The importance of ideas: an a priori critical juncture framework

This paper sets out an improved framework for examining critical junctures. This framework, while rigorous and broadly applicable and an advance on the frameworks currently employed, primarily seeks to incorporate an a priori element. Until now the frameworks utilized in examining critical junctures were entirely postdictive. Adding a predictive element to the concept will constitute a significant advance. The new framework, and its predictive element, termed the “differentiating factor,” is tested here in examining macro-economic crises and subsequent changes in macro-economic policy, in America and Sweden

Officials in Action: Geographies of the Nineteenth Century American State

Debates in American political development center on the nature of the American state, especially the character and scope of public authority in the nineteenth century. This paper contributes to this debate by posing the question: where was the American state? I answer this question using microdata from the 1850 census to geolocate members of the military and government employees at the federal, state, and local levels. This informs a spatial analysis of public authority in the nineteenth century along with an examination of the geographic and demographic correlates of the early American state. Whereas the extractive and military powers of the federal government were located around the perimeter of the United States, the information capacity of the state was diffused widely throughout the interior. At the state and local level, governing authority reflected distinct regional political economies organized around slavery with the policing functions of local government clustered around a securitized border between free and slave states. Attention to the multiple geographies of the nineteenth century state has broader implications for the study of American political development by recentering questions of state formation and state building in comparative perspective. It is the spatial organization of authority that distinguishes the early American state from patterns of state formation and state building in Europe and Latin America.</p

Populism, politicization and policy change in US and UK agro-food policies

This paper compares the effects of right-wing populism on agro-food policy in the US and UK. In both countries, populist campaigns politicized agro-food issues but the effects on policy have been variable. In the United States, policy has remained relatively stable despite the politicization of agro-food issues under Trump. In the UK, amid the uncertainty over Brexit, an opportunity exists to incorporate a wider range of goals around the environment, climate change and public health. These differences reveal how features of the policy process and the party system mediate the effects of politicization on policy change

Cambridge Analytica

Quarterly payments to Cambridge Analytica during 2016 election, organized by committee. Source: Federal Election Commissio

Political Consulting Expenditures, 2011 and 2015

Data on expenditures by firm, candidate, and type (campaign committee, super PAC, independent expenditures

Political Consulting Expenditures 2012 and 2016

Includes expenditures through March 30 of election year by campaign committees and super pacs as well as independent expenditures though May

Presidential Campaign Spending on Political Consulting Firms, 2008-2016

Spending on consulting firms by presidential candidates, 2008-2016. Appendix explains method used for coding FEC expenditure files and estimating expenditures on political consulting firms