Volume 22, Issue 4

This article describes the large and growing interdependence of public pensions and private equity – and the unusual politics that drives it. By any definition, public pension funds represent government money: they are funded through contributions of government employers and employees for the purpose of providing retirement benefits to public-sector workers. Public-sector unions play important roles at virtually every stage of public pension management, from representing the beneficiaries in state and local politics to serving in fiduciary roles on pension governing boards. In a descriptive analysis, we show that public pensions have allocated increasing amounts of capital to private equity in the last two decades, regardless of the party in control of the state legislature, and even in states with strong public-sector unions. To explain this departure from the conventional left-right structure of American politics, we offer an account of the economic incentives that underpin public pensions’ increasing reliance on private equity – and how these developments stand to have enormous consequences for the American political economy. Here, we find entities with acrimonious relationships in public, partnering on over a trillion dollars of private investments. We see signs that public employee unions attempt to influence the practices of private equity-owned companies that employ an increasing share of the American workforce. We also detail how the retirements of millions of state and local government employees and the fiscal health of thousands of American governments are increasingly commingled with the fates of the private equity industry.

A major challenge of governance in the United States is policy drift, the phenomenon wherein a policy’s outcomes are transformed due to a failure to update its rules or structures to meet changing circumstances. Policy drift has been prevalent in recent decades due to declining legislative productivity, a veto-riddled legislative process, and the rapid pace of technological and environmental change. We argue that the emergence of the “major questions doctrine” in Supreme Court jurisprudence is likely to exacerbate the problem of policy drift. This new doctrine enables courts to declare administrative actions as invalid if they are “novel” or of “economic or political significance” and lack “clear congressional authorization.” This doctrine, which departs from past standards that were more deferential to agencies, exacerbates the likelihood of policy drift by limiting the capacity of agencies to actively adapt policy implementation to changing circumstances. By rendering agency action suspect on the basis of novelty or significance, the doctrine limits action in precisely those policy domains most in need of adaptation. We show the relationship between the doctrine and policy drift through case studies of three policy domains (air pollution, student loan debt, and workplace vaccine mandates). We then examine how the doctrine has already begun to spread through lower courts, where its impact is likely to be felt most strongly. Finally, we discuss the normative and theoretical implications of our analysis, noting how the doctrine further concentrates power in the judiciary and undermines democratic accountability and transparency in the policy process.

In this paper, I contribute to the growing corpus of literature on former President Donald J. Trump’s effects on American democratic institutions. I focus on the particular institutionalized process of oversight and investigations in Congress and extract four primary lessons from the first Trump administration, showing that, while Trump did not change Congress’ basic investigative toolkit, he did expose the legislature’s institutional weaknesses through his diminished responsiveness to the opposition party’s witness requests, his defiance of Congressional subpoenas and his simultaneous decision to comply with federal court mandates. By pitting the legislature and the judiciary against one another, Trump in his first term demonstrated the extent to which effective democratic accountability through oversight depends upon the cooperation and commitment of all three branches of government.

This article shows that numerous prominent members of the Republican Party have resorted to the same electoral manipulation tactics that former president Donald Trump utilized in 2020. A case study analyzing acts of electoral manipulation undertaken by members of the Republican party in 2021 and 2022 demonstrates that Republicans have been actively engaging in breaking democratic norms, spreading disinformation, gerrymandering, restricting opportunities for voting, pressuring fellow partisans to participate in electoral manipulation, intimidating those who resist their manipulation efforts, creating an atmosphere accepting of political violence, and corrupting democratic institutions. There are also similarities between Trump and other Republicans in how the tactics are used. Just like Trump in 2020, prominent Republicans have been using different manipulation tools in concert to create a whole that is larger than the sum of its parts. The situation has various implications for the 2024 presidential election, which are discussed in the concluding chapter of this article.

Political polarization in the United States has increased dramatically, hampering the functioning of American government. Some scholars attribute this dynamic to the use of plurality elections and posit that a ranked choice voting (RCV) system may promote greater bipartisanship. Maine’s 2016 adoption of RCV presents an early opportunity to test this theory on congressional races. Using comparative analysis, we show that bipartisan bill cosponsorship increased after the adoption of RCV in Maine’s swing House district but not in its safe district. These results, along with more anecdotal evidence from Alaska, which introduced RCV in 2020, indicate an association between RCV and bipartisanship. However, it is an open question which way the causation runs. On one hand, RCV has, to date, been implemented in states that have a history of and prerequisites for bipartisanship (e.g. competitive races involving both major parties and third parties/independents, and significant numbers of centrist or independent voters). On the other hand, RCV may more easily allow jurisdictions with such “preconditions” to elect centrists who are primed for legislative bipartisanship. In the next few years, there will likely be a more diverse collection of House and Senate races held under RCV, and we can better understand how the causation works.

What can be learned from analysis of a single congressional district? This paper uses the experience of North Carolina’s 11th congressional district to understand the political changes that have defined the last half-century in the American South. The story of how this once politically inconsequential southern Appalachian district found itself in the middle of the national political maelstrom is, in many ways, the story of southern politics over the last three decade. Political polarization, strategic gerrymandering, the power of national political tides, the increasing urban/rural divide and the broader partisan transformation of the South that has remade American politics all are reflected in the 11th. In addition to uncovering new wrinkles in the story of southern partisan change, this paper defines and highlights the advantages of place-based Political Science.