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Prof. Jake Grumbach's Book, "Laboratories Against Democracy", Listed on New York Times' "Best Books of 2022"

Submitted by Stephen Dunne on October 28, 2022 - 10:01am
by Jacob Grumbach (Princeton)

Grumbach is a quantitative political scientist, and his data suggest that, although some state governments have moved to the extremes, public opinion in those states has remained fairly stable. He therefore describes the country as “under entrenched minority rule.” What explains the political shift, he thinks, is that all politics has become national. National groups, he maintains, have exploited low-information environments to increasingly dominate the state level of politics and freeze out the opposition. “Antidemocratic interests need only to take control of a state government for a short period of time,” Grumbach points out, “to implement changes that make it harder for their opponents to participate in politics at all levels.

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