The Manifold Partisan

Partisan Conflict ∗

American politics have become extremely polarized in recent decades. This deep political divide has caused significant government dysfunction. Political divisions make the timing, size, and composition of government policy less predictable. According to existing theories, an increase in the degree of economic policy uncertainty results in a decline in economic activity. This occurs because busi...

The Heritability of Partisan Attachment

One of the strongest regularities in the empirical political science literature is the well-known correlation in parent and child partisan behavior. Until recently, this phenomenon was thought to result solely from parental socialization, but new evidence on genetic sources of behavior suggests it might also be due to heritability. In this article, the authors hypothesize that genes contribute ...

Idempotents Among Partisan Games

The Future of Partisan Symmetry as a Judicial Test for Partisan Gerrymandering after LULAC v. Perry

While the Supreme Court in Bandemer v. Davis found partisan gerrymandering to be justiciable, no challenged redistricting plan in the subsequent 20 years has been held unconstitutional on partisan grounds. Then, in Vieth v. Jubilerer, five justices concluded that some standard might be adopted in a future case, if a manageable rule could be found. When gerrymandering next came before the Court,...

Partisan Competition, Growth and the Franchise

We present an argument for changes in the franchise in which an elite split along economic interests use the suffrage to influence implemented policies. Through the influence of these policies on the character of industrialization, we analyze the effects of franchise changes on economic growth. We identify in the social structure of society an explanation for the connection between enfranchisem...