Inequality and Polarization in the United States

Catalog description

This seminar examines how the profound economic and social inequality in the United States interacts with our polarized political environment, and how these forces ultimately shape democratic processes and government policy. We will analyze the interplay of economic incentives and realities with political behavior and institutions. Throughout, we will pay special attention not just to what we know, but also to how we know it, dissecting contemporary empirical research from political science and economics. Substantively, we will cover a constellation of topics at the intersection of these two fields: the relationship of income inequality and wealth concentration to campaign finance, the role of education polarization in determining who runs for office, the legacy of slavery and its relationship to identity politics, and the links between racial, economic, and political segregation across neighborhoods. Other topics include social media and internet news, the (in)effectiveness of campaign advertising, the determinants of voter turnout, the impact of social movements, and the shifting alliances among business, labor, and the major political parties. A key goal of this class is to develop intuition for research design and familiarity with the methods used in modern social science, which will help you formulate and conduct your own research projects. Thus, we will spend a substantial portion of our time carefully studying the techniques used in the studies we read. These include analysis of administrative data, surveys, text analysis, field experiments, and quasi-experimental methods such as instrumental variables, difference-in-differences, and regression discontinuity designs. Undergraduate students wishing to enroll should have a solid background in statistics and quantitative methods and need to email the instructor for permission to enroll.