Why Do Politicians Polarize Policymaking?

More from Not Another Politics Podcast All episodes →

1. 

   E164 · 27 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 3 min

   Does Congress Actually Have Power of the Purse?

   The "power of the purse"—Congress’s constitutional authority to control public spending—is often cited as the ultimate check on executive power. But how effectively does legislative funding actually translate into policy influence in modern Washington? In this episode, we sit down with UChicago Ph.D. candidate Kevin Angell to dive into his latest paper on legislative spending power and appropriations. Moving beyond political rhetoric, Angell shares rigorous empirical research examining how federal budget allocations shape agency behavior, where Congressional leverage succeeds, and where…

2. 

   E163 · 6 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 6 min

   Are Easy A’s Too Widespread in Academia?

   Across universities today, raw GPAs treat an A in advanced econometrics the same as an A in introductory film studies. Standard grading systems inadvertently penalize students who challenge themselves and reward those who course-shop. In this episode, we speak with Harvard Business School Professor Scott Kominers about his recent paper that looks at how mathematical market design and "eigengrades" can strip out course difficulty to measure actual student performance. The paper proposes a fixed-effects model—using student overlap across courses—to isolate true academic capability. We explore…

3. 

   E162 · 17 Jul 2026 · 54 min

   Do We Understand Members Of The Other Party?

   Do Democrats and Republicans really misunderstand each other as much as we think? This week, we dive into a surprising new experiment that puts that idea to the test — literally. Psychologist and researcher Adam Mastriani created a kind of “political Turing test,” asking people to write persuasive statements from the perspective of the opposite political party. Then, he tested whether others could tell the real from the fake. The results? Most people couldn’t. We unpack what this means for our understanding of polarization, partisan animosity, and political identity. Is the problem really…

4. 

   E161 · 2 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 17 min

   The Economic Cost of Populism

   While we take a quick summer break, we wanted to re-release an episode that felt timely, given the rise of right-wing populism around the world. More than 25 percent of countries around the world are currently governed by populists, from Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, to Donald Trump in the United States. Based on these findings, populism is at an all-time high, and taking a significant economic toll, according to a recent paper by Christoph Trebesch and his co-authors. Trebesch is Professor of Economics at Kiel University. He and his co-authors find that populism leads to slower economic…

5. 

   E160 · 11 Jun 2026 · 53 min

   Is Abortion Policy Out Of Step With Public Opinion?

   Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, we've been told a simple story: red states are radically out of step with public opinion. But what if that's not actually the reality? On this episode, we speak with Natalie Hernandez, Yale PhD candidate in Political Science, about her upcoming APSR paper, "Asymmetric Representation: Post-Roe Abortion Policy and Public Opinion in the U.S. States." Using a massive dataset of 155,000 respondents, Hernandez finds policies in Democratic-controlled states are actually furthest from the average voter, and what happens when Democratic lawmakers prioritize wealthy…