alyxmarkteaching-1-1000x600-1.png
Steve ScarpaJune 27, 20235min
New research from Assistant Professor of Government Alyx Mark and Tiger Bjornlund ’24 shows that courts with publicly financed elections are viewed as more legitimate and less susceptible to donor influence than those that are selected through privately financed campaigns. The paper, titled “Public Campaign Financing’s Effects on Judicial Legitimacy : Evidence From a Survey Experiment,” was published May 30 in the journal Research and Politics. “There is so much focus on the U.S. Supreme Court, but there are entire other levels of courts that receive less attention that have an impact on our day to day lives,” Mark said. In Spring…

Ben-Levin-23-1280x853.jpg
Mike MavredakisMay 24, 20234min
Before Ben Levin ’23 was a Wesleyan student, he visited a friend on campus. They ventured into a classroom together to find a student working through a math problem on a chalkboard while blasting punk rock through his headphones. The student then took off his headphones and passionately explained what he was working on. “It felt like I was in a movie scene,” Levin, chosen to speak at Commencement on May 28, said. “I was excited because it was really the first time where I thought ‘this is the kind of person I really want to surround myself with,’ even…

Gato-copy.jpg
Steve ScarpaApril 24, 20235min
For Eugene Gato Nsengamungu ’23, his homeland of Rwanda is everything. Guided by the example of his late father, a soldier who fiercely loved his country, it’s only natural that when Nsengamungu thinks of a problem to be solved, he thinks of how he can do so back home. “This is a spirit I got from my dad,” he said. Nsengamungu, a Government and Physics major, was recently awarded a Davis Project for Peace grant from the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship to create the Rwanda Youth Tech Informants (RYTI) project, a program that will equip high school students in…

owens_event.jpg
Andrew ChatfieldApril 5, 20237min
A group of artists and academics came together in the first of a series of climate change conversations to examine how art can impact policy. This event is part of the Ocean Filibuster: Art and Action series—a semester of art and activism, science and storytelling—building to the Connecticut premiere performances of PearlDamour’s "Ocean Filibuster" in the CFA Theater from Thursday, May 4 through Saturday, May 6, 2023. For more information and related events, please visit www.wesleyan.edu/cfa/ocean. The first panel discussion on March 28 considered the relationship between artmaking and policy—how artists, scientists, and policymakers can be more powerful, and more able to shape…

cam_sum_2016-0825110339-760x507.jpg
Editorial StaffMarch 29, 20235min
In a recent article in the journal Regional and Federal Studies James McGuire, Professor of Government, found that Trump's 2020 vote share was a strong and robust predictor of a lower COVID-19 vaccination rate across US states, US counties, and Connecticut towns alike, adjusting for wide range other factors thought to affect the vaccination rate. At each of the three subnational levels, McGuire showed, the Trump 2020 vote share was also correlated more closely than the Trump 2016 vote share or the Romney 2012 vote share with the COVID-19 vaccination rate. McGuire estimated the statistical impact of the Trump 2020…

Erika-Franklin-Fowler-1280x854.jpg
Steve ScarpaMarch 22, 20237min
The 2022 midterm elections featured a record volume of television advertising, while, in addition, candidates in federal races spent almost $150 million on digital ads, according to a post-mortem analysis from the Wesleyan Media Project. Late February, the Wesleyan Media Project published two reports on television and digital ad spending in The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics. “After all was said and done, and after billions of dollars were spent on political advertising in the 2022 U.S. midterm election campaign, American politics mostly changed on the margins,” according to the Wesleyan Media Project. According to WMP…

DSC00226-1280x720.jpg
Steve ScarpaDecember 10, 20229min
With pride in their accomplishments and hopes for a bright future, fifteen students celebrated their initiation into the Connecticut Gamma Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at a ceremony held on December 7 in the McKelvey Room at the Office of Admission. In order to be inducted into the nation’s oldest scholastic honor society, students must be nominated by the department of their major, have completed their general education expectations, and must have a grade point average of 93 or above. “For students elected in the fall, it is an especially exacting selection process because admittance is based on a student’s…

BelleBrown-1280x720.png
Steve ScarpaApril 4, 20227min
It isn’t often that watching late night comedy would be considered preparation for an environmental studies senior capstone project, but that turned out to the case for Belle Brown ‘22. Regular viewing of John Oliver’s commentary on environmental issues helped inform Brown’s upcoming stand-up comedy set about the absurdities of the Monsanto Company. “Belle decided to do the comedy act as her capstone project as a way of presenting research about policy and politics related to big-agriculture in a format that might be more accessible to people. I just saw a preview, and it is hilarious as well as informative,”…

media2501.jpg
Lauren RubensteinJanuary 30, 20182min
The Wesleyan Media Project’s research is resonating in our nation’s capital and beyond. Associate Professor of Government Erika Franklin Fowler, together with a team of Wesleyan students and colleagues at several institutions across the United States, conducts research on campaign advertising and health media, which is informing work in government, nonprofits and the private sector. In January, the Bipartisan Policy Center released a major report, The State of Campaign Finance in the U.S., which relied heavily on data and research from the Wesleyan Media Project. The task force that developed the report, led by a Stanford law professor and top…

fac_peck_2017-1115111740-760x507.jpg
Olivia DrakeDecember 8, 20173min
In this Q&A, Assistant Professor of Government Justin Peck speaks about his research interests, teaching at Wesleyan and road-tripping across the United States. (Brandon Sides ’18 contributed to this article.) Q: Professor Peck, what are your primary areas of research? A: My dissertation attempts to explain when and why post-WWII Congresses enacted legal constraints on executive authority. And that's now my primary area of research; the second area of my research concerns when and how the Republican Party’s position on civil rights issues has changed since the Civil War. Q: What are your current projects? A: I'm working on a book…

Lauren RubensteinNovember 1, 20172min
Two Government Department faculty recently co-authored scholarly articles with recent Wesleyan undergraduates. Chloe Rinehart '14 and James McGuire, chair and professor of government, are the co-authors of “Obstacles to Takeup: Ecuador’s Conditional Cash Transfer Program, the Bono de Desarrollo Humano," published in World Development in September 2017. Rinehart and McGuire examined factors that keep impoverished people from benefiting from the social assistance programs for which they are legally eligible. Taking the case of Ecuador's Bono de Desarrollo Humano (BDH), a U.S. $50 monthly cash transfer to families in the poorest 40 percent of the income distribution, they used field research in Ecuador to identify potential obstacles to…

Erika-headshot.jpeg
Lauren RubensteinJuly 26, 20172min
Writing in The Washington Post, Associate Professor of Government Erika Franklin Fowler and Sarah Gollust '01 show how local television news coverage is making it more difficult for the Senate to repeal the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare. "The ACA repeal was always going to be a tough, uphill battle in the Senate, as we explained here in May. The stakes are high — both for the millions of Americans who now have insurance through Obamacare, and for the Republican Party that promised to repeal it," they wrote. "Senate efforts have failed so far for a variety of reasons.…