The La Follette School Seminar Series engages participants in discussion of a range of public policy issues and showcases the research of faculty from the La Follette School, other UW-Madison departments, and outside the UW-Madison community. Faculty, students, and visitors take part in lively dialogue about topics such as poverty and welfare, health, education, international affairs, trade and finance, and the environment. For more information, email Assistant Professor This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Unless otherwise noted, all Fall 2020 presentations are live online via Zoom from 12:30 to 1:45 p.m., and there is no cost to attend. Registration is required for most seminars. Please check back periodically for updated information.
Friday, Sept. 18 – noon to 1:15 p.m.
How Propaganda Manipulates Emotion to Fuel Nationalism: Experimental Evidence from China
Assistant Professor Daniel Mattingly, Yale University Department of Political Science
In collaboration with UW-Madison Department of Political Science Models and Data (MAD) group
Influential studies depict propaganda as a heavy-handed tool with limited persuasive power. By contrast, Dan Mattingly of Yale University and Elaine Yao of Princeton University argue that propaganda can effectively manipulate emotions and cause durable changes in nationalist attitudes.
Mattingly will discuss the experiments he and Yao conducted in which they exposed over 6,800 respondents in China to propaganda videos drawn from state-run newscasts, television dramas, and state-backed social media accounts, each containing nationalist messages favored by the Chinese Communist Party.
Exposure to nationalist propaganda increases anger as well as anti-foreign sentiment and behavior; however, Mattingly and Yao found that nationalist propaganda had no effect on perceptions of Chinese government performance or self-reported willingness to protest against the state. These findings suggest that nationalist propaganda can manipulate emotions and anti-foreign sentiment, but it does not necessarily divert attention from domestic political grievances.
Dan Mattingly is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Yale University. His research focuses on the politics of authoritarian regimes, historical political economy, and China. Mattingly’s book, The Art of Political Control in China, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2019.
Wednesday, Sept. 30 – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
The Assessment Gap: Racial Inequalities in Property Taxation
Presenter: Assistant Professor Troup Howard, University of Utah David Eccles School of Business
Using panel data covering 118 million homes in the United States and geolocation detail for 75,000 taxing entities, Assistant Professor Troup Howard of the University of Utah and Carlos Avenancio-León of Indiana University documented a nationwide "assessment gap.” Howard will discuss how this gap leads local governments to place a disproportionate fiscal burden on racial and ethnic minorities.
Howard and his colleague found that holding jurisdictions and property tax rates fixed, black and Hispanic residents face a 10 percent to 13 percent higher tax burden for the same bundle of public services. He will describe two channels that give rise to this assessment gap: insufficient capitalization of neighborhood attributes into assessments and racial differences in assessment appeals outcomes.
Howard and his co-author propose an alternate approach for constructing assessments and show that this would reduce inequality by at least 55 percent to 70 percent.
Howard’s research explores how regional economic outcomes and household finances are affected by the fiscal choices of state and local governments, with particular attention to public debt and taxation. In his recent work, he documents widespread racial and ethnic inequality in local property taxes.
He also studies the common practice of providing corporate tax subsidies as an economic development incentive, the temporal link between local public debt and tax rates, and how early-lifetime experiences shape the future fiscal and legislative leanings of U.S. Congress members.
Monday, Oct. 12 - noon to 1:15 p.m.
The State From Below: Democracy and Citizenship in Policed Communities
Associate Professor Vesla Weaver, Johns Hopkins University Department of Political Science
In collaboration with UW–Madison Department of Political Science
Vesla Weaver will discuss a new technology and civic infrastructure, Portals, she and other researchers are using to initiate conversations about policing in communities where predatory systems of government are concentrated.
Based on over 850 recorded and transcribed conversations across 10 neighborhoods in five cities – the most extensive collection of first-hand accounts of the police to date – Weaver and colleagues at the Portals Policing Project analyze patterns in political discourse.
The Portals Policing Project began in Milwaukee’s Amani neighborhood and Newark, N.J.’s Lincoln Park and Military Park in 2016. Portals are virtual chambers where people in disparate communities can converse as if in the same room.
More than a data collection technique, the Portals are a medium for listening, a site of democratic deliberation, and a public good and civic infrastructure in their host communities. They increase the capacity of disparate people and communities to define their narratives and create connected political spaces, thereby expanding the possibility of studying politics in beneficially recursive ways.
Weaver is the Bloomberg Distinguished Associate Professor of Political Science and Sociology at Johns Hopkins University and a 2016-17 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. She has contributed to scholarly debates around the persistence of racial inequality, colorism in the United States, the causes and consequences of the dramatic rise in prisons, and police power for race-class subjugated communities.
She is co-author with Amy Lerman of Arresting Citizenship: The Democratic Consequences of American Crime Control, the first large-scale empirical study of what the tectonic shifts in incarceration and policing meant for political and civic life in communities where it was concentrated. Weaver is also the co-author of Creating a New Racial Order: How Immigration, Multiracialism, Genomics, and the Young Can Remake Race in America (with J. Hochschild and T. Burch).
Wednesday, Oct. 21 – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Professor Lisa Cook, Michigan State University Department of Economics
Lisa D. Cook is a professor in the Department of Economics and in International Relations (James Madison College) at Michigan State University. Her research interests include economic growth and development, financial institutions and markets, innovation, and economic history.
Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Economic History Association, and Harvard Business School, among others. Cook has held positions or conducted postdoctoral research at the National Bureau of Economic Research; the Federal Reserve Banks of Minneapolis, New York, and Philadelphia; the World Bank; the Brookings Institution; the Hoover Institution (Stanford University); Salomon Brothers (now Citigroup); and C&S Bank (now Bank of America).
She is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, the Advisory Board of the Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the Advisory Board of the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian Institution, and the Board of Directors of the Roosevelt Institute.
As the first Marshall Scholar from Spelman College, Lisa Cook received a second bachelor’s degree from Oxford University in philosophy, politics, and economics. She earned a doctorate in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Wednesday, Nov. 11 – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Effects of Post-Colonial Racism and Foreign Aid on Trade Reciprocity: Evidence from the Uruguay Round (1986-94)
Professor of International Commerce and Policy J.P. Singh, George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government
Colonial and post-colonial race relations and foreign aid are often hypothesized as impacting North-South trade, but few empirical studies examine this relationship in the context of trade negotiations.
In this seminar, Professor J.P. Singh will present two empirical findings in the context of North-South trade negotiations: (1) post-colonial racism negatively impacts trade reciprocity; (2) foreign aid is a substitute for making meaningful trade concessions.
The presentation questions ‘grand’ theories of North-South relations such as those pointing out the utility of paternalism or international hierarchies.
In addition to his position at George Mason, Singh is the Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow with the Robert Bosch Academy, Berlin. He specializes in culture and political economy. Singh has authored or edited 10 books, published over 100 scholarly articles, and worked with international organizations such as UNESCO, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization.
Previously, Singh was Chair and Professor of Culture and Political Economy at the University of Edinburgh. From 2000 to 2012, he taught at Georgetown University, Washington, DC.
Wednesday, Dec. 2 – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Co-Cities: Reimagining Cities and City Space as Common Goods
Professor Sheila Foster, Georgetown University Law School and McCourt School of Public Policy
Professor Sheila Foster will present findings from a multi-year project on "Co-Cities," which is also the title of a forthcoming co-authored book. Foster and her collaborators surveyed over 180 cities around the world and over 500 policies and projects as part of a decade-long investigation into the ways that urban commons—collectively shared and collaboratively stewarded resources—can be created and sustained in different political, social and economic environments.
In many of these cities, they witnessed the collective and collaborative governance of various urban resources such as built, environmental, cultural, and digital goods that are co-created and co-managed through contractual or institutionalized public-community partnerships (PCPs) and public-community-private partnerships (PCPPs).
The goal of this empirical aspect of this project was to extract some of the characteristics of these diverse efforts and to develop a common framework and understanding of the patterns, processes, practices, and public policies that position local communities as key political, economic, and institutional actors and stewards in the delivery of services, production, and management of urban assets or local resources.
The result of this research project is to offer design principles that reflect the conditions and factors observed as necessary to rethink the city as a “commons”—a shared infrastructure on which various urban actors can cooperate and collaborate and where various initiatives of collective action can emerge, flourish, and become sustainable.
Sheila R. Foster is the Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Urban Law and Policy at Georgetown University. She holds a joint appointment with the Georgetown Law School and the McCourt School of Public Policy.
Foster is a recognized authority on the role of cities and city leadership in promoting social and economic welfare, achieving environmental and climate justice, improving global governance, and addressing racial inequality. She is the chair of the advisory committee for the Global Parliament of Mayors, a member of the New York City Mayor's Panel on Climate Change, and a former member of the Aspen Institute's Urban Innovation Group.
Foster also co-directs LabGov, an international applied research project that has pioneered an award-winning approach to economic development that enables local communities to become co-creators and stewards of urban revitalization in their neighborhoods.