Episode 15: Information Wars (with E.J. Fagan)

Hello and welcome to their Policy Agendas podcast. I’m your host, Brooke Chanen, the project manager

of the Prop Policy Agendas Project. Today, I’m joined by p_h_d_ candidate at

UC Austin, Congressional Scholar for the Ages. Zachary McGee. Welcome, Zach.

Glad to be here. And we have a very special guest joining us today.

If you do begin to be assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago,

a scholar of Congress, think tanks and policy and former project manager of the Policy

Agenda Project. Welcome, E.J. Thank you for having me on. Of course. So we’re

here to discuss a very important dissertation, which will soon be a very important book

called Information Wars, written by e.j. And so we’re gonna get into

the big ideas straight out the gate. Let’s talk about what this book is really

about. So the focus of this book is really the party aligned think

tanks that differ from nonpartisan or sort of congressional institutional think tanks.

The point is really that they operate differently. They’re motivated differently. And they have big difference.

They have big influences on American politics. And then from there, the influence

that they have is really divergent by the party that they are aligned with. So

let’s jump into it. Let’s start with the theory that you really start that

you really bring to the table on preferences. Sure. Let me just

to take a really big step back here. Like we accept, we expect political parties to disagree on

policy when they don’t disagree on policy. We have a problem for democracy because citizens

can’t choose between policy alternatives. What we we expect this to be

driven by the different constituencies and coalitions of those parties, different ideologies of the parties and different

strategic incentives that they have. But we don’t really expect them to just disagree on their basic understanding

of reality, of how what happens after you pass a policy output. And this is

something I’ve always been interested in. I’ve been interested in. And, you know, long before I was even really thinking about political science, I’m

the one I did start thinking about political science. I was tasked by Brian Jones, are

a wonderful director of the policy genius project to take kind of answer like why why do we

how do we measure this disagreement and why do these two parties disagree? And I eventually settled

on party line think tanks, these think tanks. You may have heard of them from

the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, the Center for American Progress. They are they loom

very large in Washington politics. They’re considered some of the most influential organizations in Washington politics. If you

look at things like cabinet appointees and you know, who’s who’s in the room

when things like party platforms are being written. They they’re they’re very influential,

but they don’t have a good theory to explain why we didn’t really have a good theory to explain why

these these organizations should be influential if they don’t really have a lot of levers to affect electoral

politics. Like a lot of traditional interest groups, they don’t have footsoldiers. You know, they don’t donate money to

campaigns. They rarely, if ever, really endorse candidates.

It’s not really the way they. They work. They mostly produce and disseminate policy information. They create

policy analysis. And they put it out there in the world. And and that’s that’s how they show influence.

Yet they’re incredibly influential. And so I started kind of thinking about why these these

organizations are very influential. And when I eventually sat alone, it took a long time to get here,

is that they’ve become essentially pseudo party institutions in the United States.

You know, when I see that in when we go off to the Comparative Agendas Conference in Europe,

everyone’s like, yeah, that makes perfect sense. The parties have think tanks because that’s that. Those are the formal institutions

in most democracies and most democracies, political parties have some kind of policy analysis

capacity in some places like Germany, that’s a big publicly funded, you know, you know,

one hundred and hundred million euro, you know, think tank organization with offices everywhere

and really is the brain of a political party. It’s much more like a congressional staff than

even like a think tank. And in some places that serve their university systems

or or some other some other like indirect public public financing. And the

distinction is, is that these U.S. think tanks are privately financed. So they’re financed by rich conservatives

and progressive from most part or foundations. So speaking of the party, these

party like think tanks that are in the U.S., which ones are we talking about? Which

ones are closely aligned with Republicans and which ones are closely aligned with Democrats?

SHAW Now, there are a lot of small ones out there that I don’t study because they are

just logistically difficult to study. VS Each individual one is its on its own though little challenge in terms of data

data collection before them talking about the four largest by expenditures over. Over

the last 15 years. These are the Heritage Foundation and. American Enterprise Institute on the right

of Republican aligned think tanks and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Center for American Progress

on the Left. So you talk a little bit

right now already about how the think tanks are pretty, why the think tanks aren’t really involving

themselves in elections very much. But at one point in the book you talk about how there are specific

affiliated groups with these think tanks. Right, like Heritage Action. I think the Center for American Progress also

has an equivalent group. Right. And they do not directly intervene. So

beyond just providing policy information that they then

maybe go out and use in debates, like do different think tanks have

an ideal candidate? Like, do you have any thoughts about that? Sure. It’s a good question. So the

the let me let’s talk about the structure of these think tanks to start with. There are only

a 5 0 1 C 3 organizations and 5 1 3 organizations are

primarily supposed to be in this context, working in education.

So they put they create policy information. They put it out there in the world. They are allowed to do some lobbying,

but only as a very limited amount of a portion of their other activities.

And so some of these organizations, they kind of just do lobbying. This is actually

used to be much more explicit back in the 1950s and 60s before these party line think tanks existed.

There was organizations like the Brookings Institution were very explicitly lobbying.

And so what many of them have done is found companion 50 ONDCP

for organizations which are allowed to lobby and are allowed to get involved in electoral politics and

essentially pay some of their staff and a portion of some of their staff salaries out

of that title 1 C 4. And so they can go and do those more direct lobbying in electoral politics activities.

Up until recently, these five RNC forms were basically just lobbying organization.

So they were paying three lobbyists and at the think tank to to go

and do so. And that’s what, for example, the sign American Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

and and some other smaller ones, that that’s what they’re C4 C4 is do. Heritage

Action did some of that, but also kind of took a slightly more,

we’ll say, Republican primary focused strategy where they would they would rate

they would try to influence public policy by rating votes

and then assign people a rating like a traditional interest group, like a lot of interest groups would like. So, for example, like the American Conservative

Union, what? And they were very aggressive in doing so. I think this this certainly can affect

elections right there. There’s certainly something going on there. Heritage Action, I will say that that activity was fairly

short lived. So Heritage Action Action was founded in the early 2010s, I believe in 2011,

something like that, and was a very aggressive

young staffer was put in charge of Heritage Action. He was kind of doing all of those activities. And they’ve actually kind of stopped being so

aggressive since the 2016 election. So there’s only a four or five year period where

that really can explain very much. And for the most part, other than that, they’re just kind of in lobbying.

There is some media outreach. And they they are they do occasionally, you know, go on TV, on in the newspapers and attempt

to make these arguments. And I’ve tested some of that empirically. And there doesn’t really appear to be a very close

connection there between the the polarization, which is the output that I I’m

I’m most concerned with the way in this book and their media activities when

I’ve done some some interviews that the people I’ve interviewed at these think tanks have

said very point blank that they’re their target. Our policy makers like they want to they want to be with

in the room with a decider. Either somebody in the ministration or congressional staff or members

of Congress themselves. And they’re not really speaking to voters.

You know, it’s interesting. I think what I was initially thinking about was maybe the role of independent expenditures, but it

sounds like maybe that’s not really a significant part of what this branch of the operation

is. Yeah, none of them really do any significant and independent spenders and certainly not on the scale

of the Sierra Club’s and saves of the world. Right. You talk a little

bit about different important players, especially on the Republican side. Familiar with all of this? My own

work as well. Right. Ed Feulner, it really affiliated with the founding of

Heritage. And then the Koch brothers have their own think tank and political

influence within the Republican Party. Have you given any thought to the idea that maybe different coalitions

of beliefs are coalescing around different think tanks and competing with one another?

Yeah, I think that’s certainly the case I saw. I think that I mean, both parties have factions. You know, they see this in

your work. You study party factions and they are clearly distinct and organized and don’t

like each other very much, very often. And I think that inter-party organizations

and especially these kinds of diffuse intra party institutions that I’m claiming that these think tanks are functioning as

certainly are factionalized. One thing that I’ve done that I think was kind of. Find as I

took, I look for citations of think-tanks and I took the average

STW nominate score first mention of every of everybody who cites cited

that think tank from their parties. And there’s a very clear ideological spectrum right there. There

is a center right and center left. These are the Center on Budget and Policy Priority

and American Enterprise Institute. And then there is a a mainstream

left kind of Joe Biden to the world that people who can fit right in the center of their party.

That’s the Center for American Progress. And then there’s a far right, not in the European sense, but in

this single dimension, ideological spectrum center, the Heritage Foundation and Heritage Foundation is clearly

farther to the right than the Center for American Progress and has a quite different

constituency inside the Republican Party than the American Enterprise Institute. The Cato Institute,

which is an organization which I’ve also stayed in other work, is is is similar in that they had they the

Cato Institute has its own little segment of the Republican Party that it speaks to that the libertarian

kind of wing of that party. What’s really cool is when I study the actual information. So this

one chapter where I study impact analysis by the organizations, where I look at

some how some policy outputs and predictions that are apples to apples, comparisons

between the bunch of think tanks and a bunch of nonpartisan organizations. So there’ll be a bill coming up and they’ll say, what’s

the cost of that bill? There’ll be a there’ll be the bill. We’ll be trying

to to to change some policy output. And the question will be, what’s the change in that policy outcome?

And and everybody and everybody make their predictions. And there’s there’s there’s that

same clear left right spectrum to their predictions. So

the sound budget policy priorities in American Enterprise Institute, they’re clearly center left, center right in terms of the information

they produce that arguably the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is just center. They’re basically just trusting nonpartisans,

whereas the American at the Heritage Foundation Center for American Progress, when they make

a prediction, the prediction is farther to the left or right than it would then.

Then the nonpartisans and then that’s to the dissenters organizations. So they might say that, you know, if you if

you pass the Affordable Care Act, it’s going to cost more. If you’re the Heritage Foundation,

then the American Enterprise Institute is going to say it’s an American progress is to say it’s going to save more money

than the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is going to say or the Congressional Budget Office or other nonpartisan organizations.

So you have a kind of maps on very cleanly to that ideological spectrum,

which is spectacular and definitely one of the most interesting findings you have from this project.

E.J., are you able to see the sort of like hard numbers that are predicted by

these think tanks and maybe like witness testimonies in congressional hearings, whatever

kind of data sets can you use to show like these direct influences? Sure.

So so the first half that we’ve kind of talked about a lot is there’s this idea that I’m I think that these

party line think tanks are engaging in elite persuasion to change their core partisans opinions

about the relationship between policy and policy outcomes. Right. So there they are. They

are persuading Republicans that tax

cuts have a smaller impact on deficits than nonpartisan think or Democrats are persuading

or the center of progressives persuading Democrats that certain

progressive policy will be less costly or more effective than the nonpartisans think.

And what I what I contend is I say, OK, all of this is true in the aggregate. You should

increase polarization as they become more influential when you

when you whenever you shift people’s preferences to the left or right. Well, that that is that is definitionally

what polarization is. And we can measure polarization really well. There’s great literature on polarization that I can contribute to.

And so what I do is I measure a variety of policy line think tank

activities and then I relate those activities to polarization. There’s three

in particular that I measure across time. So just in the aggregate, every Congress, how

frequently do they testified before congressional hearings? How what’s the revenue of the

Heritage Foundation, which is the organization that was able to piece together their fall revenue series over 40 years?

And last but not least, how frequently are they cited in a set of newspapers? And

what I find in the first two of those outputs is a very, very close connection

to polarization and a very slightly L&G connection to polarization. That is, the thinking

got bigger and they got they became they started testified before Congress more frequently just

before polarization increases. And I think that’s pretty strong evidence of a of a non-surprise

connection. It’s really easy to get spiritless relationships out of out of polarization, because polarization is an increasing secular

trend. But I think it’s a I think it’s a it’s a pretty convincing

result when you just look at on a graph or when you actually do the math to do the time series work and

and shows essentially that that it seems like there’s some evidence that there they they may either cause polarization

or there’s just a very strong connection between these two series. After that, I say, OK,

we did the TIME series. Now let’s do let’s break it up by issues. And I use the Policy

Agendas project to do that. And so I take a bunch of other outputs. I take a bunch of white papers,

about 14000. My papers I scrape from their Web sites. I take

a citations where they’re cited in the Congressional Record and I take

I take their lobbying disclosure report from these five or one C four lobbying organizations, and I

measure the policy content of those outputs and then I measure polarization across

policy content, kind of using some some new stuff that I

that I’ve developed to to measure polarization, cross issues.

And I find another very close and consistent connection between the

fee areas in which they are active. The policy that the the policy,

the outputs, the policy, the content of those policy outputs and the and polarization in Congress. And

I think this is when you couple this with a time series data, I think together they’re very convincing that there’s something going

on here and this is just a serious correlation. So in terms of policy areas,

which ones do you find the most correlation with? And does it does it like bridge

both of their parties in terms of their think tanks or is it like party

specific chart? So let me answer the second one second

part first. It does not appear that the

parties have different, different structures tailored to the policy issues that they

produce their information on. I’ve published an article in party politics about a year ago on

this, and what I found is that issue ownership tends to to turn determine this. So

they tend to focus on the issues that their party prioritizes, probably

because of their electoral coalition. Right. So as you know, Democrats, their coalition cares about

essentially domestic economic policy issues. And that is largely what their think tanks prioritize.

Republicans have a broader set of issues that they prioritize, but they really do. Relative

Democratic think tank spent a lot of time on foreign policy issues, on law and crime issues, on things like

immigration, the areas that are most polarized. It varies a little bit

by the output that I measure, but the real big ones are labor or macro economic, civil rights and energy.

The the. And this is during from 2004 through 2016.

Macro economics, labor, civil rights. I mean, these are this point, I think classic issues that

divide the political parties. And so this makes sense. Energy is interest is interesting. And so

an education policy is also interesting in that these are emergent polarized issues.

During that period, during that 2004, the 1:34 1816 period, at the beginning of the period,

their parties actually aren’t all that polarized on energy. If you go back to 2008,

the Bush administration is is preparing a compromise on climate change that involves

a big nuclear energy increase, a big ethanol increase and a big increase in other alternative

energy and some sort of cap and trade system. And that breaks down. And I think a lot of the reason

why that breaks down are actually these party line think tanks. I think that this is this is the the climate

change scholars have studied these party line think tanks more than any other individual policy

policy area or set up, you know, set any individual intellectual community.

And what I found is that climate denial comes directly out of the party line. Think tanks,

not just the ones that I’m talking about here, specifically, the Heritage Foundation was very aggressive in pushing both climate

denial and kind of soft climate denial, where they do things like exaggerate the costs and and understate the benefits

of addressing climate change. But also at the same time, these other

think tanks, they’re more issue specific. They don’t study for those like the Heartland Institute. Yeah, this

brings me to one of my larger concerns, I think. You lay out a lot of really

great empirical evidence and I think the issue of climate change is a good Segway for this

are partisan aligned. Think tanks really changing minds. You lay

out a really thoughtful theory about how preference change would work

and what mechanisms parted party line think tanks would use to change minds. I think it’s

all very compelling, but I as a close

watcher of politics and still skeptical because on some level it seems like maybe these parties

still I think takes could be position taking machines. Right, like the

party line is now this. What do you say? It’s interesting. You know, I

think I think in some cases that is certainly what goes on. Right. The it is

parties have self-interest. They have their electoral coalitions. They have strategic position

taking. And often they might they might come to the idea that they need this

these these these to do the to take these positions in order to win elections. And I think that that

explains, you know, some some things and in particular, very big things. Like, for example, I don’t think anything

tanks are convincing the Republicans to to take a certain position on impeachment. I think

that’s coming out of Donald Trump’s Twitter feed and out of out of, you know, those kind of, you know, big, highly

salient, highly salient

interactions with with with with the electorate. At the same time,

I think that most issues just don’t aren’t salient like that. I think most issues, almost everything,

in fact, that comes before Congress, Congress passes, too, and it was a year holds to hold to one hundred thousands

of hearings, votes on thousands of things. And we all know this. As members of the Foreign Policy Agendas project,

most of that just flies completely under the radar of voters. And yet the parties still disagree on that stuff, too.

They still disagree on of the examples I use in the book on the effect of urban planning strategies on traffic,

you know, that is there’s intense partisan disagreement, intense action by the think tanks on

local urban planning policy because because they have a disagreement

that’s that doesn’t come out of nowhere in there. There’s there’s we intuitively believe

that the parties will develop policy preferences

that support their self-interest, but someone’s got to do it. And so someone

doesn’t do it, whether there’s there’s powerful counter forces pushing against that.

That’s self-interest. That’s science. That’s experts. That’s the federal government. That is you know, that’s all. All

those other things that that that we know influences public policy.

And what I say instead is we’ll just imagine a world where, you know, people aren’t that cynical,

where members of Congress are trying to solve problems, but they have a different idea

of how to solve those problems. So they they both want to accomplish the same goal, but

they have very different ideas about how public policy works. I think this is the story of modern conservative politics,

in my opinion. And the argument that I make in this book that modern conservative

politics is is making the affirmative argument that laissez faire

economic policy, domestic economic policy will have a different effect on

on the world, on policy outcomes than than other

than that, then, you know, traditional Keynesian economics, which would suggest or a traditional kind of just, you know,

nonpartisan expertise would suggest. And in doing so, you know, they everybody

everybody can be can believe that they are right, that they are being righteous, that they are they are they are doing the public good,

but intensely disagree and and believe that the other side is trying

to destroy the country. And I think when you when you when you when you think of it that

way, it actually makes a lot of sense. Now, the question is, why did they believe it is something is demonstrably wrong,

like, for example, cutting taxes will decrease the deficit. Why do people

who appear to believe to care about the deficit still cut taxes without doing

something like cutting spending? There’s certainly a political logic there. But I also

think that, you know, when you think about the information that they are being presented with, they’re being presented

with decades of Arthur Laffer policy analysis. When they’re being

presented with what I show in in the dissertation are credible looking

models that say like, no, no, no, you can cut taxes and the deficit won’t increase all that much.

I think we’re asking a lot of, you know, regular old members of political parties to

go in might be economists and disagree with the economists that are on their side. I think it’s much more likely that

most rank and file members of political parties will just say, yeah, I believe those

guys because they’re there with me. Right. The Heritage Foundation, they’re they’re on my side. They’re conservative. I’m a conservative.

I think that I think that, you know, whatever they say is probably right and whatever

the pointy headed liberals in the eye in academia say is probably wrong. And I think that’s a very

powerful, powerful confirmation bias available to available

to to political parties and a very powerful heuristic. And, you know, we see that heuristic

being used in all know by normal people all the time. We study political psychology, but we

tend to think that elites are supposed to be different. And I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that elites are supposed

to be different. I think that elites are normal people, too, and they have her own confirmation biases. And,

you know, they they use your instincts just like the rest of us. Right. I think some of some of

them are cynical. There certainly are ones that are cynical. But actually, I don’t think that I don’t think we should assume that

they’re cynical all the time. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s really convincing. I like

a lot of what you said. One of the things that I’ve been thinking about personally,

especially in recent months. Right. There’s a lot of thought within

the Democratic Party about how durable is this progressive movement. Right. Bernie Sanders

has, you know, folded his presidential campaign for the second time in a row. Right. But there’s clearly a

renewed liberal wing in the Democratic Party that is growing, especially

amongst young people. Right. Is your sense looking at the ideological landscape of partisan

aligned think tanks right now on the Democratic side? Is there going to be an actual

left wing, partisan aligned think tank? And will it be at all

effective for reaching the middle of the party like we’ve seen on the Republican

side? You know, it’s a great question. Yeah, I think part of the problem and this is sort of what I document

in this dissertation is that Republicans, Democrats think differently about policy analysis,

even on the left, even the institution that

is probably considered the farthest left of the larger think tanks. That’s the Economic Policy Institute.

This is still very technocratic organization. This is still an organization that

even though, you know, it is it is largely identified with with labor unions. And, you know, I’ve I’ve

spoken with what with with people there. And and, you know, they are you know, they are

true progressives and Bernie Sanders supporters and all of that. You know, they still have, you know,

conventional economics. p_h_d_ is doing much of their analysis and much of their analysis is highly detailed

and some of it is heterodox. For example, on trade issues, they are quite heterodox,

but on many other issues, they are they’re kind of right there in the mainstream

as opposed to some of the Heritage Foundation and other far

right of center Republican organizations, which really are are divergent.

Right. They really do make claims that are not supported by the

nonpartisan community and in pretty important ways and do it with much less rigor.

That said, I think the bigger question is, is who’s going to fund it? You know that

there are lots of progressive foundations out there, but foundations by their nature are

small C conservative institutions. Right. They they don’t they don’t want to rock the boat too much. They want

to don’t want to invest in a revolutionary. A billionaire is not going investment in a revolutionary. A

labor unions which will fund, for example, at the Economic Policy Institute are in decline.

And there’s a reason why economic policy is to it is not in this study. It’s because they’re not big enough. They

are much smaller than these other organizations. I think that I think that organizations

like the center by your policy priorities in this effort making progress. I think that they have actually moved the party to the left. I think

it’s very clear that that was their goal. But to the left means something different to

the euro tendons of the world and the Jared Bernsteins of the world and the job gains of the world.

Right. And it goes to the Bernie Sanders of the world. And I think the differences on the right is you got billionaires

funding this stuff. The Heritage Foundation was started by three

Republican staffers, one of which you’ve mentioned, Ed Feulner, who led the organization for a very long time

with money from the air to cause brewing. And the cause fortune

essentially started that that organization. And to this day, they get just they they they they

they rake in the money from, you know, millionaires and billionaires because millionaires and billionaires like lower

taxes and think of themselves as as as they care about

laissez faire economic policy. And so know

the funding is the ultimate problem here. If you look at these organizations, don’t disclose their funding. Another project

I’m working on is trying to reveal some of their funding. But if you look at what they do disclose, I mean,

this South American progress is getting money from places like the Gates Foundation, from anonymous billionaires, from some

some kind of some, you know, high-Profile billionaires like George Soros and the Sandlers.

But they’re also getting money from the United Arab Emirates and. Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart

and those types of places and that, well, that will hold Democrats back, I think, from

going far to the left, yeah, until we have small dollar donors funding the left wing think

tank. I mean, if you’re if you if you are listening to this and you

want to start that project like I think I think that is part of the route to turning this. And in fact,

I think if we give a lot of money campaigns and as political scientists, we all know that

the research on campaign spending and electoral outcomes is small. And the amount of money you would take

to shift, you know, two or three Democrat primaries could fund

a left wing think tank, or you could you could send that money to some of these other small left wing think tanks

like the Roosevelt Institute or the Demos or some of these other organizations which are which are quite small

and have a large impact. And actually, I think that’s part of the argument I’m making here, is that the bang for your buck

with these kinds of think tanks has got to be pretty high. Not to go too off track,

but I visited Heritage. Last time I was in D.C., they have a full on bust of Ed Feulner and their lobby.

It’s really impressive. They the Heritage Foundation is very proud of

their history, of the influence that they’ve had, of the people they’ve had there, as they should be

fifth anniversary as they should be. They’ve been in the most influential organizations in American politics. And they’ve done it.

They’ve done it by mostly providing policy information. They they wrote a book about themselves

for their 25th anniversary. That is a blow by blow account of everything that happened

during their 25 years. And and one of the reasons why they have that

boss is because they have a very large, very new building that is,

you know, that was very expensive and was paid for by these donations. So

to my knowledge, I don’t think that the Congressional Budget Office or the Congressional

Research Service building in Washington, D.C., has a giant bust of its billionaire

founders. Right. So there might be a Thomas Jefferson one in the Library

of Congress. I know an inventor in the Madison building. So

maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to judge. But I’m wondering, I know that the two of

you have done work together on the Congressional Research Service and

their policy outputs as well. So I’m wondering now, like, what? What is the trend

in the increase of these party line think tanks like Heritage and like the Center for American Progress, etc.?

How does the rise of these folks compare

with with the more nonpartisan think tanks as information suppliers?

And what are the substantive differences between the more traditional think tanks and these new party line

ones? Yes. Zack and I have a paper that we’re working on and some data that we’ve already

put online on reports from the Congressional Research Service coded for a policy agenda.

And we have a really great dataset for about 20 years of CRM subparts

that fourteen thousand unique reports and many more revisions to those reports. And

the IRS and the Commercial Budget Office and J.O. and some other organizations are their

information providing organizations, right. They they provide policy analysis to Congress.

And despite the fact that they are controlled by Congress, they are they are staffed by appointees of Congress.

They have actually withstood polarization pretty well. They’re still considered quite nonpartisan, even when

one party controls both chambers of Congress for the most part. Members of Congress trust their

information. And you just from the two of us have read so many of these things at this point.

I think we can both say that like it’s good information like this is this is good stuff. Yeah. And

if somebody is ready, you think tank report is much more detailed, much more rigorous than these thinking reports. It’s really expert information.

And they’ve been cut considerably over the last few years. Oh, well, over the

last few decades, the most the biggest of these came in nineteen ninety five.

So nineteen eighty four Republicans take control of the House and Senate for the first time in a generation.

And one of the promises they make in their platform as they as

they’re running for election, this is called the Contract with America. You heard of it is to dramatically

cut the budget of the United States Congress. There are some political arguments they made about this.

And I think that, you know, there’s political arguments might have been effective. I’m also skeptical that those arguments really voters

really end up caring about those. But those political views are made. It may have been effective. But what’s notable is that the Republican

think tanks were making this argument for years before. I have this wonderful book that the Heritage

Foundation, an edited volume that had our Heritage Foundation put out in the 80s called the Imperial Congress.

And it makes the argument that essentially that Congress is too powerful relative to the executive and is thwarting

the will of the American people by being so powerful. I understand you understand why they admit they’re making this argument

the 80s, because Republicans have been winning presidential elections consistently for a very long time, but didn’t control the House of Representatives.

And so the book, one of these chapters, makes it very specific of specific argument about cutting

these congressional support agencies, cutting congressional staff and really, really lobotomize the United States

Congress. And then when they come into Congress, they do that. They do that. They they dramatically cut the

budget of the Congressional Research Service, Congressional Budget Office and J.O. Government Accountability Office.

They date and eliminate the Office of Technology Assessment, which provided policy analysis on emerging technologies,

something I think Congresses were great at doing ever since it’s happened right before the real boom

in the technology age. Yeah. Thanks. Sorry to cut you off. One of the

things I think is interesting and makes this particularly puzzling, right? Democrats

have taken over control two times, unified government since this has happened. And they have not

restored funding. Right. But they have, as e.j shows, developed their own codrea

partisan lines, think tanks. It seems almost like the consensus or using these

nonpartisan think tanks may have just totally broken down. I don’t know if you guys certainly agree with that, E.J.,

but let’s start. It’s interesting. So it’s interesting. I think when there was clearly a political

calculus that Democrats made that they didn’t want to be seen funding

Congress by Congress, stop giving itself raises right around that time. Right. If they further cut their own staff,

this isn’t just these organizations, but also their committee staff, which are which are important experts in the Congress. But

if you look at the data, there is a rebound around that time. It’s not nearly as large as the down as

the decrease in staff. But there’s this period where Congress kind of

stopped cutting itself, starts adding more staff, start actually more money, and importantly,

not just staff. And then the Great Recession happens and Republicans

take control of Congress in 2011. And it just falls off the cliff. So I think Nancy Pelosi is kind of a she

she did start turning that around when Democrats were briefly in power. But, you know, those were

really specific times. I don’t they we can learn much from that. I do. I do think it’s it’s important that

right now there’s a strong bipartisan push to try to

modernize the modernization of Congress with lots of political scientists are involved in this.

Lots of think tanks are involved in this. In fact, a couple of center left and center right think tanks, the New America Foundation

and the Wall Street Institute. What I think are both very interesting organizations where they’re heavily involved in that process.

And the reason why I think it’s important that people have pointed this curve. This is a very famous curve among scholars,

not scholars of Congress, because you have this gigantic drop off in 1995 and then a larger a smaller

but still large drop off after 2011 and congressional capacity. But if you line that up

with the think tanks data, specifically the witnesses pre-hearing data, which I can measure really reliably

over time, they just perfectly cross. It’s an x ray. It is in your in your dissertation

are incredible to witness that the employees of these organizations, these nonpartizan

ones, it’s like a perfect X. Yeah. And you know,

you know that there’s there’s is a really big year for think tanks. The think tanks. In fact, that Heritage Foundation

book I mentioned before, I believe the Heritage Foundation book calls it the year, the think tank, which is a very,

you know, narcissistic thing to say about, you know, whatever. You know, you can see from the day, you can see like they deserved a call for you or thinking

because in 1995 and 1996 that Congress, like the think tanks, they just they just shoot through the roof.

Were they doing there a point in the Contract with America? These Republicans, I think they had written most of the Contract

for America in individual points of it, specifically a lot of welfare reform stuff in the political

reform stuff. And Republicans take power. And so they call the think taken the test by a talk about the stuff that they

wrote. That trend kind of goes down, but continues with polarization

as it goes on. And so I think it’s a fairly clear result. I think one question I asked myself

when I was writing this was like, OK. Like, is there a confounding variable here? And I think that that

there are reasons to believe that independent of the think tanks, that this decrease in congressional capacity could have a

pretty large impact and polarization. Jim Carrey’s done some work there. It is basically that at

some work has done some great work there. And the organized data argument that he’s making

is that essentially that leadership offices become more more empowered when you

have less congressional capacity because they have an informational advantage and an individual individual members, they just can’t

like form their own policy preferences because they don’t know anything about the policy. It’s a very different have information. He’s talking about.

But still, I think it’s it’s it’s it’s a very similar argument like this decreasing capacity could have an independent

effect on polarization. So what it might have is it also may have an independent effect on

demand for think tank information. There is maybe more demand for anything outside of Congress. Like anybody

who’s got some time on their hands. Come on, come on. Help us out. Right. And so I decided to measure

nonparty to try to measure nonpartisan information over time from outside sources. So not

from the doesn’t the internal congressional capacity we know goes down. But let’s see, they compensate for it by calling

in more nonpartisans. It’s really hard to do. It’s not it’s there’s no real simple way to do it.

And so what I do is I measured the witness the same variable, the frequency of witness testimony

from the Brookings Institution, which is a major nonpartisan think tank, arguably the most important thing taken the world.

And then Harvard University, Yale University, Stanford University, three large research

institutions that during the full 40 year period are very influential. And what you see is a decline

in the nonpartisans as well. So Harvard University goes down, Brookings stays the

same, Yale and Stanford go down. So not only are is Congress,

at least according to these data, calling it more partisans to testify, but they’re calling in fewer nonpartisans

to testify and they’re cutting their own staff. And so now you’re not just talking about more

party line thinking, you’re talking about the balance of the information environment becoming more partisan. I think we should expect

under those circumstances that the that that you would shift preferences. Right. If people are hearing

more from the partisans, they’re going to be more partisan. They’re going to believe the partisan

stuff. They’re gonna think of. The other side is wrong. And the nonpartisans are supposed to be kind of bookwork. Work against

that. One argument that I make in the book and I think is really my my. I think the most important takeaway

is that we have that conservatives and Republicans have defined the

for the traditional partisan infrastructure of universities and expertise

in science as liberal. And that’s all wrong. It’s not liberal. It’s nonpartisan.

It’s objective. It is the scientific process playing out. It may be true that

the people working there tend to vote for Democrats, but there’s is there’s a major there’s a major chicken and egg

problem right there. Right. When they’re rejected, they’re going to vote for that. They’re gonna vote against the party that rejects them.

And before the 1970s, both parties agreed that. This was a nonpartisan infrastructure, not

a liberal infrastructure. And so they they were able to come to a consensus

around that information. And there was indeed some neo left leaning policy analysis

competing against the right leaning policy analysis. But then conservatives say, no, no, no, no. These people,

the experts, tended to favor the expansion of the federal government. They tended to favor

more redistribution government programs during the Great Society, during what what our

mentors called the great broadening that we’ve talked about in this podcast. And as

as they support that, the conservatives realize that essentially,

if they want to be laissez faire, small domestic policy conservatives,

that they need to they need to fight against these nonpartisans who are convincing Republicans

to to expand government and expand. Republicans did, in fact, and spanked me considerably through this entire

period. And so they they they brand them as liberals. They say not enough. They’re not nonpartizan. They’re liberals.

And therefore, we need a conservative alternative. We need a different knowledge regime for conservatives that will

be conservative because the other one is liberal. And Democrats don’t respond immediately

and say like, oh, no, that that means we need we need like the left balance. And so the center can remain the center.

And it takes about 20 years before for Democrats to really start to build their own left

of center knowledge regime. So now we have three anology regimes. Right now we have a right of center, one that was around

from the 70s to the present day, even left of center one that’s not as far left, but still, you know,

still left of center. And then we have a nonpartisan one. And I think that’s actually a good thing.

I think that I think that you can’t have consensus around a center unless

the center is the true center, as in you know, both sides disagree with it. And so

they they use it as as consensus whether or not Republicans will.

Give up kind of their their strongest like of these nonpartizan institutions. I don’t

know. I think Democrats can very easily kind of coalesce around around that center

again if need be and still do to some extent. But I think that’s kind of the optimistic notion

here. Like if if the University of Texas at Austin can be a trusted source of policy information

again and not consider just a point bunch of pointy headed academics, because they they sometimes

disagree with both the right and the left. Then I think I think that maybe

we can kind of fight some of this polarization. Well, what a great conversation and

what a great read. Thank you so much, E.J., for joining us on this podcast today.

Thank you for having me. And I hope that you will continue. Like, how was it actually as being the

interviewee? How did it feel? You know, I do a lot of these podcasts, mostly baseball. We did that.

I said this policy agendas podcast for a long time. You know, I think you know, I think it’s

it’s it’s easier it’s easier to respond than then to have to then to lead people.

I think it’s a very difficult task that you have. And I look forward to listening to you continue

to host this podcast in the future. I always wanted this pie. Got to be something that I started and hand it off to to the next

person. So I’m very happy to hand it off to to the next person. You also want to remind you

to make sure to go over things to read. I was just trying to show jokes and making jokes.

But it’s been a really great conversation. You’ve been a great, fearless leader. And we really hope that you’ll continue

to come back and host every once in a while. But we definitely are going to lean on you to come back for more interviews.

Either way, whenever you want, whatever you want, Brooke, I will I will be on this podcast. He’s going to ask

me. OK. So far, our last question. What is one thing

in the discipline? It can be political science at large. It doesn’t have to be a think tank focused. But what

is one thing that you want to suggest our listeners read? Sure. I am. I’m

a big fan of a book called The National Origin of Policy Ideas by two sociologists,

John Campbell and Owen Peterson. This book, I think, really provided a lot of intellectual foundation

of of this project. They go out to a bunch of different countries, the United States,

Germany, Denmark and France, I believe. And they basically ask where do the Paul the dominant policy

ideas in those those systems come from? And they went and interviewed a lot of people

and they just really good ethnographic work or my sociologist don’t really know what it’s called, but that is why it’s really

good, intense qualitative work to understand where these policy

ideas are coming from. And they settle on this idea that the United States has this private

system that does that performs the role of political parties, a private knowledge regime versus the public

knowledge regime of other organizations. And, you know, they speculate a little bit about what those effects could

have on politics, but the non political scientists or sociologists or they they documented that. And I really fancy myself as kind of

picking up the big time from where they are and saying there is this different knowledgably

regime. I was slightly different story of how that knowledge regime evolved. But still there’s this different knowledge regime.

They talked to me the same unity, made the same people that I interviewed. And because there’s a different knowledge

regime. I one look at the consequences and then the consequences are polarization.

But the book, again, the national origin of policy, the idea that idea is by can’t win Peterson is excellent.

Awesome. That’s a very strong vouchercare to read that one as well. Well,

thanks again. Thanks, Zach, for being here. Thanks, E.J., for being our interview today. Hopefully we get

to see each other soon when we’re all allowed to return to the outdoors and to guess it

feels like we’re in the office right now.

Anyways, thanks again, you guys. And let’s let’s do this again. Thank you. Thanks for

the tip.