When a president nominates someone to lead a federal agency, the confirmation process is often described as a negotiation between the White House and the Senate. That view is incomplete. Organized interests are also part of the process, and their influence can begin well before many nominees ever take office.
Leave a CommentMonth: June 2026
In recent years, voting by mail has been the subject of numerous lawsuits and attacks that often claim the process gives Democratic nominees and legislative bills an edge. Are there merits to this claim, and what are the actual causal effects of sending ballots to all registered voters? In the paper, we take advantage of a unique situation in Southern California that allows us to pin down the causal effects convincingly.
Leave a Comment
Many of the variables social scientists care about most change over time. We typically build models to explain shifts in average levels, such as how approval ratings rise or fall in response to economic change, or how GDP grows or contracts in response to political events. Yet sometimes what matters is not the average level of a variable but how erratic it is.
Leave a Comment