Would Helping the Poor Benefit Everybody? John Rawls (1921 – 2002) was one of the most (if not the most) prominent political philosophers in the 20th century. Rawls proposed a theory of justice, which he called Justice as Fairness. Justice as Fairness consists of two basic principles. The first principle (known as the liberty principle) …

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Do Voters Discriminate Against Women Running for Office? Women make up roughly half of the world’s population but hold only 25.7 percent of the elected positions in national legislatures (Inter-Parliamentary Union 2021). Political scientists have long tried to make sense of the persistent underrepresentation of women in politics around the globe. One recurring question in …

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Home-price subsidies increase local-level political participation in urban India Today, over half of the world’s population lives in cities. While developing countries remain predominantly rural, urbanization is expected to add 2.5 billion people to the global urban population by 2050, with 90% of this increase slated for Asia and Africa. India alone is expected to …

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The Missionary Roots of Nationalism In the era of European colonialism, Christian missionaries spread to practically every corner of the globe. By 1900, they had evangelized 700 million people, nearly half the world population. The conventional wisdom in the social science literature is that Protestant missionaries spread literacy and democracy. The argument is straightforward: Protestant …

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Can Competition for Migrants Limit Backsliding? Throughout the world, including in the United States, we are witnessing an increase in “democratic backsliding” –  the state-led erosion and weakening of democratic institutions and norms. How can this trend be opposed and undermined? In our new article, we examine a potential economic consequence of backsliding: whether backsliding …

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  In a new paper at the Journal of Politics, “How Campaigns Respond to Ballot Position: A New Mechanism for Order Effects”, Saad Gulzar, Thomas Robinson, and Nelson Ruiz find evidence that political campaigns spend more money in campaigns when placed at the top of the electoral ballot. This suggests that ballot order effects might …

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