Ep 10 – The Comparative Agendas Project

[0:00:01 Speaker 1] Welcome

[0:00:02 Speaker 0] back to the connector, where we bring together innovative, groundbreaking and collaborative research inside the U T. Austin political science universe. I’m your host, Stewart Tendler. Spend any amount of time around an academic department at a research university, and you might find graduate students at the heart of it all. In this episode, we talked to two of those students, Rebecca Eisler and analyst Russell. Put simply there, enthusiasm is infectious and makes easily understandable why there’s always so much hope and energy invested in our graduate students. But Rebecca and analysts are also somewhat unique. They’ve been fortunate to work their way into leading roles in the Comparative Agendas Project, an international effort to systematically measure, compare and research public policy across the globe. We talk about how they made its Austin what they and the project do their own research and even discuss a little politics I hope you enjoy. All right. Excellent. So we’re here today with a couple of graduate students, and we’re going to talk a little bit about the graduate program at UT, but mostly about the Comparative Agendas Project or the Policy Agendas project. I’m not sure if it’s officially changed names or, if

[0:01:19 Speaker 1] it’s

[0:01:19 Speaker 0] moving back and forth,

[0:01:20 Speaker 1] hasn’t officially changed names. But generally I’m Rebecca Eisler, by the way, the manager of the policy agendas project. And generally, when we’re talking about it in the international sense, the whole project, we talk about the comparative agendas. But when you talk about the US data, it’s the policy agendas product or US policy agendas project.

[0:01:42 Speaker 0] Excellent. So let’s just back up in the air. Let’s

[0:01:45 Speaker 2] get believe you super confused.

[0:01:48 Speaker 0] Let’s get some introductions. So we have Rebecca. We have Annalise. But let me allow you to introduce yourselves. Rebecca, you just told us who you are. But why don’t you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

[0:01:59 Speaker 1] Well, I am Rebecca Eisler. I am 1/5 year graduate student in the Department of Government, and I study American government public policy, and my dissertation work is on the agenda of the American president.

[0:02:16 Speaker 2] And so I’m Emily’s and ah, I do Rebecca’s bidding within the project and also run the undergraduate research arm of the project. So we have through ah, Brian Jones and Sean Theory out on undergraduate research course that meets for an entire year and I work with them as they develop their own research projects and also do work for the project. So through the project, I work with our undergrads, go over coding update data, sets, anything and everything that needs doing in the project that we can have undergraduates dio and then my own research. I again look at Congress and institutions. But more specifically, my dissertation looks at how members of Congress prioritize information. And so I do that by studying members of the Senate on Twitter. So my days are spent with the tweets of, you know, Chuck Grassley and Chuck Schumer. And so some days it’s great and other days its Oh my gosh, what’s what’s our world coming? Teoh?

[0:03:14 Speaker 0] So we pay you money? Teoh read a Twitter feed said

[0:03:19 Speaker 2] Yes, but I promise it is in the most academic way possible. It is not fun. I mean, some days you read things. You know, Chuck Grassley is talking about the fact that he ran over a deer. But other days it’s about votes. It’s about promises to constituents and things like that. So there is a lot of material there beyond just scandal on hoopla.

[0:03:37 Speaker 0] Yeah, no that does legitimately sound legitimate and fascinating, and we’ll come back to some of your research a little bit later. What I’d like to kind of start with is get some background kind of on the agendas project, and I’d like to talk about how you all kind of came to you. T how you got involved with the project. And then, to the extent that graduate students, I guess kind of rise through the ranks or something, you two have, just You’re involved in this really serious project and you’re in leadership roles now, and I think you’re just involved.

[0:04:17 Speaker 2] How did that process happen? How

[0:04:18 Speaker 0] did that process happen? And I just want to hear more about kind of what you guys do, because I don’t think a lot of people envision the opportunity for the kind of things you’re involved with when they think about going to graduate school. So I think it’s sort of unique and really interesting and let me stop there. And maybe we could just start with some background on the project itself.

[0:04:40 Speaker 1] So background and history of the project well, Brian Jones, when he was at the Texas A and M, was working with another scholar, Frank Baumgartner, and they wanted to study what it was Congress was doing. And what policy areas were they paying attention to? And they started by doing this from sort of a case study approach. The agendas and instability book that they wrote takes a look at a few policy areas like tobacco. And

[0:05:13 Speaker 2] this is all all like, early nineties.

[0:05:14 Speaker 1] Yeah, early nineties nuclear policy, and they enjoyed. But they did with that book, but they wanted to do more comprehensively. So they started. Why, looking at all of the hearings in the House and Senate, they came up with a topic coding scheme so that every hearing could get assigned one policy area and this top and Kotick scheme, which evolved over time and used to figure out what was the best way to do it has now 20 sort of major categories. Things like macro economics and health and social welfare. And underneath that about 220 minor topics, things like within macroeconomics, interest rates or unemployment statistics, or under health mental health, so that we could get some of this fine grained look at what Congress and eventually other institutions were paying attention to at a single point in time and really across time. The point was to develop a reliable, consistent time series because

[0:06:25 Speaker 2] nothing existed before. I mean, that was the problem. They lamented the fact that there was nothing to be able to study over time a consistent Siris of public policy

[0:06:34 Speaker 1] because, you know, as as they’ve written about in subsequent articles, if you’re just going with keywords as a way to assign policy, the way we talk about issues changes over time. In the seventies and eighties, when we cared about the environment and air quality that evolved into talking about global warming, it wasn’t that these were two distinct areas. They were an evolution in the way we talked about the issue. So they created this. Cody’s came with the goal of being consistent. Time moved on, and Brian moved up to the University of Washington, and there they had a visiting graduate student from our whose university in Denmark who was working with them and saying, Oh, well, this is a really interesting way of looking at policy. What government does I want to try this in Denmark? And Brian’s initial thought was Well, I’m not sure it’ll work, but you know my blessing to you. Go and try. I think you

[0:07:33 Speaker 2] said he was pretty sure. I dont think this war. Yeah, Rebecca makes it sound a little less less pessimistic. Pretty pessimistic.

[0:07:41 Speaker 1] Yeah, but he was wrong. He was wrong. Dead wrong. I mean, Christopher went back toe are who’s and just they found the exact same dynamics of how governments distribute their attention to issues. So that was the star truly of the comparative. A dentist project. That first attempt started spreading through first universities in Europe and now further a field there, roughly 2025 country projects also a couple of US state projects and the you that are all finding these very, very similar dynamics of how governments pay attention to policy areas over time. And that’s led to further research. Realizing that it’s not so much government systems, it’s human beings and their ability to pay attention to stuff. It’s the cognitive limitations that really end of shaping the policy process.

[0:08:46 Speaker 2] And so it’s that process that’s been going on for the last 25 years that we your now at the helm of so the way this is evolved for us is graduate students is as this process developed within the U. S. System, we created this coding scheme, so we have to maintain it. And so the people that are in charge of maintaining it end up being the graduate students that work for the project. Whether Brian was at the university washing are now here’s housed at the University of Texas. And so there are a number of people who have held our positions before. But we were the next in line and stadiums health, maybe yet yet willing victims telling victims I enjoy it really did. But part of our experience in UT at least I know for me coming here was the knowledge that I was going to be working on this project, and I can’t say I think Rebecca and I if we went back and looked at how we got here. We have very different stories for me. I had professors at the University of Oklahoma where I was at saying, You need to go here. You need to apply to this place. You need to work with this person. And so I knew very early on what I I don’t I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but I knew the research group and the professor that I was hitching my horse to, so to speak. So I had a very, ah different perspective. Whereas Rebecca, I think would say

[0:10:10 Speaker 1] dumb luck is how I got into this chair today. I had graduated from Tulane University the year before, and it was sort of in my senior year that I went I think I’d like toe become a professor. This I enjoyed teaching. I enjoy academia. I enjoy research. This could be good thing. And when I mentioned Teoh, a couple professors, they went, Oh, yeah, that would be a good fit for you. But that was probably the extent of mentoring I got in terms of applying to graduate school. So the University of Texas actually was a fluke in terms of where I applied to. Recent Tulane professors have gotten their PhDs here. I said, Well, if that’s the quality of job you can get with this degree, then I may as well send in an application. I sent an application I got in, and then this professor, I’d never heard of Brian Jones started reaching out to me is part of recruitment, and I went well. I don’t know what he does or who he is. That’s the biggest joke of it all. But he seems like a nice person. I’ll visit the university. I’ll see how it goes. And then I came to visiting day and I went, This is my home. This is where I’m supposed to be. Dr. Jones seems like a great person to work with on coming here. And after I said I was coming, I started getting e mails and whatnot from graduate students who were in the policy, done this project, saying, Do you want to come to meetings? And I brightly, it was another one. Those those moments of luck and genius I didn’t say no to anything that was that was invited. Teoh. So the world

[0:11:50 Speaker 2] grad school, You never say no. You can say no later, after you’ve learned the error of your ways. But you never say no for

[0:11:56 Speaker 1] so I I didn’t say no. And now I’m here.

[0:12:02 Speaker 2] Yeah, we just hit the ground running and you get an assignment. And five years later, now we’re the ones in charge of handing out the assignments. But we have a graduate group that works with the project of probably, I don’t know, eight or 10 people that are somewhat attached to the project at various ways throughout

[0:12:24 Speaker 1] a core group of 45 that do coding and but for the day to day work

[0:12:30 Speaker 2] of the project throughout the number of cohorts here at UT, with slightly different interests and a common interest in policy. But throughout that varying, varying differences, and so it really does create a unique community other than having those relationships with just those people you came into graduate school with but really having this research group that has a similar interest in things that you do but also has a vested interest in your own individual projects and a willingness to work with you.

[0:13:00 Speaker 1] Yeah, I think one of the things that’s unique about, or rather, the policy genders project environment is unique within the social sciences. I’ve actually seen compared mawr with the natural sciences, where you’ll have a lab group that you work with where your you’ve got a core goal in common, but individual interests and research. Aside from that, and it creates sort of Ah, a second bond. In addition to your cohort bond, the people you entered grad school with its across generational bond in a way. And it really helps, because these are people you can turn to for sort of the immediate questions and professionalization that the people that you’ve entered with are struggling with its well, whereas, you know, I remember within the first semester of grad school coming across a concept in a reading that I knew was gonna be really, really, really important. But I didn’t get it and I could turn to I think he was 1/3 year at the time and say, Can you explain this to me? Because by this point, he’d figure it out, and all of a sudden I got it by having someone else be able to explain to me

[0:14:14 Speaker 0] It’s interesting how you set that up, how you both kind of came here from very different places. And that’s clear. I mean, and it is Ah,

[0:14:24 Speaker 2] I think we run the spectrum of like how people end up in grad school like there was a very deliberate, like, This is where you need to be versus hunky Dorry. I’m here. I mean, not that, but, like, sort of. That was a happy accident. And everyone seems to fall somewhere in the middle.

[0:14:38 Speaker 0] Yeah, no, I mean, that’s exactly where it was going. And and it’s intriguing for me in the sense that perspective graduate soon is always want to know kind of what the path into graduate school is. And so we could probably have a long discussion about kind of what the commonalities across your two different experiences are that kind of lead Teoh to where you wound up. But maybe we could take a different spin on that. What about expectations? So, analysts, you came in with a very deliberate plan. Has your experience fallen in line with what you thought you were getting into?

[0:15:14 Speaker 2] So I grew up in academia as a professor’s kit, and so I knew what academia looked like years down the road. I had no idea what it looked like as a graduate student, and I had no idea how to get there. So I’ve always seen what it looks like way off in the distance I coming in. I could tell you how to deal with 10 year case files, but I had no idea how to pass a comp or how to pass a graduate course. So I mean, I think you come in with a certain set of expectations. But you just have to roll with the punches, because what you think it’s going to be is inevitably different than what it will be. I mean, I think we both like, watched episodes of like, West, we growing up or like I want to Be like these people And no matter what you think coming in, what politics is, whether it’s American politics compared to possible takes, you know, global security, what have you, the way you look at things and the way you deal with these questions that we are faced with in graduate school, the notion that you were no longer reciting material but you’re coming up with your own logic for things is just completely beyond anything that most students have ever really had to do. And so I think, even though I I had a more direct path and kind of knowing what I wanted, what I wanted once I got here is nothing I could have anticipated. I don’t think no matter what I’d prepared myself for.

[0:16:37 Speaker 1] I think a great example of this is encapsulated in. We come in having proposed research ideas in our applications, and I didn’t see it at the time, But I see it now. When I talk to prospective students and they say, Oh, well, I’m gonna research this, that and the other thing and I go great. And I sort of, you know, maybe they will. There are there people like analysts who do have a much closer idea of what they’re going to study when they start. But I also sort of go, Just wait. You’re going to read a 1,000,000 things and have your eyes opened to so much literature that you’ve never and and ideas about politics and the political process you never thought about before. So while you can stick with what you initially thought, even that will evolve light years beyond what you initially thought about it when you start in graduate school, I came into graduate school going. I want to say the presidency, and that was about as much detail. So I got to sort of wander through the literature without as many free conceived ideas of what I was going to do to it. So, you know, I feel like whether you come in knowing what you think you want to study or sort of wandering. Ultimately you end up in the same place of having to explore all of it.

[0:17:57 Speaker 0] Okay, thanks for that. I’m interested to hear maybe about how your own research interacts with what you do in your official capacities for the project. If it does it all, I mean, is it just a separate job? Or is your personal research embedded in the tasks your fulfilling and kind of your paid work, so to speak? I don’t know if you could talk about that, but

[0:18:20 Speaker 2] also yes, absolutely 100%. Yes. Now this isn’t true for everyone, I will say, But I will say everyone that’s involved the comparative edge in this project in some former fashion, what we do as a group influences what they do on their own. I think the common the common thread moving through all of this is that we all inevitably, in some form or fashion, use the coding scheme that we all have to learn and all work with. And so that’s the same for me. So does my coating of hearings every year directly influence my rework? No, because I’m looking at tweets, but I’m coding them based upon the same policy system and the same coding scheme that we used to code hearing. So by doing that, I only make myself a better coder, and in turn, it helps my work. And then when it comes down to it, if I want to make my work comparable across different types of policy, if I wanted to compare hearings or bills with communications or tweets, I have that ability. And on I’m just a much more broader level, the notion of even content analysis or coding in general or any sort of Catterick, Catterick, cat or categorization Yes, finally, Christmas, Um, putting things into categories. I don’t think I could have done that and learn sort of the mistakes. As I was setting up my own project that I learned going through this project, I sort of was able to see the fault lines and what works and what didn’t because I worked for the project and got a much better understanding of how you set up a coding scheme and why it’s set up the way it is. I mean, it was it was that knowledge that the first summer after grad school, I was a research assistant at a different university and they asked me to come. One of the reasons they did is because I’d been part of the project and work with the coding scheme. They were developing their own for a different project and asked me, Bring your knowledge from coding to us so that we can develop a scheme for something else. And so you’re able to take those skills with the whether or not you’re coding policy or, you know, coding something completely different. It’s those skills they were able to apply to multiple venues.

[0:20:40 Speaker 1] I actually use the policy agendas product data in a much more direct, explicit way. My dissertation came out of the fact that I was unsatisfied with the way that all of political science, including the policy agendas project, had explored what the president does. We have to existing data sets of presidential policy outputs. We have executive orders and with State of the Union, and I just felt my God, there is so much more that the president does to try to influence policy. So my dissertation is my dissertation. Data is depending on how ambitious I’m feeling, either seven or eight new data sets that are all coded according to the policy agendas project coding scheme. And I’m including the existing data sets to have just a better way of measuring the presidential agenda, this more robust measurement and and categorization scheme. But ah, key component of of Once you’ve categorized things and you can say, OK, the president spends 8% of his time on this or 9% on that. The question is, why does he spend his time the way he does? And a big part of that, I think, at this early stage he does is because of the political environment. And that means I use data sets like our congressional hearings data set to see Well, maybe it’s what Congress is paying attention to in hearings that has an effect on what the president pays attention to Or, you know, maybe it’s Supreme Court cases. So I’m using ah, lot of the other policy genders datasets as independent variables to see if they are. These are the external agendas are part of what shapes the presidential agenda. So I both use the coding scheme, and the data sets to further my own goals.

[0:22:36 Speaker 0] Excellent. I just point out that Rebecca got categorization on Try one.

[0:22:41 Speaker 2] You blame the fact I’m from Oklahoma Wave

[0:22:45 Speaker 0] one zero so far.

[0:22:48 Speaker 1] I will say, at the recent comparative agendas conference, it took me like eight tries to get our own email address the policy agendas email address. So So at least she got it wrong on a word, not something I should have thoroughly memorized.

[0:23:05 Speaker 0] Well, perfect Segway, Because knowing what I know about the project and listening to you speak certainly one of the one of the exciting things about it is this kind of community of scholars, that one you talked about this community within the within the department. There’s this more national community of people across the country that are working with the coding scheme and working with the project. But as you alluded to, I mean, this is now international on scale, and it’s not just virtually internationally. I mean, the international group now meets annually Natalie someplace three

[0:23:43 Speaker 2] weeks ago from Geneva, Switzerland.

[0:23:45 Speaker 0] Yeah, so let’s maybe you could talk a little bit just about that just that international group of scholars and the experience of being at these conferences and things like that.

[0:23:54 Speaker 1] Absolutely so this year in Geneva, Switzerland, was the ninth. That’s

[0:23:59 Speaker 2] what I was trying to sink in my head. And I think nine sounds about right, if not

[0:24:03 Speaker 1] nine or 10 compared agendas conference. And every year it’s hosted by a different project. So it’s in a different country. Next year is in Edinburgh, Scotland. It’s a smaller conference. Not, you know, the thousands of people like Apsara Midwest. It’s usually about 70 people, and largely it’s. I’d say about 70% of that is the same people year after year. So there are these really strong ties that developed between the projects that allows for collaboration because there’s not just intellectual commonalities we’ve met, we know each other we’ve discussed. So there are friendships that develop out of it as well and collaboration. And so it’s usually a three day conference where everyone attends every panel, basically, and and here’s ideas that are along the lines of what they dio and then completely different from what they do. And it’s a great way to sort of see the full range of what you can do when underlying interest is policy. And we accept that they’re certain underlying assumptions that, like people, are bounded, Lee rational and have limited capabilities to pay attention to things. And we have a common coding seem so they’re certain elements of research that we agree on. And then you see all the directions it could go from there.

[0:25:32 Speaker 2] Yeah, And so I think it’s that that international community that directly led to the fact that a year ago Rebecca and I spent a semester in Denmark with members of this community working in their research team, meeting with them, working on our own research and had it not been for this international community, that opportunity would never have have come up. I can. I can now tell you Maura, about question time in Danish Parliament than I ever you know, thought imaginable. But it was an unbelievable experience to be ableto look at policy not only from the lens of American politics but also from a global perspective in the sense that while things air wildly different at the heart of it, there are so many things that are similar, and for students of American government, which is we both are and public policy. It’s nice to be able to see that on an international level and to be able to work with people who also value those experiences. I mean, at the same time, we were able to visit the project in Belgium as well. And so to visit with them, hear about their research and also get feedback on our own was really important. I mean these air scholars, who you would send them updated drafts of a proposal and then five days later say Okay, I’m ready to talk and, you know, sit down with you and give you the kind of feedback that, as a graduate student becomes, uh, so valuable because it really is time and effort. And when you’re thinking through things, it’s hard to really have something to show for it. Sometimes that’s a bit dissatisfying, but when you have people around who can ah who can give you feedback on that process? And while you’re going through that thinking that was really special.

[0:27:21 Speaker 1] Yeah, I’d agree. I’d also say that the environment is Ah, if you are a scholar of American politics, I feel like Sometimes our field goes, Oh, the U. S is too different from anyone else. There’s no point doing any comparison, and this is a

[0:27:37 Speaker 2] for not that special.

[0:27:39 Speaker 1] This is a firm way to slap this down. And I say that as a presidency scholar, which is an institution that really, there are few like it in the rest of world. I still say no. There’s lots to compare. There’s lots that makes the comparative endeavor worthwhile.

[0:27:57 Speaker 0] So I’m gonna ask a question. Now, that might seem like I’m going off course, but I’m gonna come back to some of the things we’ve been talking about. I have, ah, have a plane.

[0:28:04 Speaker 2] Your students. Brian Jones. Tangents are nothing we are unfamiliar with.

[0:28:10 Speaker 0] You may have read that about him. My question and leases for you, which is, if I heard you correctly, you study senators tweet. So how have you managed to keep yourself from just being occupied by Donald Trump’s tweets?

[0:28:27 Speaker 2] Well, um, he’s not a senator. So think. Thank your lucky stars there. Whatever your political preference, Maybe that would be tough. So some days it’s easier. I’m finishing up coding 2015 so we’re well into the Republican primary. And so I do have the tweets of Cruz Rubio. Ah, Paul, technically, Bernie Sanders. But so far he hasn’t been to campaign oriented cause these air their individual or Senate accounts as well, not explicitly their campaign against. But there’s still tons of stuff, you know, by my bumper sticker and honor for the Fourth of July. Send me over the edge this quarter for fundraising. And so some of that stuff can be very trying, especially for someone who’s interested in policy rather than the politics of it. That can be frustrating, but it’s I learned something every single day. I mean, you’re going through. Probably recently, I go through 507 100 tweets per day and you learned something intimately, cause I’m looking at how they build their own individual agenda for the project we’re looking at. You know, these institutional it Jinde is all of congressional hearings. I’m curious as to how does one individual development agenda and so the new wants that’s involved in what you wouldn’t expect from you know, 140 characters becomes very vivid when you’re they’re sort of in the trenches coating of every single day, I will say, Yeah, election tweets are not my favorite. And so I am. I am blessed to have avoided the trump cause. I do that. I get that question often we’ll have. What do you think about Trump’s tweets and Global? Trump’s not the senator yet, although, you know Trump Jr keep your eyes peeled

[0:30:09 Speaker 0] just for reference. This is Ah, July 2016 when we’re having this conversation. So we’re in the middle of the

[0:30:15 Speaker 2] Republicans, said on Morning Joe this morning that he’s enjoyed his time in politics. So we will, we will see. Well, you know, we will see if he has a future.

[0:30:25 Speaker 0] So where I wanna go, I kind of want to talk policy and politics. And before we were on before we were recording Rebecca, you were talking about your mom sending you Hillary paraphernalia and analyze. You mentioned watching The West Wing, growing up and knowing Brian as I do. I know he’s one to as hard core of a social scientist as he is. I have heard him talk about building normative type issues into the research he does. I feel like he encourages his students to go down that path more so than maybe other scholars. So what I’m curious about is kind of how you both separate and integrate those things into anything, right? To what extent does your personal passion or interest in politics, your personal feelings? How do you deal with kind of separating that from the research you do? But also, are there ways that it gets integrated either in the questions you want of asking or things of that nature?

[0:31:33 Speaker 1] So I will first start by saying, the stuff that my mother sends me is stuff that says a woman’s place is in the White House, which sort of is the overlap of my research interest in the presidency and personal political beliefs. I’ve sort of jokingly, maybe not jokingly said that with a President Trump, I would have to look for new research questions simply because my research has me reading line by line, what President say, and that’s not trump specialty when looking for the policy content in it, so it can be a little bit tougher there. But I think you know, one win big, real big, they would be shorter sentences, but I think also my data looks from President Reagan through to present and well to 2014 at the moment. And while I haven’t loved every president that’s been in office by spending so much time with their thoughts, which in a way their their speeches and their their executive orders really do reflect, I’ve come to have a great respect for everyone who tries their hand at the office. It’s incredibly difficult, the breath of topics that they are expected to have some sort of idea opinion solution often is phenomenal, and it’s all one person. I mean, that’s one of the things that I find constantly staggering about. The presidency is it’s one person in Congress you’ve got over the two chambers, 535 people, all of whom can have the ability to start specialising in those things that interest them. Ah, President can’t specialize. They have to deal with whatever is thrown at them and most of the time, be knowledgeable, at least to a certain extent, or to be able and willing toe listen to people who are more knowledgeable than they are and then incorporate that into what they know. So there’s a certain extent to which the more. I spend time with these individuals who have held the office, the more respect them, regardless of what their personal beliefs are.

[0:33:48 Speaker 2] And so I would say two points on that. So the notion that as scholars were not supposed to have an opinion on politics, I think that’s a bunch of bull hockey. I mean, we all our people were humans with emotions, and we have perspectives and feelings. And if I remember my public opinion literature, right, we have attitudes that are formed by this information. And so we have opinions, of course. And I would say our adviser, Brian, encourages his stab opinions. We have discussions, but when it comes down to the research that we dio, I would say the amount of politics that we end up considering is on Lee so far as it effects or is relevant to your research. So Rebecca’s primarily studying policy at the presidential level and Congress. I’m setting policy, but I also have a consideration for how politics influences how people prioritise their agenda. So how much of the time is Congress are members of Congress actually spending on talking about how much the president has failed on Obamacare. How much are they really? You know, getting a dig in at their fellow congressman because that’s relevant. I mean, if you’re spending all of your time on, you know, politics, how much time can you spend on constituents or other media opportunities or things like that? So it’s a balancing act. So in that regard, I do consider politics, and I dio spend time thinking about how politics influences my data. But I don’t do it from the perspective of Oh, gosh and I’ve got a code Republican tweets. I hate all of the Republicans or, gosh, the Democrats, all they ever talk about is, you know, health care or something like that. I mean, I have favorites when I code, but party has nothing to do with most of those. It’s depending on how I’m feeling. That day I come across when I go. Oh, my God. Bernie Sanders was gonna be like 100 today where I come across Richard Shelby who? You know, Republican. And I was like, Great, He only has to today that makes my life so much easier. So I mean, there are preferences that we all hold, but for me and in the work that I do. A lot of it has nothing to do with politics.

[0:35:50 Speaker 1] Well, and from talking with you, Annalise about your own research. I know sometimes your favorite senators come about because of their creativity or personality, which is regardless of their ideology.

[0:36:02 Speaker 2] Yeah, you know, I mean, I funny once the fact that Chuck Grassley is more than willing to talk about the fact that he hit a deer and its presumed dead or the fact that you know Oh, gosh, I think it was widened from Oregon was talking about something the other day that it just it just made me laugh out loud. So the things that they put out there and just an Democrat Republican, old young, what have you So I would say it is a part of who we are as people, of course, but for our research and Onley influences as Muchas as we select and as as much as it really is directly related to our research questions, there is not a policy agendas meeting that goes on without someone making a quip about what’s going on in the political world because most of us don’t study elections no in the policy area, so we find it more spectator sport. So we look unlike our election and public opinion colleagues. We look at this from a very different perspective. As you know, a bystander things well, so we have some knowledge about, you know, the policy ramifications down the line or how it might work once they’re elected within an institution. So we can kind of think about those possibilities, but we’re not as intimately familiar with the ah horse race, our elections. So for us, we’re still it’s still kind of ah sport, and we’re just interested to see how it all plays out. Whereas there have a vested interest in the my new Sha of the election

[0:37:26 Speaker 1] in a lot of ways, were just slightly better educated in political science, literature. Everyday people, when it comes to elections, because it the election doesn’t

[0:37:36 Speaker 2] we know you like people to ask if we have, you know, a burning question. But I can tell you is I’d have to go read something because everyone always asks you studied political science. What do you think of the election ago? Hey. And you? Yeah. I read the same story in The New York Times that you did. So that’s all I know.

[0:37:56 Speaker 0] All right, What about what’s next for the comparative agendas project is do you see just sort of more of the same? Just continue toe maintenance, the project? Or is there a vision for Howard evolves or does its evolution just depend on kind of the next generation of graduate students and the questions they’re asking?

[0:38:16 Speaker 2] So in policy, we often think of policy as punctuated and so that you know, yeah, we have. We have Teoh. So we go over time and we have little changes that happen. And then we have these wild sort of Oh gosh, we had this huge change and then we have some more incremental change. And then we have these big changes. And I would say, As policy is punctuated, so too is the comparative agendas project. So I would say over time, even throughout the last 20 years, this project has has changed. I would say change but evolved. And every year, something little happens. We add a new data set or we make small changes. But this last year

[0:38:56 Speaker 1] he was a huge punctuation. We just finished the development of a brand new website, the comparative genders dot net, which allows for the on the fly graphical comparison of data across time, countries, institutions all in one place. And for those who don’t deal in data as much as we do, three dimensions is really hard for graphing. It required a lot of thinking about how do we we select things. How do we search for what we want? I mean, prior to this website, there had been a U. S website that allowed for graphing across institutions and time

[0:39:39 Speaker 2] so you could compare hearings and roll call votes over time to see if they’re talking about the same thing. Yeah, but now But

[0:39:44 Speaker 1] now you could compare hearings in the US with question time in Belgium, and the tool is designed for complete freedom for the researcher. You know, you could ask really brilliant questions of the trends tool. You could ask really stupid questions, and it all comes down to the researchers flexibility. So we’ve had a big technological punctuation, and I think over the next few years we’re going to see a huge evolution in the researcher. The research that’s being done with this data now that it’s freely available. Previously, if you wanted to do comparative research, as happened that most compared to research, their required a lot of cooperation. Now,

[0:40:26 Speaker 2] it’s not to say that these conferences won’t become less vital, but it will become easier for most of that sort of collaboration was, Hey, we know that this conference, we work together. Let’s let’s work on this project. But now

[0:40:38 Speaker 1] now, if you are interested in these two countries, you don’t need to spend two months sending emails trying to get data. The data is there for you to download for anyone to download, and this also offers the opportunity for the policy Agendas Project and Comparative Agendas project to become a resource four journalists or four politicians who are interested in knowing what’s going on from a sort of grander sense than what they’re seeing on a daily basis. So comparative agendas dot net is a phenomenal tool that while the website is collaborative and it was used international funds to do, it was the lates people here at the University of Texas who really took this abstract idea liberal arts, instructional technology services, yes, and just ran with it and took our ideas and brought him to life. So in that way, that was a big punctuation. And now this next year or two here at the U. S. Project are going to be catching up on updating data sets. We spent a year and 1/2 maybe closer to 20 months, pretty much solely focused on this website. So now we’ve got a lot of updating of the existing datasets we need to do, but we’ve started talking. Okay, Well, what do we see for the next five years? What we see in the next 10 years and you know, the ideas, they’re still sort of just being floated around. But I think the goal really is this project’s existed for 25 years. How can we keep it going? Another 25? Because art inherent goal is being able to study policy data across long time periods. Well, you can only have those long time periods if you commit to keeping them updated. I think

[0:42:28 Speaker 2] in general the future of this project mirrors I would say, a more broad cultural shift to open data, open source accessibility. We live in an era where the notion that you can’t Google something or easily access what you want that you have to, you know, go read the Encyclopedia Britannica that the days of that are over. And so the notion of Inbar going someone’s data till you have five publications or something like that is really not what this project is about were really wanting to make things accessible, not only to reach literatures, but to anyone. And so, being able to forward this notion of big data that is easily accessible Teoh many people on multiple platforms, I think falls just a larger cultural trend within academics and just within ah, research in general.

[0:43:26 Speaker 0] It’s interesting hearing you talk about that because it just reminded now of all the fights over NSF funding, and I know that I have got a lot of funding from the NSF and if I remember correctly, the attacks against the NSF funding where that basically there was no use for the research that was being funded. But of course you have dispel them is because here is research that policymakers that researchers wanting to craft public policy could draw from and actually be grounded in reality. Do we have any scent? Well, you can comment on that, if you are or not, get into that debate. And

[0:44:10 Speaker 1] one of Brian’s favorite stories is the fact that Senator

[0:44:14 Speaker 2] Coburn, from the former Senator Coburn from Oklahoma, wave of people row proud,

[0:44:19 Speaker 1] who was one of the big anti NSF senators, had actually used policy agendas data in a previous iteration of policy making. Because we were the only source for that data over time, which it’s that cruel irony of using memory selectively. Oh, this previously NSF funded project was what got me what I needed. Well, NSF is bad overall anyhow, we don’t care about the past, so it’s a tough balance. We are doing work that is useful for, ah, lot of people inside and outside of government. But whether they remember it or not is

[0:45:02 Speaker 2] that it’s easy to criticize, you know, work, studying, you know, the kidney stones and iguanas or something like that. But really, when it comes down to it, no matter what, no matter what you’re studying, it becomes relevant down somewhere down the road. I mean, I’m sure Coburn didn’t think Oh, I’m gonna need this. And you know these air, the fundamental studies that lead on to other studies that, you know, as we like to say it here in Texas have the potential to change the world.

[0:45:29 Speaker 0] So before I go too far into discussions of kidney stones, is there anything else either you would like to add or bring up or

[0:45:38 Speaker 2] No, I mean, it’s been a truly amazing experience to work for this project, and neither have had any idea how that would have come about. But it really has been, Ah, one of the biggest assets that we’ve had so far and going forward. And so as graduate students here at the University of Texas, it’s truly been, ah, vital to our success here.

[0:46:03 Speaker 1] And I’ll say, You know, in the past, people who haven’t known the project as well have perhaps criticized us for being ah, community of our own from their perspective, perhaps exclusive. And all I want to say to that is the fact that the only thing you need to do to get involved is say, I’d like to be involved and then be willing to do the work were incredibly inclusive. I would love to have 10 people come up to me and say we want to be a part of this because

[0:46:29 Speaker 2] she’s happy to assign work.

[0:46:31 Speaker 1] Believe me, there’s plenty to do. But in exchange for doing the work, you get to be a part of it. So this is not one of those we hand pick people. This is like, Hey, we think we see someone might be interested so we’ll go up to him. But if we didn’t go up to you, that’s not because you’re not welcome. It’s just perhaps we didn’t have the right conversation with you to realize that it would be a perfect fit for you, too. So anyone who’s listen to this and thinking about coming to you tea and thinking, maybe I want to work with the Policy Agendas project. The answer is yes. We would love to have you.

[0:47:04 Speaker 0] Excellent. That sounds like a great note to end it on. Thanks.

[0:47:08 Speaker 1] Thank you. Thanks, E.

[0:47:14 Speaker 0] I hope you enjoyed this discussion with Rebecca Eisler and analysts. Russell graduate students managing the Comparative Agendas project. In case you missed the URL, you confined the project at www dot comparative agendas .net toe leave feedback for me. You can find me a Gove dot utexas dot edu. Thanks for listening and for all you prospective graduate students out there. We hope to see you soon on the 40 acres