Rev 8/22/2020

Soc 9N reading questions. These questions are here to guide you if you are stuck, but you are not obligated to answer them or address them.

Week 1	Reading Assignment
Sept 23
Sept 25	On democratic theory. Reading: Dahl, Who Governs? Book I and II, chapters 1-12 Questions: What are the social and economic powers in US society that make US society less democratic? For context: How was the Democratic Party of the 1950s different from the Democratic party of today? Who are the different kinds of elites whose empowerment would make the US less democratic? What are the axioms of the political class (ch. 8), and who in today’s US political class fails to subscribe to them? What is cumulative inequality and why is it antidemocratic? What is dispersed inequality? What is Dahl’s evidence from New Haven that the rich and powerful do not, in fact, run everything?
Week 2
Sept 30	On Democratic theory. Dahl’s Who Governs? finish the book Questions: Why are elections a counterweight to wealth and privilege? How (contra Dahl) might wealth and privilege exert control over election processes? What is a diverse media important for democracy? Why is the level of citizen participation in voting important in a democracy? Were New Haven citizens sufficiently engaged in the process to support the idea that New Haven was a democracy?
Oct 2
Week 3
Oct 7	On how campaigns work: Green and Gerber Get Out the Vote, read the whole book. Questions: What research methods do Green and Gerber describe in this book? What is especially powerful about randomized field experiments? What are the get-out-the-vote strategies that are most effective? Which strategies scale up easiest? Which strategies seem not to work at all? How big of an effect (in terms of percentage point increases in turnout) are the larger effects that Green and Gerber report on? Why do volunteer phone bankers achieve better results than paid phone bankers? What do G+G have to say about shoe leather in-person canvassing, and what do they have to say about events  to draw people to the polls? Why is it difficult to measure the effect of mass media on turnout? What did the Broockman and Kalla experiment described in Chapter 9 find?
Oct 9
Week 4
Oct 14	* Shelby Co  v Holder (US Supreme Court decision) * Newkirk in the Atlantic * Blackshear and Guinier *https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-republican-choice/ Questions: * In what way is Shelby County a blow to the Voting Rights Act? * What was the status of voting rights in the US before Shelby County, and what is the status now?
Oct 16
Week 5
Oct 21	* Allcott, Hunt, and Matthew Gentzkow. * Vosoughi et al * Arendt 1971 Questions: * Why are lies sometimes more appealing than truth? * How do politicians get away with lying?
Oct 23
Week 6
Oct 28	* Richman et al * Ansolabehere et al * Levitt 2007 report, The Truth about Voter Fraud * Levitt 2019 article * Goel et al, One person One Vote Questions: * What does the data say about the prevalence of election fraud in the US * What do politicians say about the prevalence of election fraud, and why does this sometimes differ from the evidence?
Oct 30
Week 7
Nov 4
Nov 6
Week 8
Nov 11	Netflix Movie Knock down the House. * What is the experience of being a rookie candidate, according to Knock Down the House?
Nov 13
Week 9
Nov 18	A report and a paper by Uggen Question: What is the state of felon disenfranchisement in the US today, and why does it matter?
Nov 20
Week 10
Dec 2	Lord et al and Baldassari and Gelman on political polarization * How do we measure political polarization, and why is it increasing?
Dec 4