In the 1980s, two groups of physicists in Europe and America began to lay plans for a high energy proton accelerator that could settle the question of electroweak symmetry breaking. In 1984, Weinberg is appointed to the SSC Board of Overseers, and this work would occupy his time for much of the next decade. Weinberg testifies before Congress in favor of the SSC project and starts to appreciate the role of pork-barrel politics in the siting decisions. The Texas site of Waxahachie, near Dallas, is approved in 1988. The project’s construction funding is approved but faces ongoing challenges from other competing areas of science. Changes in the specifications, required by the science goals, lead to increases in the costs, resulting in bad press. In 1993, the funding was cut, and the SSC was killed off. Weinberg writes a successful trade book, Dreams of a Final Theory.

The Introduction sets the stage by describing the intense focus on abusive tax avoidance and tax evasion by the rich among political figures, legal scholars, and the general public. The Introduction also describes the stakes for the tax system in addressing high-end tax noncompliance. It then provides an overview of two conventional approaches to the problem of high-end tax noncompliance: increasing IRS funding and “activity-based rules” targeting specific strategies that enable tax avoidance and evasion. The Introduction describes the book’s argument that both of these responses are incomplete solutions. It then describes the overlooked role that tax compliance rules – which govern critical aspects of tax administration and enforcement but that currently apply to all taxpayers without regard to their income or wealth – play in enabling tax avoidance and evasion by the rich. The Introduction provides a summary of the core argument and contribution of the book: that policymakers should introduce a system of means-based adjustments to the tax compliance rules for high-end taxpayers.

The introduction chapter lays the groundwork for understanding the intricate relationship between Congress and information acquisition, particularly through committee hearings and witness testimonies. Highlighting the pivotal role of information in shaping legislative decisions, the chapter probes into the challenges faced by Congress in navigating the complex landscape of external expertise within a politically charged environment. The chapter delves into the critical questions driving the book’s exploration: How does Congress acquire information, and what factors influence the selection and content of information provided by external witnesses? It introduces the overarching themes of partisan incentives, institutional conditions, and the strategic nature of information acquisition, aiming to dissect their impact on legislative processes. By providing a comprehensive overview of the book’s scope, methodology, and key theoretical insights, the introduction sets the tone for a deep dive into the dynamics of congressional information-seeking behavior.

Primaries may contribute to polarization in other ways than a selective effect emanating from voters. This chapter tests a second potential mechanism of polarization, where incumbent members of Congress may respond to being challenged in a primary by adopting more liberal or conservative voting patterns in subsequent congresses. To test incumbents’ responses, it uses a series of fixed-effects models, clustered at the representative level, with roll-call movement as the key dependent variable. When considering the universe of all primary challenges, incumbents do not respond positionally, but when primaries are ideological and factional, they move toward their ideological pole. These effects are larger for factional primaries, indicating that incumbents are most responsive when a primary opponent has the support of an alternative party faction. These effects are larger for Republican than Democratic members of Congress, which is one way in which primaries may contribute to asymmetric polarization. These findings indicate that primaries may matter for polarization because incumbents believe them to be important and so are responsive to them.

Chapter Eight turns to what became a growing preoccupation for Rogers in the 1920s: politics. In his journalistic writing and live appearances, the humorist’s habitual survey of current events and public issues increasingly focused on the tendencies and foibles of American political life. He especially took aim at the pretension, dissembling, selfishness, and pomposity of both political parties and delighted in skewering Congress and various president’s for ineffective or foolish policies. He often described politics as "bunk." Rogers covered Republican and Democratic conventions, interviewed Presidents Harding and Coolidge, and spoke frequently with influential figures such as Bernard Baruch and Al Smith. Throughout, he stood squarely in the tradition of American populism, upholding the interests of average citizens and criticizing the privileges of social and economic elites. Rogers’ own political reputation peaked in 1928, when he was convinced to run a tongue-in-cheek campaign for the presidency.

Does the US administration exercise more informal influence over the World Bank when it has less control over US bilateral aid because of opposition from Congress? Replicating four studies of the World Bank, we show that years with a divided US government account for earlier findings of informal influence. This link between donor domestic politics and the exercise of influence in multilateral settings is important for understanding informality in international organizations and provides an alternate explanation to persistent questions about the role of international organizations in the international political economy.

To fully understand the innovative potential of intersectional advocacy, one needs to understand the traditional policymaking process that it confronts. In Chapter 2 illustrates how policy boundaries contribute to inequality in the United States. Drawing from a textual analysis of the Congressional hearings on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and newspaper articles covering VAWA, the chapter presents evidence that the policy boundaries in the VAWA harmed intersectionally marginalized groups. Moreover, it shows advocacy groups that did not represent intersectionally-marginalized groups contributed to the setting of these policy boundaries by participating in the policymaking process. Underscoring how advocacy groups that do not represent multiply-marginalized intervene in the policymaking process, this chapter illustrates what is at stake with the traditional policymaking process and the ways that mainstream advocacy groups have participated in it.

In Chapter 3, the overarching question of this book starts to be answered: how do advocacy groups intervene in policymaking processes to represent intersectionally marginalized populations? Here, work is presented that examines how advocacy groups representing intersectionally-marginalized groups have participated in this policymaking process. Analyses of the testimony and statements from advocacy groups during Congressional hearings over the reauthorization of VAWA from the past 25 years is provided to show that select organizations were successfully advocating for linkages between policies and issues that reflected the experiences of intersectionally marginalized groups. These linkages were between VAWA and policies on welfare, immigration, and tribal rights. In this chapter, “intersectional advocacy,” is identified to explain how advocacy groups in this setting engaged in it to change VAWA policy over time. The chapter shows that VAWA changes in remarkable ways that better represent and serve intersectionally marginalized groups.

The chapter begins by reviewing the long history of how Congress has procedural rules for itself and, in the process, created protections against majority tyranny while limiting the power of transient majorities to rewrite Americas laws. It also describes how members individual political need to depart from party platforms limits party leaders power and often promotes bipartisanship. The trouble is that these same rules facilitate gridlock, stoking anger and polarization across the wider society. The chapter concludes by analyzing how filibusters, supermajorities, and government shutdowns limit majority tyranny by supplying a practical test of when proposed legislation unduly burdens the minority.

The electoral college is an extraordinarily complex mechanism for selecting a president. State and national laws drawn to implement the electoral college system have only added to the complexity—and the risks of a malfunction. The allocation of electoral votes among the states may not accurately represent the citizens resident in those states. Electors are not wise elites, and they may make errors or violate their charges when casting their votes. The constitutional provisions and laws required to implement the electoral college are open to multiple interpretations and may well involve Congress and the courts in partisan wrangling over which candidate won a state and which electoral votes to count. Their decisions may misrepresent the public’s wishes. Donald Trump’s attempts both to create alternative slates of electors and to reject certified electors from states won by Joe Biden could only occur because there was an electoral college. The absence of a right to vote in presidential elections is certainly inconsistent with our notions of democracy. Similarly, the selection of the ultimate choosers of the president—electors—by party committees is contrary to our notions of transparency and popular participation. Allowing a state legislature to choose the winning slate of electors of a state makes a mockery of popular selection of the president.