Kenneth Lowande

Associate Professor @UMich || scholar of American political institutions || author of False Front:

[Kenneth Lowande @ProfLowande]

How should scholars who study American politics change what they do in light of the Trump administration?

The emerging consense is: write about Trump, go normative, and raise "alarm bells."

TLDR: This is a bad idea.

[Kenneth Lowande @ProfLowande]

@JohnHolbein1 it sounds trite but this critique often means "I don't think your results mean what you say they do" -- which is actually an important thing to have right before putting this stuff out into the world

[Kenneth Lowande @ProfLowande]

Very important and timely reminder for everyone in the media; Trump isn't an aberration, here. All contemporary presidents caught on to the fact that the media tends to parrot policy announcements in a way that makes the political shop in the WH very happy.

[Gabe Fleisher @WakeUp2Politics]

NEW: It’s a familiar pattern: Trump announces a new policy on Truth Social. News alerts are sent out. Lawmakers issue statements. Furor ensues.

And then ... nothing.

In today’s newsletter, I investigate: how often do Trump policies announced on social media actually happen?

[Kenneth Lowande @ProfLowande]

@WakeUp2Politics Very interesting work, but nothing new, at least for recent presidents:
https://t.co/QjV95AUOaN

[Kenneth Lowande @ProfLowande]

@Spencer_Goidel cool. curious how are you acct for the dramatic variation in N from cycle to cycle? my guess is the differences in these lines would be swamped by error bars

[Kenneth Lowande @ProfLowande]

@Nolan_Mc my name is legion, for we are many

[Kenneth Lowande @ProfLowande]

@Nolan_Mc what if i bought all the data for the paper on a credit card

[Kenneth Lowande @ProfLowande]

@dbroockman It takes annoying, tedious things that sometimes tooks hours and were not fun, and does them in seconds. Whenever I read doom-takes about AI, I circle back to this.

[John Kastellec @JKastellec]

I used Claude Code to build an website that implements the simulations presented in "Making in the Supreme Court: The Politics of Appointments, 1930-2020" (with Chuck Cameron) that predict the composition of the Supreme Court under different scenarios.

https://t.co/Mh4d3P5ndm

[Sean Westwood @seanjwestwood]

This is a really hard position to take in the academy. It is also correct. It's impossible not to be alarmed by Trump--but alarm shouldn't drive scholarship. We need a firewall between our personal views and our academic writing.

[Kenneth Lowande @ProfLowande]

In a new review, I write about the costs of this kind of scholarship, and how scholars should "respond" to the moment: https://t.co/M6MCGMhj9c

[Kenneth Lowande @ProfLowande]

How should scholars who study American politics change what they do in light of the Trump administration?

The emerging consense is: write about Trump, go normative, and raise "alarm bells."

TLDR: This is a bad idea.

[Kenneth Lowande @ProfLowande]

@joshmccrain it means the contestants can't see each other but each has to decide who to propose marriage to anyway

[Kenneth Lowande @ProfLowande]

@seanjwestwood the discussion is so contentious because the stakes are so low

[Kenneth Lowande @ProfLowande]

@seanjwestwood I am, indeed, very mad; been stewing for days, but hope this apology helps me heal

[Kenneth Lowande @ProfLowande]

The year is 2026, and I am told daily by a machine that it is "verifying that I am human."

[Kenneth Lowande @ProfLowande]

...we need to invest more resources into understanding what happens after the president says "go."

Applications due Feb 16. Please reach out to me with questions.

https://t.co/VwKoGikPsm

[Kenneth Lowande @ProfLowande]

I'm hiring a Postdoctoral Research Fellow!

Something that should be obvious after this past year: The American presidency and the executive branch, more broadly, are far and away the most important political institutions in American politics.

[Kenneth Lowande @ProfLowande]

Many thanks to generous support from the Hewlett Foundation for seeing a desparate research need. If we are in a new era when most policy is made by American presidents from the top-down...