Does Gerrymandering Cause Polarization?

Both pundits and scholars have blamed increasing levels of partisan conflict and polarization in Congress on the effects of partisan gerrymandering. We assess whether there is a strong causal relationship between congressional districting and polarization. We find very little evidence for such a link. First, we show that congressional polarization is primarily a function of the differences in how Democrats and Republicans represent the same districts rather than a function of which districts each party represents or the distribution of constituency preferences. Second, we conduct simulations to gauge the level of polarization under various "neutral" districting procedures. We find that the actual levels of polarization are not much higher than those produced by the simulations. We do find that gerrymandering has increased the Republican seat share in the House; however, this increase is not an important source of polarization.     

Beyond (and Within) City Limits: Climate Policy in an Intergovernmental System

This analysis explores the role of city‐level and state‐level variables to explain why some cities make more progress on climate‐related policy implementation than others. Using multilevel modeling, we find little support for the influence of state factors on local government leadership among the 812 cities in the dataset, but local government institutional and community variables are strongly associated with climate policy initiatives. We argue for a rethinking of the notion of the limited and constrained city and suggest that, in the realm of climate protection and environmental policy, cities are leading a bottom‐up federalism. Moreover, where some political analysts and scholars have argued that climate protection and environmental policies may not be economically rational for cities to pursue, we theorize that cities are acting locally to further their self‐interest in an increasingly global economy.     

Riots without killings

From 1980 to 1985 serious clashes between police and squatter activists and their supporters occurred on the streets of Amsterdam. This paper describes the series of riots that took place and analyzes five of them in greater detail. Specifically, the investigation focuses on the issue of learning from recurrent crises. Did the authorities learn from one riot to the next? If so, in what ways and at what levels? And how effective did the lessons drawn prove to be — given the fact that the other party may have learned as well. Analyzing the key decisions that have been taken in these cases and confronting them with alternative scenarios that may have been pursued, suggests that learning from crises is a two-edged sword. Its potential benefits must be traded off against risks of overgeneralization or misapplication of lessons. The paper is commented on by Arthur H.W. Docters van Leeuwen, Head of the Dutch Security Service.