Democracy

Smartphones have become a primary gateway for consuming political news, but we know little about what individuals actually see on their phones. In new research, Guy Aridor, Tevel Dekel, Rafael Jiménez Durán, Ro’ee Levy, and Lena Song open the smartphone black box using novel content data and document individuals’ exposure to election-related content during the 2024 presidential election, as well as the drivers of this exposure.

Mihir Kshirsagar argues that the evidence presented in FTC v. Meta shows that discussions about the application of First Amendment protections to social media must go beyond the binary set in Moody v. NetChoice between treating them as common carriers or editorial agents. Rather, a commercial conduct framework is needed to understand how speech operates on platforms designed to maximize user attention and ad revenue.

In new research, Seda Basihos investigates the relationship between a decline in market competition and global democratic backsliding. She finds that market concentration leads to increasing political power for giant firms—a trend that ultimately erodes democracy levels.

The following is an excerpt from “Politics and Privilege: How the Status Wars Sustain Inequality” by Rory McVeigh, William Carbonaro, Chang Liu, and Kenadi Silcox, now out at Columbia University Press. 

Reed Showalter argues that the suggestion that antitrust can be ringfenced from democracy or the democratic process is erroneous. Antitrust is fundamentally a body...

Yunsieg P. Kim argues that economic regulation, including antitrust, can only be democratic if it is the choice of well-informed citizens. This article is part...

Erik Peinert explores the paradoxical relationship between economic concentration and democracy, where economic concentration compromises the democratic process and democratic backsliding also gains momentum by taking advantage of concentrated market actors, whose political power is now impotent, to capture civil society.

Gerhard Schick discusses the CumEx and CumCum share-trading scandals that cost German taxpayers billions of euros over the course of several decades and the failures in political and social institutions that allowed these scandals to persist for so long.

In new research, Kenneth Coriale, Ethan Kaplan, and Daniel Kolliner show how the Republican Party has benefited more from redistricting and gerrymandering. Their research has important implications for political power and representation in today’s era of razor-thin Congressional majorities.

In new research, Claire Liu and Jared Stanfield examine how relationships between corporate leaders and the United States president enable firms to capture regulation and avoid antitrust scrutiny.