March 2023 Weidenbaum Center Highlights

Accurate information is at the heart of democratic functioning. For decades, researchers interested in how information is disseminated have focused on mass media, but the reality is that many Americans today do not learn about politics from direct engagement with the news. Rather, about one-third of Americans learn chiefly from information shared by their peers in conversation or on social media. How does this socially transmitted information differ from that communicated by traditional media? What are the consequences for political attitudes and behavior? Drawing on evidence from experiments, surveys, and social media, Taylor N. Carlson finds that, as information flows first from the media then person to person, it becomes sparse, more biased, less accurate, and more mobilizing. The result is what Carlson calls distorted democracy. Although socially transmitted information does not necessarily render democracy dysfunctional, Through the Grapevine shows how it contributes to a public that is at once underinformed, polarized, and engaged.

This book was supported by the Weidenbaum Center through survey data collection from The American Social Survey (TASS). 

Are you discouraged by our divided, angry culture, where even listening to a different perspective sometimes feels impossible? If so, you're not alone, and it doesn't have to be this way. Learning to Disagree reveals the surprising path to learning how to disagree in ways that build new bridges with our neighbors, coworkers, and loved ones--and help us find better ways to live joyfully in a complex society.

In a tense cultural climate, is it possible to disagree productively and respectfully without compromising our convictions? Spanning a range of challenging issues--including critical race theory, sexual assault, campus protests, and clashes over religious freedom--highly regarded thought leader and law professor John Inazu helps us engage honestly and empathetically with people whose viewpoints we find strange, wrong, or even dangerous.

This groundbreaking, poignant, and highly practical book equips us to:

• Understand what holds us back from healthy disagreement
• Learn specific, start-today strategies for dialoguing clearly and authentically
• Move from stuck, broken disagreements to mature, healthy disagreements
• Cultivate empathy as a core skill for our personal lives and our whole society

A leading sociologist reveals why racial inequality persists in the workplace despite today’s multi-billion-dollar diversity industry—and provides actionable solutions for creating a truly equitable, multiracial future.

Labor and race have shared a complex, interconnected history in America. For decades, key aspects of work—from getting a job to workplace norms to advancement and mobility—ignored and failed Black people. While explicit discrimination no longer occurs, and organizations make internal and public pledges to honor and achieve “diversity,” inequities persist through what Adia Harvey Wingfield calls the “gray areas:” the relationships, networks, and cultural dynamics integral to companies that are now more important than ever. The reality is that Black employees are less likely to be hired, stall out at middle levels, and rarely progress to senior leadership positions. Wingfield has spent a decade examining inequality in the workplace, interviewing over two hundred Black subjects across professions about their work lives. In Gray Areas, she introduces seven of them: Alex, a worker in the gig economy Max, an emergency medicine doctor; Constance, a chemical engineer; Brian, a filmmaker; Amalia, a journalist; Darren, a corporate vice president; and Kevin, who works for a nonprofit.

In this accessible and important antiracist work, Wingfield chronicles their experiences and blends them with history and surprising data that starkly show how old models of work are outdated and detrimental. She demonstrates the scope and breadth of gray areas and offers key insights and suggestions for how they can be fixed, including shifting hiring practices to include Black workers; rethinking organizational cultures to centralize Black employees’ experience; and establishing pathways that move capable Black candidates into leadership roles. These reforms would create workplaces that reflect America’s increasingly diverse population—professionals whose needs organizations today are ill-prepared to meet. It’s time to prepare for a truly equitable, multiracial future and move our culture forward. To do so, we must address the gray areas in our workspaces today. This definitive work shows us how.

Why are political conversations uncomfortable for so many people? The current literature focuses on the structure of people's discussion networks and the frequency with which they talk about politics, but not the dynamics of the conversations themselves. In What Goes Without Saying, Taylor N. Carlson and Jaime E. Settle investigate how Americans navigate these discussions in their daily lives, with particular attention to the decision-making process around when and how to broach politics. The authors use a multi-methods approach to unpack what they call the 4D Framework of political conversation: identifying the ways that people detect others' views, decide whether to talk, discuss their opinions honestly―or not, and determine whether they will repeat the experience in the future. In developing a framework for studying and explaining political discussion as a social process, What Goes Without Saying will set the agenda for research in political science, psychology, communication, and sociology for decades to come.

Concerns about unaccountable executive power have featured recurrently in political debates from the American founding to today. For many, presidents' use of unilateral power threatens American democracy. No Blank Check advances a new perspective: Instead of finding Americans apathetic towards how presidents exercise power, it shows the public is deeply concerned with core democratic values. Drawing on data from original surveys, innovative experiments, historical polls, and contexts outside the United States, the book highlights Americans' skepticism towards presidential power. This skepticism results in a public that punishes unilaterally minded presidents and the policies they pursue. By departing from existing theories of presidential power which acknowledge only institutional constraints, this timely and revealing book demonstrates the public's capacity to tame the unilateral impulses of even the most ambitious presidents. Ultimately, when it comes to exercising power, the public does not hand the president a blank check.

How is it that America's cities remain almost as segregated as they were fifty years ago? In Race Brokers, Elizabeth Korver-Glenn examines how housing market professionals--including housing developers, real estate agents, mortgage lenders, and appraisers--construct contemporary urban housing markets in ways that contribute to neighborhood inequality and racial segregation. Drawing on extensive ethnographic and interview data collected in Houston, Texas, Korver-Glenn shows how these professionals, especially those who are White, use racist tools to build a fundamentally unequal housing market and are even encouraged to apply racist ideas to market activity and interactions. Korver-Glenn further tracks how professionals broker racism across the entirety of the housing exchange process--from the home's construction, to real estate brokerage, mortgage lending, home appraisals, and the home sale closing. Race Brokers highlights the imperative to interrupt the racism that pervades
housing market professionals' work, dismantle the racialized routines that underwrite such racism, and cultivate a truly fair housing market.

Judging Inequality offers a comprehensive examination of the powerful role that state supreme courts play in shaping public policies pertinent to inequality. This volume is a landmark contribution to scholarly work on the intersection of American jurisprudence and inequality, one that essentially rewrites the “conventional wisdom” on the role of courts in America’s democracy. 

Feeling Godly brings together well-known and highly regarded scholars of early American history and literature, Native American studies, African American history, and religious studies to investigate the shape, feel, look, theology, and influence of religious affections in early American sites of contact with and between Christians. While remaining focused on the question of religious affections, these essays span a wide range of early North American cultures, affiliations, practices, and devotions, and enable a comparative approach that draws together a history of emotions with a history of religion.

A myth-busting book challenges the idea that we’re paid according to objective criteria and places power and social conflict at the heart of economic analysis.

Your pay depends on your productivity and occupation. If you earn roughly the same as others in your job, with the precise level determined by your performance, then you’re paid market value. And who can question something as objective and impersonal as the market? That, at least, is how many of us tend to think. But according to Jake Rosenfeld, we need to think again.

Poorly Understood is the first book to systematically address and confront many of the most widespread myths pertaining to poverty. Mark Robert Rank, Lawrence M. Eppard, and Heather E. Bullock powerfully demonstrate that the realities of poverty are much different than the myths; indeed in many ways they are more disturbing. 

A fresh, original history of America’s national narratives, told through the loss, recovery, and rise of one influential Puritan sermon from 1630 to the present day.

In this illuminating book, Abram Van Engen shows how the phrase “City on a Hill,” from a 1630 sermon by Massachusetts Bay governor John Winthrop, shaped the story of American exceptionalism in the twentieth century.

American Rage argues that anger is the central emotion governing contemporary US politics, with powerful, deleterious effects. Tracing the developments that have given rise to a culture of anger in the mass public, the book sheds new light on both public opinion and voting behavior. 

Human beings are social animals. Yet despite vast amounts of reesarch into political decisionmaking, very little attention has been devoted to social dimensions. In political science, social relationships are generally thought of as mere sources of information, rather than active influences on one's political decisions. 

What happens to black health care professionals in the new economy, where work is insecure and organizational resources are scarce? In Flatlining, Adia Harvey Wingfield exposes how hospitals, clinics, and other institutions participate in “racial outsourcing,” relying heavily on black doctors, nurses, technicians, and physician assistants to do “equity work”—extra labor that makes organizations and their services more accessible to communities of color. Wingfield argues that as these organizations become more profit driven, they come to depend on black health care professionals to perform equity work to serve increasingly diverse constituencies. Yet black workers often do this labor without recognition, compensation, or support. Operating at the intersection of work, race, gender, and class, Wingfield makes plain the challenges that black employees must overcome and reveals the complicated issues of inequality in today’s workplaces and communities.

The tenth edition of this respected textbook provides a fresh perspective and a crisp introduction to congressional politics. Informed by the authors’ Capitol Hill experience and scholarship, the new edition reflects changes in Congress resulting from the 2018 elections and such developments as (a) a new majority party in the House; (b) new campaign spending numbers and election outcomes, rules, committees, leaders, and budget developments; and (c) recent political science literature that provides new perspectives on the institution. The text emphasizes the recent developments and includes important learning aids, including lists of key term, discussion questions and suggested further reading. Alongside clear explanations of congressional rules and the lawmaking process there are examples from contemporary events and debates that highlight Congress as a group of politicians as well as a lawmaking body.

The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice provides a comprehensive overview of the research in economics, political science, law, and sociology that has generated considerable insight into the politics of democratic and authoritarian systems as well as the influence of different institutional frameworks on incentives and outcomes. The result is an improved understanding of public policy, public finance, industrial organization, and macroeconomics as the combination of political and economic analysis shed light on how various interests compete both within a given rules of the games and, at times, to change the rules. These volumes include analytical surveys, syntheses, and general overviews of the many subfields of public choice focusing on interesting, important, and at times contentious issues. Throughout the focus is on enhancing understanding how political and economic systems act and interact, and how they might be improved.

A Connected America: Politics in the Era of Social Media examines how voters interact with political representatives, the media, and other voters online. Offering a broad and current overview that doesn't skimp on the details, this text focuses on how new media affects policy changes, legislation, and elections-especially in the wake of the unprecedented 2016 U.S. presidential campaign cycle, the multiple special elections, and sweeping policy shifts. Cutting across a variety of course areas and topics, A Connected America is a perfect complement to courses on campaigns and elections, public opinion, and political media.

Combining timeless readings with cutting-edge articles and essays, Principles and Practice of American Politics, Seventh Edition,enriches students’ understanding of the American political system by examining the strategic behavior of key players in U.S. politics. This collection of classic and contemporary readings brings concepts to life by providing students with real examples of how political actors are influenced by the strategies of others and are governed by the Constitution, the law, and institutional rules. Carefully edited by award-winning authors Samuel Kernell and Steven S. Smith, each reading is put into context to help students understand how political actions fall within a major national political forum.

Although the U.S. Constitution requires that the House of Representatives and the Senate pass legislation in identical form before it can be sent to the president for final approval, the process of resolving differences between the chambers has received surprisingly little scholarly attention. Hong Min Park, Steven S. Smith, and Ryan J. Vander Wielen document the dramatic changes in intercameral resolution that have occurred over recent decades, and examine the various considerations made by the chambers when determining the manner in which the House and Senate pursue conciliation. Politics Over Process demonstrates that partisan competition, increasing party polarization, and institutional reforms have encouraged the majority party to more creatively restructure post-passage processes, often avoiding the traditional standing committee and conference processes altogether.

With its rock-bottom approval ratings, acrimonious partisan battles, and apparent inability to do its legislative business, the U.S. Senate might easily be deemed unworthy of attention, if not downright irrelevant. This book tells us that would be a mistake. Because the Senate has become the place where the policy-making process most frequently stalls, any effective resolution to our polarized politics demands a clear understanding of how the formerly august legislative body once worked and how it came to the present crisis. Steven S. Smith provides that understanding in The Senate Syndrome.

Like the Senate itself, Smith’s account is grounded in history. Countering a cacophony of inexpert opinion and a widespread misunderstanding of political and legislative history, the book fills in a world of missing information—about debates among senators concerning fundamental democratic processes and the workings of institutional rules, procedures, and norms. And Smith does so in a clear and engaging manner. He puts the present problems of the Senate—the “Senate syndrome,” as he calls them—into historical context by explaining how particular ideas and procedures were first framed and how they transformed with the times. Along the way he debunks a number of myths about the Senate, many perpetuated by senators themselves, and makes some pointed observations about the media’s coverage of Congress.

The Senate Syndrome goes beyond explaining such seeming technicalities as the difference between regular filibusters and post-cloture filibusters, the importance of chair rulings, the changing role of the parliamentarian, and the debate over whether appeals of points of order should be subject to cloture margins, to show why understanding them matters. At stake is resolution of the Senate syndrome, and the critical underlying struggle between majority rule and minority rights in American policy making.

The severity of the Great Recession and the subsequent stagnation caught many economists by surprise. But a group of Keynesian scholars warned for some years that strong forces were leading the U.S. toward a deep, persistent downturn. This book collects essays about these events from prominent macroeconomists who developed a perspective that predicted the broad outline and many specific aspects of the crisis. From this point of view, the recovery of employment and revival of strong growth requires more than short-term monetary easing and temporary fiscal stimulus. Economists and policy makers need to explore how the process of demand formation failed after 2007, and where demand will come from going forward. Successive chapters address the sources and dynamics of demand, the distribution and growth of wages, the structure of finance, and challenges from globalization, and inform recommendations for monetary and fiscal policies to achieve a more efficient and equitable society.

Banking crises threaten the stability and growth of economies around the world. In response, politicians restore banks to solvency by redistributing losses from bank shareholders and depositors to taxpayers, and the burden the citizenry must bear varies from case to case. Whereas some governments stay close to the prescriptions espoused by Sir Walter Bagehot in the nineteenth century that limit the costs shouldered by taxpayers, others engage in generous bank bailouts at great cost to society. What factors determine a government's response?

In this comparative analysis of late-twentieth-century banking crises, Guillermo Rosas identifies political regime type as the determining factor. During a crisis, powerful financial players demand protection of their assets. Rosas maintains that in authoritarian regimes, government officials have little to shield them from such demands and little incentive for rebuffing them, while in democratic regimes, elected officials must weigh these demands against the interests of the voters—that is, the taxpayers. As a result, compared with authoritarian regimes, democratic regimes show a lower propensity toward dramatic, costly bailouts.

The 2008 U.S. presidential campaign has provided a lifetime's worth of surprises. Once again, however, the nomination process highlighted the importance of organization, political prowess, timing, and money. And once again, it raised many hackles. The Democratic contest in particular generated many complaints—for example, it started too early, it was too long, and Super Tuesday was overloaded. This timely book synthesizes new analysis by premier political scientists into a cohesive look at the presidential nomination process—the ways in which it is broken and how it might be fixed.

The contributors to Reforming the Presidential Nomination Process address different facets of the selection process, starting with a brief history of how we got to this point. They analyze the importance—and perceived unfairness—of the earliest primaries and discuss what led to record turnouts in 2008. What roles do media coverage and public endorsements play? William Mayer explains the "superdelegate" phenomenon and the controversy surrounding it; James Gibson and Melanie Springer evaluate public perceptions of the current process as well as possible reforms. Larry Sabato (A More Perfect Constitution) calls for a new nomination system, installed via constitutional amendment, while Tom Mann of Brookings opines on calls for reform that arose in 2008 and Daniel Lowenstein examines the process by which reforms may be adopted—or blocked.

The American Congress Reader provides a supplement to the popular and newly updated American Congress undergraduate textbook. By the same authors who drew upon Capitol Hill experience and nationally recognized scholarship to present a crisp introduction and analysis of Congress's inner mechanics, the Reader compiles the best relevant scholarship on party and committee systems, leadership, voting, and floor activity to broaden and illuminate the key features of the text.

Party Influence in Congress challenges current arguments and evidence about the influence of parties in the U.S. Congress. Political scientists differ in their evaluations of the influence of congressional parties over policy outcomes. Steven S. Smith reviews the arguments and finds them deficient in many respects. In their place, he offers an enriched, more nuanced view of the way parties influence the behavior of legislators and shape legislative outcomes.

One-Armed Economist represents a personal, if eclectic, approach to public policy. Weidenbaum avoids doctrinaire positions, be they Keynesian or monetarist or supply side or libertarian. This distillation of Weidenbaum's wide range of writings on public policy issues over the last four decades draws on his practical experience in government and business as well as his academic research over that extended period.

The volume covers six major clusters of policy issues: economic policy, government programs, business decision-making, government regulation, the defense sector, and the international economy. There are chapters on how to achieve a cleaner environment, how to fundamentally overhaul the tax and health care systems, and a defense of Reaganomics. The work examines how public sector activities impact the performance of the national economy. Its coverage includes the role of government as a buyer, a seller, a provider of credit, and a source of subsidy and support. Drawing heavily on his experience as economist for a major military contractor, Weidenbaum shows that the defense industry is the most heavily regulated sector of the American economy and discusses ways to modernize the arcane and wasteful process of procuring weapon systems.

He also draws on his work on the hidden costs of regulation on the consumer, showing how to improve the regulatory process so as to achieve national objectives while minimizing the burdens of compliance. The last section is devoted to the international economy, with chapters on the role of the overseas enterprises. One-Armed Economist is a lucid analysis of major public policy issues of our time. As such it will be of special interest to organizations involved in public policy, think tanks, and government policymaking groups, as well as readers interested in fresh perspectives on a broad range of policy issues.

Events in Russia since the late 1980s have created a rare opportunity to watch the birth of democratic institutions close at hand. Here Steven Smith and Thomas Remington provide the first intensive, theoretically grounded examination of the early development of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Federation's parliament created by the 1993 constitution. They offer an integrated account of the choices made by the newly elected members of the Duma in establishing basic operating arrangements: an agenda-setting governing body, a standing committee system, an electoral law, and a party system. Not only do these decisions promise to have lasting consequences for the post-communist Russian regime, but they also enable the authors to test assumptions about politicians' goals from the standpoint of institutional theory.

Smith and Remington challenge in particular the notion, derived from American contexts, that politicians pursue a single, overarching goal in the creation of institutions. They argue that politicians have multiple political goals--career, policy, and partisan--that drive their choices. Among Duma members, the authors detect many cross currents of interests, generated by the mixed electoral system, which combines both single-member districts and proportional representation, and by sharp policy divisions and an emerging party system. Elected officials may shift from concentrating on one goal to emphasizing another, but political contexts can help determine their behavior. This book brings a fresh perspective to numerous theories by incorporating first-hand accounts of major institutional choices and placing developments in their actual context.

Describes how expatriate Chinese entrepreneurs are building business empires in Southeast Asia.

One of the most difficult issues facing the United States government is how to maintain an adequate defense in a period of budget stringency. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait made it clear that the United States must be able to respond to rapid changes in the international scene. On the other hand, with the extraordinary events in Eastern Europe, reductions in US-Soviet tensions, and a worsening budget deficit at home, it is equally obvious that the military budget will be squeezed substantially in the early 1990s. The issue of defense spending is at the forefront of the US political agenda, and with it a host of fundamental questions: How much military strength does the US really need in a post-Cold War world? How can economic policy handle large cuts in defense? And what is to be done with the people and companies now working on defense projects? In Small Wars, Big Defense, Murray Weidenbaum, the former Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, draws on years of government and industrial experience to offer a provocative look at the troubled US military complex as it confronts a radically changing world. After a careful assessment of present and likely future threats to US security interests, he takes a hard look at the the American military and defense industry, demonstrating how cycles of "feast and famine" in military budgeting have been so wasteful. He calls for a fundamental reform of the spending process, including an overhaul of the procurement system, more sensible ways of paying military personnel, and reductions in regulation of the defense contractors. At the same time, he offers concrete policies on how the American economy can best adjust to large defense cutbacks and move toward a more civilian-oriented economy. Finally, he presents ideas for getting the most out of lower defense budgets, while maintaining the capability to reverse course if necessary.

A former economic advisor to President Reagan offers a blueprint for dealing with America's economic malaise, with specific emphasis on cutting spending and improving competitiveness and the tax system.