uninformed voters could actually generate a healthier democracy? We’re taking...

07.12.2023

When Fox Viewers Watch CNN Instead

Partisan misinformation. Many people think it comes from the news people watch. When it comes to cable news, Fox and CNN have pretty partisan viewers. So, what would happen if Fox viewers tuned into CNN for a month? Would they...

06.21.2023

Do White Americans Favor White Politicians?

As the Supreme Court debates whether to end affirmative action, concerns about the power of implicit racial bias to shape who gets ahead in America are as salient as ever. But what do we know about the extent and power...

06.07.2023

Do Stimulus Checks Buy Votes?

We’ve become deeply familiar with stimulus checks in the last few years, but what isn’t clear is what affect these transfers may have on elections. Could stimulus checks be enough for citizens to change their votes to the party handing...

05.24.2023

Can You Judge A Politician By Their Looks?

We all know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but if we’re being honest we all do it on occasion anyway. Could it be that we also elect our politicians just based on how they look?...

05.10.2023

Can Citizen Appeals Change Government Action?

When citizens directly appeal to their government, are their concerns ignored or taken seriously? It’s an important question for understanding norms around accountability, especially in authoritarian regimes. To find some answers, University of Chicago Professor of Public Policy Shaoda...

04.26.2023

Does Bad Government Breed Populism?

Why is populism on the rise across the globe? One story says this movement is driven by anti-elite and anti-establishment sentiment, that they just want to throw the bums out. Another says it’s driven by identity politics, an anti-immigrant pro-nativist...

04.12.2023

Do Political Endorsements Undermine Trust In Science?

In the runup to the 2020 election, the academic journal Nature made the unprecedented decision to endorse Joe Biden for President. During an era when trust in science has never seemed more crucial, this decision led many to wonder if...

03.30.2023

Do Politicians Spend Money Differently Depending On Its Source?

If you found a hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk, would you spend it differently than a hundred dollars made at work? This same question applies to politicians. Governments collect revenues from a variety of sources, does where the money comes...

03.15.2023

How Does Representation Work?

There are two classic questions in political science research: how does representation work and how should it work? They’re crucial questions when it comes to designing a functioning democracy. In fact, researchers have been trying to answer these questions for decades....

03.01.2023

The Polarization Of State Legislatures

When we talk about polarization on this podcast it’s almost always in the context of congress or the presidency. But are state legislatures polarizing as well? And, if they are, what can that tell us about the state of our...

02.15.2023

Are We In A Period Of Global Democratic Decline?

02.02.2023

Political Brokers In India’s Most Marginalized Communities

01.18.2023

An Algorithm for Detecting Election Fraud

For better or worse, one of the biggest stories in US politics today is the detection of election fraud, or in many cases the lack of election fraud. But determining whether fraud happened in an election can be difficult, even...

01.05.2023

Why The U.S. Isn’t As Polarized As It Seems

As we approach the anniversary of the January 6th attack on the US Capitol, we wanted to reflect on where we are as a country and whether politics are really as polarized as they seem. Our co-host Will Howell recently...

12.21.2022

Why Aren't the Majority Of Voters Getting What They Want?

12.07.2022

An International Look At Affective Polarization

We often talk about the rise of affective polarization in the United States, but rarely are the trends we observe domestically placed in an international context. What about Norway, Canada, New Zealand, Japan? What are the trends in global affective...

11.23.2022

Why Aren't There More Moderate Politicians?

We took some time off to enjoy the holiday with our families, but in the wake of the 2024 mid-terms, we’re going to re-share this crucial episode and relevant episode. When it comes to polarization, most people in American politics blame...

11.09.2022

LIVE: How Members Of Congress Forge Relationships With Their Voters

This episode was recorded live at the NASPAA conference in Chicago. With the midterms upon us, we decided to look back at a piece of landmark scholarship that may be able to tell us something about the dynamics of personal...

10.26.2022

What Can We Learn About Polarization From The UK?

One theme on our show is trying to make sense of why elites appear to be so polarized when the larger public is more moderate. We almost always study these trends in the U.S. but could we look to another...

10.12.2022

Are Legislators Beating The Market With Insider Information?

There might not be a more controversial political hack than members of Congress being legally allowed to trade stocks. Infamously, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, has been regularly accused of insider trading. Recently the...

09.28.2022

Do Primaries Cause Polarization?

For years, political scholars and pundits have claimed that primary elections are exacerbating polarization and with the 2022 midterm elections approaching this year has been no different. With many extremist candidates on both sides of the aisle, it certainly feels...

09.14.2022

Can Fact-Checking Counter Misinformation?

The COVID-19 pandemic has been an era of misinformation. From social media to cable news, the spread of false or misleading information about COVID vaccines has been rampant. Some social media platforms have moved more aggressively by trying to flag...

08.31.2022