Please join the CAPE-Junior Working group for our first meeting of the new academic year! We will be hosting a professionalization panel on publishing books and articles as junior scholars, featuring the following editors:

• Gabe Kachuck (Acquisitions Editor, Politics) of Oxford University Press
• Philip Rocco (Marquette) of Publius: The Journal of Federalism
• Julie Rose (Dartmouth) of the American Political Science Review

Each editor will share some information and advice for publishing at their journal or press, and there will be plenty of time for audience Q&A.

The Political Economy of Tipping: Norms, Inequality, and Institutional Change in the United States

Presenter: Karina Alpayeva (UC-Riverside)
‍Discussant: Timothy Weaver (University at Albany, SUNY)

Abstract: This project investigates why tipping became institutionalized in the United States but remained marginal in the United Kingdom, despite both being liberal market economies. I argue that tipping in the U.S. emerged as a response to global economic pressures, neoliberal labor reforms, and weak union resistance—allowing employers to shift wage burdens onto consumers. Legal frameworks like the tipped minimum wage and strong tipping norms further reinforced this system. In contrast, the U.K. maintained stronger wage protections and weaker cultural support for tipping. Using comparative historical analysis, process tracing, and typological theorizing, the project develops a theory of when and why societies adopt informal wage supplements like tipping. Drawing on legal records, union documents, economic data, and cultural discourse, the research contributes to debates on labor justice, informal institutions, and the political economy of wage-setting.
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The Origins of Financial Citizenship: Savings Banks, Thrift, and State-Building in Nineteenth-Century United States

Presenter: Ayelet Carmeli (MIT)
Discussant: Katherine Rader (University at Albany, SUNY)

Abstract: How were working-class Americans first integrated into the financial system? This paper traces the rise of savings banks in early 19th-century Northeast U.S., established by social reformers to encourage thrift among the working poor. These institutions offered safe, interest-bearing accounts to promote self-help and reduce reliance on poor relief. The paper follows their development and state endorsement through special charters and regulation, culminating in the Reconstruction-era Freedman’s Savings Bank—a project that extended saving opportunities to the formerly enslaved but operated under far looser federal oversight than state-chartered mutual savings banks, leaving it vulnerable to mismanagement and collapse. By embedding savings within a broader project of moral reform, these institutions laid foundations for a welfare model based on conditional inclusion rather than redistribution. The paper develops the concept of “financial citizenship,” in which access to savings is framed as both a right and a duty, and shows how international and inter-state institutional diffusion shaped early U.S. state-building.

The Burden of Inflation and Incumbent Support Across Income Groups

Presenter: Shria Pallati (University of Missouri)
Discussant: Amber Wichowsky (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Abstract: How do voters across different income groups provide incumbent support in US Presidential elections when inflation is their most important problem? In the 2024 US Presidential election, a staggering 96% of voters for Donald Trump claimed inflation was important for their vote, compared to 79% of Kamala Harris’ voters. It is typically argued that high-income voters will rank inflation as their “most important problem” due to stress over depreciating assets and savings. However, I posit that low-income voters will show greater concern over inflation than their high-income counterparts due to inflation’s disproportionate effect on inelastic goods, such as food, that represent much of their expenditure, the makeup of their asset profiles, and a lower level of economic literacy. Thus, low-income voters are more likely than high-income voters to punish candidates perceived to be responsible for their most important problem. I empirically test this using a linear probability model and a sample of US voters drawn from the Most Important Problem Dataset (MIPD).* I show that, indeed, low-income voters are more likely than their high-income counterparts to prioritize inflation as their most important problem and, consequently, punish the incumbent at higher rates. This issue is particularly salient for policy evaluation and as a relevant campaigning tool. By challenging assumptions about income groups in existing theory, this study provides a novel perspective on the propensity of economic voting for them. It also sheds light on the responsiveness of an electorate to the economy, supporting a natural extension of economic voting theory.
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The Hidden Inequities of Medicare Choice: Burden, Barriers, and Coverage Discontinuities

Presenter: Miranda Yaver (University of Pittsburgh)
Discussant: Andrew Kelly (California State University, East Bay)

Abstract: Medicare enrollment is notoriously complex, and Abaluck and Gruber's seminal (2011) analysis of prescription drug coverage highlights that not only do many seniors choose their plans incorrectly, but this can be costly. Seniors are confronted with a host of decisions: original versus privatized Medicare (Medicare Advantage, where there is an average of 43 plans from which to choose) and if the former, whether to enroll in Medigap (10 plans) and Part D (average of 14 plans). This places substantial health literacy demands (which are unevenly distributed) at a time of not only greater health needs and diminished income, but also, potentially, cognitive decline. Consequently, this is a natural setting for examining health insurance enrollment barriers through the lens of administrative burden, or the experience of policy as being onerous, and resulting inequities. When one chooses a suboptimal plan, they may face greater health costs, leading to care postponement or medical debt. Drawing on a new nationwide survey of 1,964 seniors, I examine the administrative burdens experienced by seniors enrolling in Medicare plans, the extent to which their plan choices align with their priorities amid problems of choice overload, and the extent to which coverage barriers through prior authorization and related denials (which likewise demand health literacy to remedy through appeal) lead to discontinuities in coverage (and in turn, care) for seniors, especially seniors from margininalized backgrounds. The paper then offers solutions for how to better promote equitable access to health care for America's seniors.

Private Markets, Racial Politics, and Delegated Authority: Social Rented Housing in the United States, 1960-1980

Presenter: Jacob Loewenberg Ball (Rutgers University)
Discussant: Discussant: Jessica Trounstine (Vanderbilt University)

Abstract: This study examines the transformation of American social rented housing during the 1960s and 1970s, a period when lawmakers and federal officials from both parties advanced policies embedding private interests into low-income rental housing. By the 1970s, these privatizing reforms interacted with the Nixon administration’s push to limit federal fiscal responsibility and delegate authority to state and local governments, curbing an expanding subsidized rental supply and reinforcing racial inequalities. Initially, a shift toward increasing reliance on private housing embedded market logics into the policies of low-income housing provision. Subsequently, despite the enactment of fair housing legislation, federal devolution intensified the spatial politics of inequality. This bolstered white suburban communities’ ability to limit in-migration of lower-income, often racial and ethnic minority households. Ultimately, this research asks how and why American housing policy prioritizes exchange-value over use-value and examines the distributional consequences of this emphasis.
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Uniquely Captured Regulators? Investor-Owned Utilities and Business Power Over American Electricity Policy

Presenter: Joshua A. Basseches (Tulane University)
Discussant: Sandeep Vaheesan (Open Markets Institute)

Abstract: Investor-owned electric utilities (IOUs) occupy a unique and essential space within the American political economy. They are for-profit, monopoly corporations providing an essential public service. In this paper, I develop four characteristics of this industry that I theorize, in combination, make it uniquely able to capture its regulators. I then use the case of the distributive politics of renewable portfolio standards in five U.S. states to illustrate how IOUs combine these four characteristics in order to prevail over competing political actors in every case, irrespective of variation in state context. I conclude with a comparison to other industries which share some, but not all, of the four characteristics in order to further illustrate the “uniqueness” of IOUs while also suggesting that lesser degrees of capture are still highly likely in these other industries. My findings have implications for both American electricity policy and for the study of business power generally.

Taxation at the Edges of Morality: How Tobacco Retailers Respond to Negative Public Good Provision

Presenters: Simone Paci (Stanford University) and Julian Gerez (UC Irvine)
Discussant: Discussant: Isaac William Martin (UC San Diego)

Abstract: Why do excise taxes exhibit chronic compliance gaps even in high-capacity states? We argue that vice taxes invert the fiscal contract: rather than funding valued public goods, revenues are earmarked for programs—cessation campaigns, inspections, enforcement—that directly harm retailers’ business interests. We call this dynamic negative public good provision. To examine compliance under these conditions, we partner with the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA) to conduct the first large-scale randomized controlled trial of excise inspections in the United States. Random assignment of inspections across ~30,000 licensed tobacco retailers is paired with baseline and follow-up surveys measuring deterrence, compliance costs, social norms, and fiscal contract mechanisms. The design provides causal evidence on inspection effects, heterogeneity across compliance paradigms, and spillovers within retail networks. Findings will advance theories of tax compliance and inform cost-effective enforcement strategies in sin-tax domains, with implications for both revenue collection and public health policy.

Natural Disasters, Workers' Attitudes, and Companies' Political Behavior

Presenter: Giulia Leila Travaglini (Columbia University)
Discussant: Amanda Kennard (Stanford University)

Abstract: This paper examines how managers’ preferences for green energy influence corporate political behavior in the U.S., focusing on lobbying and campaign contributions related to environmental policy. Using a novel dataset that links natural disaster exposure, used as a proxy for changes in perceptions of climate risk and green energy, with managers and fossil fuel companies headquarters political activity at the county level, the paper preliminary results indicate that polluting firms, especially those in Democratic areas, hide their political behavior on green energy and environment related policies after disasters. While from visual evidence it looks like managers in fossil fuel firms tend to shift campaign contributions toward Democratic politicians following climate shocks, these firms do not adopt explicitly pro-climate lobbying positions. Instead, they engage in more ambiguous political strategies, with implications for regulatory feedback and the broader politics of climate adaptation.
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Relocating Right, Lobbying Left: Firm Relocation and Lobbying for Social Inclusion

Presenter: Junwoo Suh (UC Berkeley)
Discussant: Max Kagan (Columbia University)

Abstract: Many private corporations across diverse sectors and countries of origin have lobbied Congress on legislation that promotes LGBTQ rights. Existing studies imply that the high costs of lobbying, diffuse benefits, and non-excludable outcomes of social policy would deter firms from lobbying on issues such as federal legislation on LGBTQ rights. What motivates firms to attempt to influence legislation on civil rights and liberties like the Equality Act and the Respect for Marriage Act? I argue that firms in industrialized economies face dual objectives, of minimizing production costs and having access to talent. In this trade-off, firms choosing to locate in lower-wage and lower-regulation regions (Relocating Right) may lobby for the advancement of civil rights in those regions (Lobbying Left) in order to attract and sustain talent. This study shows how workers' labor market leverage, firms' production costs, and cross-regional social policy heterogeneity jointly shape firms' decision to lobby politicians for civil rights protection.

A Political Psychology of Inequality

Presenter: Daniel Connolly (Princeton)
Discussant: John Jost (NYU)

Abstract: The high level of inequality of income and wealth across individuals, groups, and nations, is widely and credibly regarded as among the most fundamental problems facing humanity. Yet public outrage about inequality remains surprisingly limited, even among those who are disadvantaged by it. We argue that this disconnect arises from basic features of human social cognition which evolved for interpersonal interactions in small groups. The key features of social cognition are: (i) a focus on local notions of equality and equity between socially connected individuals, rather than across society at large; (ii) group identification, which directs attention to inequality between groups rather than ‘pure’ inequality across the broader population; and (iii) what we call an i-frame bias—a tendency to explain social outcomes as the product of individual behaviors. We examine how the very wealthy exploit these features of social cognition to shape the political and policy landscape.

Immigration, Prohibition, and Cultural Conservatism in the United States

Presenter: Daniel Urquijo (European University Institute)
Discussant: Max Palmer (Boston University)

Abstract: This paper studies the emergence of punitive moral legislation and its potential to catalyze broader culturally conservative changes. We posit that increasing violations of moral norms can mobilize norm-upholders to protect them through law. This mobilization, in turn, generates organizational and discursive resources that can be co-opted by members of the upholder coalition to advance their broader political agendas. We focus on the case of alcohol prohibition in the United States—a landmark victory for evangelical Protestants who sought to codify their morals into law. We argue that German and Irish immigration disrupted Temperance social order in rural America, spurring local alcohol bans as a defense against perceived norm violations by immigrants. We confirm this using a shift-share instrumental variable design. We then examine how Prohibition affected the spread of other culturally conservative movements, particularly nativism. Leveraging staggered state-by-state adoption of dry laws, we show that Prohibition significantly increased conservative voting in Congress on cultural issues, chiefly immigration, while leaving economic voting unchanged. This historical case demonstrates how moral crusades emerge to protect social order and how their success can generate broader reactionary reforms.

Starbucks Workers and Intersectional Organizing as a Strategy for Union Sustainability

Presenter: Amytess Girgis (University of Oxford)
Discussant: Tamara Lee (Rutgers University)

Abstract: How can precarious workers sustain labor campaigns amid protracted union busting and hostile political economic conditions? Scholars have pointed to the importance of worker-led ‘organizing approaches’ for union revitalization, but these accounts tend to excise the role of identity-based contestation, both within and outside the workplace, in shaping and sustaining such approaches. This article traces how Starbucks workers in the U.S. developed an intersectional organizing strategy, shaped by their social identities and political values, to sustain and grow the union amid high turnover, wide geographic spread, extreme union-busting, and delayed contract bargaining. Drawing on interviews, organizing documents, and observation of meetings and actions from July 2022 – November 2025, I demonstrate that this strategy informed how workers (1) developed inclusive and motivating priorities, (2) sustained and expanded organizing capacity through mobilization, and (3) strengthened internal participation and democracy. These findings problematize portrayals of social identity as merely predisposing workers to organize and instead use identity to understand why, how, and with whom workers deploy ‘organizing approaches’ in the absence of institutionalized labor relations. Theoretically, the Starbucks case demonstrates the utility of applying a broader contentious politics framework, informed by critical race theory and intersectionality, to expand how scholars define and analyze labor contestation

The Long-Run Effects of Teacher Unionization on Citizens' Political Participation and Partisanship

Presenter: Carlos Lastra-Anadón (IE University)
Discussant: Melissa Lyon (University at Albany)

Abstract: We examine how childhood exposure to teacher collective bargaining laws shapes long-run political behavior. A long tradition of research shows that public policies generate “policy feedbacks” that influence citizens’ participation and identities. We focus on public schools as a central socializing institution and study the consequences of state laws, adopted beginning in the 1960s, that required school districts to bargain collectively with teachers’ unions. These reforms expanded workplace democracy for teachers, but may also have shaped the political development of students educated under them. Leveraging staggered adoption of duty-to-bargain laws in a cross-cohort difference-in-differences design, we estimate the long-term effects of exposure during childhood. We find that such exposure reduces adult voter turnout by roughly 2 percentage points, with effects concentrated among men. At the same time, exposure increases the likelihood of identifying as a Democrat rather than a Republican. These results show that public sector labor law generates durable feedback effects on both political participation and partisan identity.

The Political Nature of the Firm

Presenter: Marco Mari (Politecnico di Milano, MIT)
Discussant: Mark Mizruchi

Abstract: Political economy treats firms as institution-takers. This paper asks when American firms become institution-makers. At regional scale, institutional environments are not always settled—new industries lack governing arrangements, declining communities face collapsed order, abandoned places have lost coordination. In these vacuums, firms with sufficient capability and agency produce institutional order directly. I call this corporate statecraft. Four American cases illustrate: Terman's Stanford built Silicon Valley's institutional infrastructure; Miller's Cummins transformed Columbus, Indiana through patient capital and civic investment; Pittsburgh's corporate elite reconstructed the region after steel's collapse; Long's American Woolen is attempting to rebuild both a textile ecosystem and a distressed Connecticut community. The cases vary in orientation—open statecraft enabling broad participation versus closed statecraft entrenching incumbents—with consequences for who gains and who loses. The inquiry is conditional: when does corporate statecraft emerge? But the answer is constitutive: the capacity to produce institutional order reveals the political nature of the firm.

In the Shadow of Governmental Ownership

Presenter: Alon Jasper (Tel Aviv)
Discussant: Brian Highsmith

Abstract: Governmental ownership of public utilities occupies an uneasy place in American legal and political thought. For decades, debates have focused on whether public provisioning can match private efficiency and whether it threatens the public–private boundary associated with liberty and democracy. On these terms, governmental ownership has been marginalized and dismissed as a policy option. Both critiques, however, rest on an underexamined assumption: that governmental ownership functions merely as a substitute for regulation. This Article argues instead that governmental ownership enables distinct regulatory capacities. It allows direct regulation through contracts, competition, and infrastructure, and it generates indirect regulatory effects when it operates as a credible alternative to administrative regulation. The prospect of public ownership reshapes regulatory bargaining, constraining private incumbents, administrative agencies, and even courts, while expanding the range of available regulatory tools. Using nineteenth-century railroad governance as a case study, the Article shows how keeping governmental ownership “on the table” exerted a pull-push effect on regulatory design. Efforts to avoid public ownership encouraged the development of administrative regulation, while the possibility of ownership expanded the legal imagination of regulatory experimentation. This historical dynamic remains relevant today. As interest in public options resurfaces in sectors such as healthcare, energy, broadband, and artificial intelligence, governmental ownership should be understood not as an anachronism, but as a persistent force shaping regulatory possibilities and a potential safeguard for the administrative state.

Anti-Black Roots of Routes: Great Migration Exposure and Contemporary Regional Transit Fragmentation

Presenter: Nicolas Florez (University of Michigan)
Discussant: Margaret Weir (Brown University)

Abstract: Why have some American metropolitan areas succeeded in developing regionally integrated public transit systems while others have adopted localist, fragmented transit policy regimes? I argue that contemporary differences in metropolitan transit coordination are rooted in how subnational elected officials responded to the postwar racial diversification of urban areas. I conceptualize the mid-century transition from privately operated to publicly governed transit as a critical juncture in metropolitan political development, during which local and state officials exercised substantial discretion over transit governance. Variation in exposure to the Second Great Migration between 1940 and 1970 served as a key differentiating force at this juncture, shaping whether officials pursued regionally integrated or locally insulated transit institutions. Using a shift–share measure of Great Migration exposure and contemporary data on transit agencies and their finances, I show that metropolitan areas receiving larger Black migrant inflows exhibit significantly more fragmented transit governance today, including a greater number of transit agencies and less coordinated allocation of local transit funding. These findings demonstrate how anti-Black racism at a formative moment in policy development produced durable institutional legacies in a fundamentally metropolitan policy.

(In)Capacity, Violence, and the the Local Roots of Mass Incarceration

Presenter: Rebekah Jones (University of California, Berkeley)
Discussant: John Pfaff (Fordham University)

Abstract: What explains local variation in incarceration rates? While local governments play a central role in the criminal justice system, most scholarship has focused on state and federal policy, obscuring the role of counties in driving the American prison boom. This paper addresses that gap by applying leading theoretical frameworks to over thirty years of county-level penal policy choices across counties. I show that more variation in incarceration rates occurs within states than across them, underscoring the need to examine local–rather than solely state-level determinants of punishment. I revisit dominant accounts of the prison boom by distinguishing between relative changes over time and absolute levels of violent crime and prison admissions. Relative measures confirm prior findings that incarceration failed to decline alongside post-1990s crime drops, suggesting a decoupling between crime and punishment. Yet absolute comparisons reveal a different reality: in most counties, violent crime consistently outpaced prison admissions, with few ever approaching parity between the two. To explain divergent local trajectories, I examine the role of public opinion and novel measures of local capacity. Using California ballot initiative turnout data, I find limited evidence that county public opinion drove incarceration growth. Instead, original historical court statistics–capturing caseloads and law enforcement capacity–show that local capacity to respond to high levels of violence strongly predicts prison admissions as well as the nature of the response. These findings complicate the dominant over-punitive narrative, reframing mass incarceration as a product of weak and uneven local capacity-building rather than a uniform overreaction to crime decline, with important implications for understanding its distinct repressive character.

Potemkin Disclosure: How Firms Strategically Use Transparency to Avoid Climate Regulation

Presenter: Jonas Fischer (University of Oxford)
Discussant: Matto Mildenberger (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Abstract: Albeit its effectiveness is contested, firms increasingly disclose their carbon emissions and broader environmental performance indicators. Why do firms voluntarily disclose? We extend existing theories that firms self-regulate in response to the threat of regulation by arguing that firms use voluntary disclosures as a form of strategic accommodation. By disclosing information, firms seek to signal to policymakers that stringent regulations are unnecessary. To test our theory, we examine the responses of U.S. public firms to a mandatory disclosure rule proposed by the SEC in 2022. Using a novel directed and focused measure of firm lobbying, we show that firms that lobbied against mandatory disclosure were more likely to voluntarily disclose in the same period. We show that voluntary disclosures constitute a mechanism for firms to exert influence on policymaking, akin to lobbying.

Quantified Progress

Presenter: Ximena Benavides (University of Georgia)
Discussant: Jacob Hacker (Yale)

Abstract: The United States leads the world in biomedical innovation, yet this scientific dominance has not translated into broad access to health technologies. Persistent barriers—from neglected disease areas to unaffordable treatments and restricted knowledge flows—coexist with decades of bipartisan policy attention. This Article examines the institutional and legal dynamics that sustain this gap. Tracing the political economy of U.S. biomedical innovation since the 1950s, the Article shows how pluralistic innovation levers have reshaped the meaning of scientific progress, revealing a stark paradox. Although taxpayer funding remains central to biomedical research, the turn toward financialized research and development has intensified, rather than resolved, access problems. Progress has increasingly been defined by commercialization metrics and investor returns rather than health outcomes. The Article proposes a cross-disciplinary governance framework that reorients biomedical innovation toward structural access as a directional principle, calling for early-stage accountability mechanisms to counterbalance financialized conceptions of progress.

AI Labor Market Transformation and Anticipatory Policy Feedback

Presenter: Paul Lendway (Stanford University)
Discussant: Jane Gingrich (University of Oxford)

Abstract: Advances in AI are transforming work. As experts ranging from business leaders to economists try to predict AI’s impact on the labor market, how do these various forecasts shape political behavior? At stake is the possibility that expert labor market predictions impact important political outcomes regardless of whether the theorized changes take hold. To probe this, we run a novel U.S. sample assessing how varying forecasts surrounding the economic impact of AI on jobs shapes political attitudes. First, we show that subjects with higher populist attitudes are more likely to attribute AI-induced job losses to business elites, tech industry elites, politicians, and public policies. Second, subjects who more greatly value equality are more likely to respond to AI-induced job losses with support for increasing federal taxes on the wealthy. Finally, AI-induced job increases result in lower mass support for breaking up large companies. These results illustrate how differences in forecasts and preexisting technomoral values can condition mass responses to advances in AI on matters ranging from taxing the rich to corporate regulatory policy.

Education Reform and Small-City Labor Markets

Presenter: Antonia Gordon (Michigan State)
Discussant: Jonathan Collins (Columbia University)

Abstract: Small cities face structural barriers to economic diversification, leaving local labor markets dependent on small businesses, low-wage service work, or a single dominant industry. As residents commute to regional job centers, population decline and a shrinking tax base can further destabilize these communities. In many Rust Belt small cities, however, public K–12 education systems function as one of the largest and most stable employers. Because schools receive substantial state and federal funding—most of which is allocated to staffing—education policy plays a central role in shaping local labor markets. This paper examines how education reform policies affect labor market conditions in small cities, focusing on case studies of public-school districts in Camden, New Jersey, and Muskegon Heights, Michigan. Both communities have relied heavily on public education as a primary labor industry and have experienced major restructuring, including state takeovers, charter conversions, and school closures. The study analyzes how such reforms reshape employment patterns and broader economic stability over time.