Michael Hankinson

Next week, I will be at the #2025APPAM Annual Fall Research Conference in Seattle. I will be presenting new work on the local politics of renewable energy siting as well as updates on building a national housing permits database.

If you want to connect, please reach out: hankinson@gwu.edu

A great overview of an important local gov’t reform! Ties together many different literatures and shows how the unexpected can happen in implementation. Thanks @jacksantucci.bsky.social !

I'm excited to share that we're running a junior faculty search in American politics. Proud to see GWU continue to invest in political science. Link: www.gwu.jobs/postings/122...

Our findings shed new light on the political challenges of achieving decarbonization, where local governments must balance national goals with local resistance.

Come to "The Comparative Politics of Clean-Energy Siting," Friday, 2 pm, VCC East Ballroom.

On Friday at #APSA, I'll be presenting new research on how political geography shapes the siting of collective goods. We use the consolidation of municipalities in Denmark to show how the distribution of entire electorate affects where wind energy is politically viable.

In Vancouver for the APSA Annual Meeting. First time visiting the city and I rented a bike for a 2-hour spin. Blown away. Bike infrastructure on par with Denmark plus miles of trails in the middle of UBC’s campus (4 miles from downtown).

“Many seek results, too few seek understanding.”

You told me that last time we hung out. It stuck with me.

Engineered extrachromosomal oncogene amplifications promote tumorigenesis - Nature Large extrachromosomal DNAs are engineered using a CRISPR- and Cre–loxP-based approach and shown to drive cancer in mouse models, with potential applications in determining the role of oncogene a...

Nature article: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Rui Gao on LinkedIn: Engineered extrachromosomal oncogene amplifications promote tumorigenesis… Happy to share that a significant research project from my PhD is finally out in 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 today! 🎉🧬 For the first time, we show that gene amplifications…

So proud of my wife, Rui Gao! Her dissertation research has led to a breakthrough in understanding ecDNA-amplified cancers, opening paths for better treatments in the future.

And a co-first author publication in Nature is a nice outcome as well :)

www.linkedin.com/posts/ruigao...

Improving debriefing practices for participants in social science experiments Abstract. Social science experiments often expose participants to false, deceptive, or otherwise harmful content. In an effort to mitigate the effects of s

What's the best way to debrief study participants? At
@pnasnexus.org, Katie Clayton, @yamilrvelez.bsky.social, @thomasjwood.bsky.social and I introduce a new debriefing method that leaves participants much better off than standard debriefs. Especially relevant for misinfo research. bit.ly/41i19sU

The Robert E. Lane Award for the best book in political psychology published in the past year. 2024: Alex Coppock (Yale University) Persuasion in Parallel: How Information Changes Minds about Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2023) 2024: (Honorable mention) Alexandra Filindra Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2023) 2023: Efrén Pérez (University of California, Los Angeles) and Margit Tavits (Washington University in St. Louis) Voicing Politics: How Language Shapes Public Opinion (Princeton University Press, 2022) 2022: Cigdem V. Sirin (University of Texas, El Paso), Nicholas A. Valentino (University of Michigan), and Jose D. Villalobos (University of Texas, El Paso) Seeing Us in Them: Social Divisions and the Politics of Group Empathy (Cambridge University Press, 2021) 2021: Nicole M. Bauer (Louisiana State University) The Qualifications Gap: Why Women Must Be Better than Men to Win Political Office (Cambridge University Press, 2020) 2020: Ashley Jardina (Duke University) White Identity Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2019) 2020: Markus Prior (Princeton University) Hooked (Cambridge University Press, 2018) 2019: Gwyneth McClendon (New York University) Envy in Politics (Princeton University Press, 2018)

PHILIP E. CONVERSE AWARD Given for an outstanding book in the field published five or more years ago. 2024: Dan Hopkins, The Increasingly United States 2023: Jaime Settle, Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America. 2022: Ted Brader. Campaigning for Hearts and Minds: How Emotional Appeals in Political Ads Work 2021: Samara Klar and Yanna Krupnikov. Independent Politics: How American Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction 2020: Christopher F. Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg. The Silent Sex: Gender, Deliberation, & Institutions 2019: Green, Donald P., Bradley Palmquest, and Eric Schickler. Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters.

I'm on two 📘 award committees for APSA, deadlines March 1, 2025

Robert Lane Award (with Nichole Bauer and Markus Prior)
connect.apsanet.org/s28/nominati...

Converse Award (with @wzcmarsh.bsky.social, @jfdaoust.bsky.social, @hmridge.bsky.social)
connect.apsanet.org/s32/awards/

pls nominate & share

Very cool research opportunity here!

We're hiring in American Politics at the junior level. Position will be affiliated with GW’s Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics. Applications due January 2nd. I'm on sabbatical, but I am happy to answer questions about the dept., broadly. DM me. www.gwu.jobs/postings/116...

The Renters’ Republic | Charlie Dulik In a majority-homeowner nation, the rental crisis alone cannot explain Harris’s defeat, especially since the concentration of renters in cities means that as a group they likely still tilted toward he...

“Harris’s [supply-increasing] housing plan responded to an urgent crisis with reforms whose benefits would be felt slowly if at all.” It is worse than that: Renters tend to oppose supply increases, as @hankinson.bsky.social has shown. www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/... LIST 01%2F06%2F2020

Using tax dollars to block new housing is bad policy - The Boston Globe More than a dozen communities have been accused of ‘weaponizing’ the sale of public land to stop housing development.

Excited to see @maxwellpalmer.bsky.social and my research in this @bostonglobe.com op-ed this morning. The use of public money to actively block much-needed affordable housing is appalling, and shows the strength of opposition to new housing in Greater Boston. www.bostonglobe.com/2024/11/25/o...

I’m adding a day on path dependence to my undergrad Intro to Policy Analysis class. Would love recommendations for favorite podcasts/news articles/etc that illustrate the concept!

Can mayors keep their affordable housing promises? — APM Research Lab Mayors across the Sun Belt and beyond have promised to build housing and reduce costs. But they face obstacles – including “Not in My Backyard” sentiment from their constituents.

Facing a cost of living crisis, mayor are (finally) promising to build more housing. Can they deliver? I discuss both the political obstacles, but also opportunities for success with @apmresearch.bsky.social at American Public Media.
www.apmresearchlab.org/10x/mayors-a...

Astead Herndon’s “The Run-Up” is the most informative politics podcast. He interrogates an interviewee’s beliefs while warmly inviting them to define the framework. From party loyalists to undecideds, he extracts depth where others flatten/abstract away. I could build my Intro Amer. syllabus via it

When do interest groups — like organized labor — use the housing entitlement process to secure benefits? Now published in JPIPE, A. Magazinnik, Anna Weissman, and I find a relationship with big implications for the housing supply & attempts to reform local permitting. 1/10

🚨 How should we design surveys to capture opinion in fast-changing contexts like elections or within hard-to-reach communities? 🚨

My paper, conditionally accepted at Political Analysis, develops a method that leverages LLMs and adaptive algorithms to construct surveys that evolve with user input.

A new interesting article by @hankinson.bsky.social and @jdbk.bsky.social is now available on our FirstView page. It is entitled “How self-interest and symbolic politics shape the effectiveness of compensation for nearby housing development”.
Enjoy it here: t.ly/-0IQO

Open to feedback! Thank you @jpublicpolicy.bsky.social for making our article open-access (cup.org/3BT7jVS). 11/11

My other work on compensation & housing:

Construction & benefits via entitlement process (shorturl.at/K7SPV)

The Good and the Bad of Community Benefits Agreements (shorturl.at/9voyW)

Ultimately, compensating those who bear a policy’s concentrated costs may be an advance in equity compared to 20th c. top-down planning, where communities affected lacked voice. Yet the (over)use of compensation risks inefficiencies in the use of financial resources. 10/11

For policy, including affordable housing can increase support. But once doing so, compensation is unlikely to prove useful in expanding a coalition. In fact, additional compensation may only hurt the financial viability of a project, with little payoff in public support. 9/11

For poli-sci, our findings underscore the dominance of symbolic politics in mass public preferences. Only when a policy is proximate to an individual’s material well-being & lacks a salient partisan or racialized framing should we expect self-interest to drive attitudes. 8/11

Open-ended responses also show more focus on compensation ("dollar") for the market-rate proposals. Respondents evaluating affordable housing may have paid more attention to other features, such as whether the housing itself would benefit the community. 7/11

Notably, more $ increased support for market-rate housing, but it had no effect on mixed-income housing. We believe the inclusion of affordable units activates symbolic attitudes which are more calcified, harder to move via material benefits. 6/11

Respondents preferred mixed-income housing and larger amounts of compensation, but didn’t respond to the form of compensation. Proximity did not have significant effect, likely because the proposals were all within a mile of the respondents’ home but rarely on their block. 5/11

For each proposal, we randomized a) the distance to the respondent, b) whether the proposal was for 100% market-rate or 50% affordable housing, c) the amount of compensation offered, and d) whether it would be a cash payment or an investment in nearby parks and streets. 4/11