Political Means
Public Opinion and Emphatic Legislative Speech: Evidence from an Automated Video Analysis
Oliver Rittmann, Tobias Ringwald & Dominic Nyhuis
British Journal of Political Science, November 2025
Abstract:
Why do politicians sometimes deliver passionate speeches and sometimes tedious monologues? Even though the delivery is key to understanding political speech, we know little about when and why political actors choose particular delivery styles. Focusing on legislative speech, we expect legislators to deliver more emphatic speeches when their vote is aligned with the preferences of their constituents. To test this proposition, we develop and apply an automated video analysis model to speech recordings from the US House of Representatives. We match the speech emphasis with district preferences on key bills using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. We find that House members who rise in opposition to a bill give more passionate speeches when public preferences are aligned with their vote. The results suggest that political actors are not only mindful of public opinion in what they say but also in how they say it.
Benefit Seekers or Principle Holders? Experimental Evidence on Americans’ Democratic Trade-Offs
Chloe Rose Mortenson & Erik Nisbet
Perspectives on Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines how Americans conceptualize democracy and whether their support for democratic principles remains consistent across different trade-offs. Using a conjoint experiment, we test whether citizens act as principle holders -- maintaining support for democratic norms regardless of circumstances -- or benefit seekers who prioritize material outcomes over liberal democratic norms. Our findings reveal that while respondents generally prefer democratic principles including rule of law, political equality, and freedom of expression, these preferences are moderated by economic well-being. When presented with scenarios featuring economic disadvantage, support for traditional democratic principles declines markedly. This context dependency challenges conventional survey measures of democratic attitudes, as we observe substantial divergence between participants’ self-reported understandings of democracy and their revealed preferences when forced to navigate trade-offs. These results help to explain why campaign appeals framing democracy as “on the ballot” proved ineffective in the 2024 US presidential election, as voters facing economic hardship privileged material concerns over abstract democratic principles. Our findings contribute to debates about democratic backsliding by demonstrating that economic conditions play a crucial role in shaping citizens’ commitment to democratic governance, with implications for understanding populist mobilization and the resilience of democratic norms during periods of economic uncertainty.
"Captain Gains" on Capitol Hill
Shang-Jin Wei & Yifan Zhou
NBER Working Paper, November 2025
Abstract:
Using transaction-level data on US congressional stock trades, we find that lawmakers who later ascend to leadership positions perform similarly to matched peers beforehand but outperform them by 47 percentage points annually after ascension. Leaders’ superior performance arises through two mechanisms. The political influence channel is reflected in higher returns when their party controls the chamber, sales of stocks preceding regulatory actions, and purchase of stocks whose firms receiving more government contracts and favorable party support on bills. The corporate access channel is reflected in stock trades that predict subsequent corporate news and greater returns on donor-owned or home-state firms.
The public agglomeration effect: Urban–rural divisions in government efficiency and political preferences
Theo Serlin
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why and when do cities vote for the left? The emergence of the urban–rural divide in the United States in the 1930s is inconsistent with canonical theories of cleavages. This paper introduces an explanation: agglomeration effects. The provision of government services is more efficient in urban environments because of nonrivalries, economies of scale, and access costs. If the public sector in cities is more efficient, and voters face a trade-off between taxation and government spending, urban voters support more spending. When redistribution is salient, one should observe an urban–rural electoral divide. As predicted by a formal model, more-urban locations faced lower costs of providing public services and shifted toward the Democrats as the party implemented the New Deal. In addition, urban voters were more supportive of government spending. In the United Kingdom, the urban–rural divide also accompanied the rise of redistributive politics. Agglomeration effects influence preferences for redistribution and create political cleavages.
Lying increases trust in science
Byron Hyde
Theory and Society, December 2025, Pages 947-958
Abstract:
This study begins by outlining the transparency paradox: that trust in science requires transparency, but being transparent about science, medicine and government reduces trust in science. A solution to the paradox is then advanced here: it is argued that, rather than just thinking in terms of transparency and opacity, it is important to think about what institutions are being transparent about. By attending to the particulars of transparency — especially with respect to whether good or bad news is disclosed — it is revealed that transparency about good news increases trust whereas transparency about bad news decreases it, thus explaining the apparent paradox. The apparent solution: to ensure that there is always only good news to report, which might require lying. This study concludes by emphasizing how problematic it is that, currently, the best way to increase public trust is to lie, suggesting that a better way forward (and the real solution to the transparency paradox) would be to resolve the problem of the public overidealizing science through science education and communication to eliminate the naïve view of science as infallible.
Crony Capitalism, Populism, and Democracy
André Quintas & Peter Boettke
George Mason University Working Paper, November 2025
Abstract:
In the wake of the Cold War, liberal democracy was heralded by Francis Fukuyama as the "end of history", the only viable form of human governance. Three decades later, that triumphalism has faded. Liberal democratic capitalism now faces mounting criticism, particularly for enabling cronyism. In response to this, Munger and Villarreal-Diaz pose one of the most important questions in contemporary political economy: "Does capitalism in a democracy always devolve into corporatist cronyism?" They answer in the affirmative. This paper revisits their question and offers a more precise thesis: it is not democracy per se but its current institutional form that fosters cronyism. Democracy is a normative commitment to viewing one another as dignified equals, but how that commitment is realized is a matter of continual debate and institutional design. We further argue that the democratic system itself generates a backlash against cronyism in the form of populist movements. However, while these movements claim to restore power to the people and dismantle elite privilege, under existing institutional constraints, they reproduce the very pathologies they oppose. Current democratic institutions, then, suffer from a double failure: they breed cronyism, and the populist response they provoke deepens it. In short, in the current institutional setting, there is no endogenous path out of cronyism. Does this mean democracy is inherently incompatible with capitalism? We argue that it is not. The problem lies in how democracy is institutionalized. Drawing mainly on the works of James Buchanan, F.A. Hayek, Vincent Ostrom, and Don Lavoie, we outline an alternative vision for democracy.
“A No Man's Land Somewhere Between the Legislative and Executive Branch”: John C. Calhoun, John Nance Garner, and the Creation of the Modern Vice Presidency
Justin Greenman
Presidential Studies Quarterly, December 2025
Abstract:
The transformation of the vice presidency into a powerful position in the executive branch is tied to the rise of the imperial presidency. This paper challenges the standard view of this transformation, which casts it as a positive development for the vice presidency and for the federal government at large. It resurrects and reevaluates the original constitutional possibilities granted to the vice presidency to be a national figure with an important role to play, independent of the President. It argues that Presidents did not raise the vice presidency from constitutional obscurity but rather crushed a rival and valuable conception of the office, a conception best exemplified by John C. Calhoun and John Nance Garner. The modern vice presidency was forged in direct backlash to that idea; Calhoun and Garner exemplified exactly what presidents did not want in that office. Their reactions against it led first to the selection of the Vice President by political conventions and then to direct selection by the presidential nominee. In cutting off alternative constructions of the office, these new procedures transformed the vice presidency into a dependent executive office, and they shut down an important source of pluralism in the constitutional design.