Being a politically progressive college professor who isn’t a passenger on the Bernie Sanders Express can be uncomfortable at times. Lucky for me, I’m a political science professor, which means that I have plenty of scholarly company, particularly among my fellow political scientists who study American politics. The reason for the disparity is, in my…
Category: National politics
The United States, Asylum Policy, and Central America
One of the constants about immigration as a topic is how emotional people of all stripes get talking about it despite little to no understanding of immigration law. This is not necessarily their fault. The salience of the immigration phenomenon and the complexity of the rules, coupled with misinformation stemming from politicians, media organizations and…
Question 2 and the Myths about Citizens United
Guest post from Professor Raymond J. La Raja of UMass Amherst and Professor Brian Schaffner of Tufts University. With Election Day in just a few days, Massachusetts voters must make up their minds on three important ballot questions. Unfortunately too little attention has been paid to Question 2. We have several concerns about it. Question…
We live in a democracy
We live in a democracy. It seems silly to have to remind each other of this, but I notice a trend on social media and elsewhere of snarky comments targeting those who raise concerns about democratic norms. It goes something like this: Commentator: “A President who lost the popular vote nominates a Justice for the…
Democratic Primaries Showed the Route to Beating Baker
Charlie Baker is likely to win re-election this November, just like every elected Massachusetts governor who has sought re-election has in the last 34 years. Re-electing governors, regardless of party, is what Massachusetts voters do. However, Baker’s re-election isn’t a sure thing. There is a scenario wherein his chances could plummet. It’s a scenario that came…
American Presidents and Their Removal From Office.
One of the most studied tenets in comparative politics is the inherent instability in presidential systems. First proposed by Juan Linz, the basic insight is that in a system where the main actors have contrasting sources of legitimacy, deadlock is not just more likely, but the norm. This, in turn, leads to governmental incapacity, public…
Jeff Jacoby’s Latest: Embarrassingly Wrong and Dangerously Irresponsible
Jeff Jacoby’s latest column, published at the right wing website Townhall as well as in the Boston Globe, is a bitter conservative twofer. In a column about the widely reported incident at Smith College wherein a student of color was mistaken for a suspicious and/or unauthorized visitor and subjected to police questioning, Jacoby managed to…
Tariffs as Economic Policy: Lessons from Latin America
President Trump loves tariffs. “They are the greatest!” he tweeted recently. The sentiment would be familiar to most Latin American leaders from the middle of the 20th century. At the time, Latin America was engaged in a massive attempt to develop local industries, so following the ideas of the Argentinian economist Raúl Prebisch, the region…
A Tale of Two Challengers
Much has been made of the similarities between the two women running in Democratic primaries this year against the Bay State’s two longest-serving U.S. House members, but the differences between the challengers are actually more significant. Both are benefiting from the surge of progressivism in the Democratic Party nationally as well as the anti-establishment fervor…
Springtime for Oligarchs
There hasn’t been a better time in memory to be an oligarch. In America, it’s Springtime for Oligarchs.