In Orange County, California, where the typical house sells for $1 million, Rep. Katie Porter’s four-bedroom, three-bath residence in a leafy subdivision on the University of California Irvine campus is a bargain. The progressive Democrat and law professor, who has lamented the cost of housing in her district, purchased it in 2011 for $523,000, a below-market price...
People can become involved in politics in a number of ways. They can vote, volunteer in campaigns, or even run for office themselves. But when it comes to improving the state of the U.S. democracy, what can the average citizen do? Christopher Beem, managing director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State, attempted...
Through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, Congress attempted to curb CEO pay by repealing a long-standing exemption that allowed companies to deduct large amounts of qualified performance-based pay. New research finds the change has had little effect, with CEO pay either staying the same or growing after the law made it more...
By working together, economic and racial justice organizers in the last decade have brought about policy changes to address economic inequality, researchers report in a new book. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign urban planning professor Marc Doussard and his co-author, Portland State University urban studies and planning professor Greg Schrock, examine grassroots organizing efforts in six cities, including Chicago, in “Justice at Work:...
The ‘anomie’ concept – that the society is disintegrating and losing moral standards – explains why people with low socio-economic status trust politics less than those with a higher one, concludes a new study published in the scientific journal Social Psychological Bulletin. The study was conducted by two Belgian researchers, Thierry Bornand (ULB and IWEPS) and Olivier Klein (ULB) in...
Mass shootings in the US account for 73% of all 139 incidents occurring in developed countries between 1998 to 2019. During this time, 62% of all 1,318 fatalities from the attacks also happened in the states. These are the findings of a shocking new study, published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal...
As many state legislatures consider weakening voter protections and Congress debates new voting rights laws, recent research from the University of California San Diego’s Rady School of Management reveals that the 1965 Voting Rights Act contributed to improvements of the economic status of Blacks. Conversely, after the Supreme Court rendered the Voting Rights Act ineffective...
New research from the University of Warwick, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Reichman University, Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the Barcelona School of Economics challenges the conventional theory that the transition from foraging to farming drove the development of complex, hierarchical societies by creating agricultural surplus in areas of fertile land. In The Origin of the State:...
New research from City, University of London shows how platform firms (such as Uber or Deliveroo) have adapted to regulations to provide different services and gain infrastructural power. This power – which stems from their position as mediators across a variety of interests – is shaped by pre-existing regulations and the firms’ strategic response of ‘contentious compliance’....
New research published March 11 in Criminology by Sadé Lindsay, sociologist in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy, finds that the formerly incarcerated face a “prison credential dilemma” when deciding whether to use credential from prison education and training programs when seeking employment. The research article, “Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t: How...
