Kenny Lowande

Many thanks to generous support from the Hewlett Foundation for seeing the vision. If we are in a new era when most policy is made by American presidents from the top-down, we need to invest more resources into understanding what happens after the president says "go." Send me your students!

I'm looking for someone smart and motivated who is interested in expanding their research portfolio to include the presidency and executive politics. They'll spend at least a year with me working on that research, with the possibility of a second.

More context: The American presidency and the executive branch, more broadly, are far and away the most important political institutions in American politics. Yet every year, my discipline, political science, supports and trains few (if any) people dedicated to studying how it works.

I'm hiring a Postdoctoral Research Fellow! Applications due Feb 16. Please reach out to me with questions.

apply.interfolio.com/178829

Also, this figure would seem to be at odds with all those "father of a daughter" studies

Putting together my grad syllabus in American political institutions. Anyone have recommendations for new "must-read" books?

This is technically true. But if the rule of law is actually an attitude, and people believe EOs matter, then the technicality doesn't matter. This is why presidents sign symbolic orders anyway. The hope that people will believe in them.

Meh. Tomato, tomahto.

Fong is changing the study of legislatures, and he's not doing it by finding neat little RDDs and natural experiments.

This policy change might also might lead Congress to, at last, defeat Taco Bell in the contest for who has a lower annual staff turnover rate.

This isn't just a Trump thing. The presidency has been moving in this direction for decades. This is just the logical conclusion.

in order to adequately assess your submission and do our annual editorial reports we will now need your ssn and five years of residency history; plz post

i see your bat signal and respond by throwing a book

False Front: The Failed Promise of Presidential Power in a Polarized Age (Chicago Studies in American Politics) False Front: The Failed Promise of Presidential Power in a Polarized Age (Chicago Studies in American Politics) [Lowande, Kenneth] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. False Front: The Failed Promise of Presidential Power in a Polarized Age (Chicago Studies in American Politics)

I wrote a book about this, and attempted to do what you're saying would be helpful for orders since the 1990s: www.amazon.com/False-Front-...

Link to full study and more info: myumi.ch/W6Pz7

The Trump admin owns the public narrative by taking executive action, over and over. Our new study shows this strategy has detectable impacts on Google search traffic for the incumbent president. Ballpark est. similar to pop artists when they release a new album.

This study is joint work with some smart undergraduates at the University of Michigan, all of whom, would make great White House staffers -- for any president!

6/6

White House alumni lean correlates with 2025 investigations and funding cuts, after accounting for observables. We aren't saying this is causal. But it is a good illustration of how Trump actions reflect deeper, political divisions in higher ed itself.

5/6

Highly ranked (i.e., by US News) university alumni are overwhelmingly Dem-leaning, while large publics and small colleges are more diverse...

(I am having fun with my alma mater in this figure. Sic'em.)

4/6

Republican leaning majors:

3/6

Even within credentials, staffers were polarized by degree field. Democrat leaning majors:

2/6

NEW STUDY: White House staff hiring over 1996-2024 shows the diploma divide is in the White House. Elite universities sent far more alumni to work for Democratic presidents. Full paper: myumi.ch/pVMM5

Details:

First --> Overall, Democratic presidents tend to value more credentials...

1/6

This plots data from the DOD's 1033 program -- there are other programs, of course, and we'll be adding them as we process what we've obtained through FOIs.

Policymakers and the public need to understand how/if these programs are working. We'll soon release some of our own findings, but we hope the underlying data will help others who want to study domestic law enforcement -- and how it has been changed by shift toward homeland security.

We'll be updating these data as they become available, and eventually adding the billions more in homeland security subsidies that have gone out since 2007.

The DOD has billions in military hardware circulating among state and local police. Pleased to announce a tool developed to visualize and track this equipment, along with clean, historical data on all controlled items circulated between 2014-2025.

police.executivepolicy.org

Counterpoint: there's never been more data available about what the government actually does. Most political scientists just have a soft spot for what happens between peoples' ears.

Especially on Sundays in Ann Arbor, where street parking only costs a small portion of your soul.

Never.

No.