Program on Political Economy

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences and IQSS sponsor this seminar on formal and quantitative political research. The Program on Political Economy (PE) supports research-related activities that integrate the study of economics and politics, whether by studying economic behavior in the political process or political behavior in the marketplace. In general, positive political economy is concerned with showing how observed differences among institutions affect political and economic outcomes in various social, economic, and political systems and how the institutions themselves change and develop in response to individual and collective beliefs, preferences, and strategies. All interested faculty and students are invited to attend. Jorg Spenkuch (Northwestern) presents, “Politics from the Bench? Evidence from SCOTUS.” Abstract: “Supreme Court justices often vote along ideological lines. Is this due to a genuinely different interpretation of the law, or does it reflect justices' desire to resolve politically-charged controversies in accordance with their personal views? To study this question, we differentiate between votes that were pivotal and those that were not. We find that, when a justice's choice determines the outcome of a case, her ideology plays an even greater role in determining her decision---both relative to her choices on other narrowly decided cases and relative to other justices voting on the same case. The data allow us to reject theories of sincere voting as well as explanations according to which ambiguous signals about the merits of a case force justices to fall back on ideology as a form of tie breaker. Simple counterfactuals suggest that strategic voting determines the outcome of a nontrivial share of 5--4 splits”.