Politics after National Development: Explaining the Populist Rise under Late Capitalism

Religion, Politics and Luck: Explaining the Rise of Sustained Innovation

e institutional and path-dependency approaches used to explain innovation in Britain during the Industrial Revolution generate prediction errors when applied elsewhere. Here, innovation is modeled as a dynamic coordination game with multiple equilibria. Tests of the resulting propositions based on 116 successful inventions between 1700 and 1849 suggest that there were two distinct categories of...

“Enemies of the People?” Public Health in the Era of Populist Politics; Comment on “The Rise of Post-truth Populism in Pluralist Liberal Democracies: Challenges for Health Policy”

In this commentary, we review the growth of populist politics, associated with exploitation of what has been termed fake news. We explore how certain words have been used in similar contexts historically, in particular the term “enemy of the people,” especially with regard to public health. We then set out 6 principles for public health professionals faced with these situations. First, using th...

Capitalism and the Politics of Resignation

The Spirit of Capitalism, Economic Development, and National Wealth

In both original form and in popular discourse, Weber's classic Protestant Ethic thesis is grounded in the relationship between capitalist values and status attainment. Advocates and opponents of Weber’s thesis have primarily focused on the religious underpinnings of the ‘Protestant Ethic’ at the expense of the ideological dimension Weber saw as the key motivational force behind the rise of con...

Explaining the Rise of Americans With No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations*

The proportion of Americans who reported no religious preference doubled from 7 to 14 percent in the second half of the 1990s, according to data from the General Social Survey. This dramatic change may be the result of demographic shifts, increasing skepticism, or the politicization of religion. Part of the increase reflects a succession of generations; the percentage of adults who had been rai...