The Geography of Work

Nicholas Eberstadt & Peter Van Ness

Modern America is afflicted with a work problem. Steadily growing numbers of American adults have been dropping out of the workforce, and it seems difficult, if not impossible, to lure many of them back in. While this problem's demographic contours have been examined in some depth, its geographic variability is remarkably under-studied. Today, a stunning 50-plus percentage-point gap separates workforce-participation rates in different metropolitan areas, and between these extremes lies a remarkable national dispersion of local performance that does not fall into predictable regional or economic patterns. This mystery has occasioned strangely little interest, but it demands explanation.

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March 26, 2023

Children of the Future

March 25, 2023

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March 24, 2023

States of Being

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March 05, 2023

What the Federalist Papers Can Teach Us Today

The National Affairs Podcast, Episode 43: On Publius' revolution in political thought and the challenge of statesmanship.

February 05, 2023

How a Redistricting Case Could Alter American Democracy

The National Affairs Podcast, Episode 42: On the independent state legislature theory and saving legislative redistricting.

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How to Think about Patriotism

Wilfred M. McClay

Patriotism in the American context has always involved both a devotion to an intricate latticework of ideals, sentiments, and overlapping loyalties, and also a commitment to our unique traditions, culture, history, people, and land. These two types of American patriotism are undeniably in tension, but the tension has been a healthy one throughout our history. Since its founding, our nation's universal ideals have meshed with, and derived strength from, Americans' local and particular sentiments.

the public interest

Summer 1972

Up and down with ecology—the "issue-attention cycle"

Anthony Downs

The Public Interest was a quarterly public policy journal founded by Irving Kristol and Daniel Bell in 1965. Throughout its four decades of publication, ending in 2005, it offered incomparable insight and wisdom on a vast range of challenges at the intersection of public affairs, culture, and political economy—helping America better understand and govern itself in a tumultuous time. National Affairs now hosts its archives, free of charge.

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Spring 2016

Putting Regulators on a Budget

Jeff Rosen

The spending undertaken by federal appropriators — just like private businesses and households — is restrained by a budget. But federal regulators face no such constraints. They can impose costs on the economy without limit, as long as they can somehow claim sufficient benefits connected to their rules. It is time for Congress to establish a regulatory budget to contain the cost of our administrative state.

Summer 2013

Religion and the American Republic

George F. Will

America has generally marked out a division of labor between the institutions of politics and those of civil society, including and especially those of religion. It is as the foremost of our civil-society institutions that religious organizations play a crucial role in sustaining our distinctive system of government — as shapers of citizens, and as limiting counterparts to the state. That is why citizens concerned for our tradition of limited, constitutional government should be friendly to the cause of American religion — even if they are not believers themselves.

Summer 2018

The First American Founder

James W. Ceaser

Americans revere the nation's founders, and it seems perfectly natural that we should. But we are never quite clear about exactly who counts as a founder, and exactly for what. Our country had more than one beginning, and has several uses for its several foundings. In fact, the idea of a national founding needed to be introduced into our political vocabulary and developed into the core of our self-understanding. The concept of the American founding itself had a founder.

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