Having a glass of ice water as a little treat

Adam doing some of the best work on the political economy of American parties today. And by explaining the material bases of parties helps explain why parties do what they do.

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply." me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

Hearing directly from those in the admin, it's clear to me at least that (1) the bench of models and heuristics making this link were sorely lacking, policymakers made do with little (2) legislative process + judicial hostility limited policy space, (3) some uncomfortable with policy as politics

A challenge to politics-understanders: why was Biden so unpopular given the very good policy he delivered on wages, climate, & antitrust, among others? This is not an invitation to relitigate 2024, but rather explore what his political failure reveals about the underlying mechanisms of politics.

The issue with political brands, including political party brands like Democratic or Republican, is that there is no central organizing committee to declaim someone's use of it. A programmatic political movement, however, may depend on being able to do this

Deep stuff from @sanjukta.bsky.social in response to @gabrielwinant.bsky.social on the utility of diving into the details of market coordination rather than getting caught up on the "structure" vs "voluntarist" distinction. lpeproject.org/blog/the-law...

I will admit there is something liberating about ruling myself out of the political science job market. Now I get to engage with the discipline on purely intellectual terms!

I _think_ it was me who Mairpilled @daschloz.bsky.social @samrosenfeld.bsky.social at a Princeton workshop back in 2016 ...

Could focusing on like, cheaper goods and material issue saliency work for left-liberal + social democratic parties? Probably. But you actually have to lay out your theory of politics instead of it being implicit.

Trying a radical new social media strategy of following accounts. Wish me luck.

I'd add to this is that stupidevil is that which is selected in our floundering decadent state. It's not that they found a strategy to game the system, it's that this was how they were going to be, and our system continues to select it for power.

Thinking I might do discourse again

Thriving in academia is a constant struggle between distrusting your intuition as part of a (hopefully constructive) critique process and, well, trusting your intuition and just going for it. The illusion is to think one can reside permanently in one mode or the other.

One of the most important things I learned at Cambridge is that you weren't upper class unless you had a couple holes in your sweater

Not great that elite liberal discourse, from foundation donors down to humble posters, revolves around a main character's breakfast thoughts

There is impeachment, but no snap election, no (formal) way for Congress to install the next President. What a mess.

The history of the development of the CPI and other government compiled price indexes suggests that this will lead to even more contestation and litigation over contractually mandated wage hikes, adjustments to government benefits, and more. An expensive, unnecessary mess, one we outgrew.

Really banking on this one fam

Not great that elite liberal discourse, from foundation donors down to humble posters, revolves around a main character's breakfast thoughts

The underlying reasoning is that all political behavior is psychological, that psychological mechanisms are immutable and can be scientifically determined, and that messaging can utilize these mechanisms. Without this framework, much political consulting would be unviable.

At a production of Waiting for Godot and the audience is taking it as a laugh riot. Not sure whether this reflects more on the directorial choices or the composition of the audience, but concerning nonetheless.

There has never been a better time for understanding the mechanisms which lead to the formation of a regime, the maintenance of a regime, and a regime's displacement by an insurgent alternate political formation. A great place to study this is at the local level and comparatively.

My theory is not that people see him as politically powerful, especially given these atrocious disapproval numbers. People giving into the regime are betting it won't be toppled anytime soon, no matter how bad it gets.

New working paper showing that Citizens United led to an increased per capita propensity to incorporate corporations in general and LLCs in particular

Pleased to share our new paper now out in Perspectives on Politics! Happy to discuss and looking forward to hearing thoughts and suggestions for further research.

I finally have a proper arxiv account! Check out this thesis I wrote on the moduli space of the SU(2) singular monopole, showing it to be isometric to a solution of Einstein's equations. arxiv.org/abs/2507.13424

I have a new working paper up at SSRN. In this paper, I examine the Robinson Crusoe toy models of consumption and exchange over time to demonstrate an inductive method of economic modeling using signals and Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Did Citizens United increase the propensity to form corporations, and LLCs in particular, to conceal one's identity when spending money in politics? Using a diff-in-diff design, I find the answer is "yes, it did!". See working paper (now on SSRN!) below. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....