The Knife Edge Election of 2020: American Politics Between Washington, Kabul, and Weimar

Ferguson, Thomas S.; Jørgensen, P. C. Willemoes; Chen, Jie

doi:10.36687/inetwp169

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Perceived Likelihood: The "swift and relentless spread" of the pandemic indicates a high perceived likelihood of the crisis affecting individuals and communities (Ferguson et al, 2021). In SCCT, high likelihood often requires proactive and continuous communication to keep the public informed and engaged (Sellnow & Seeger, 2021).…”

Section: A)mentioning

confidence: 99%

An Analysis of the Great Disruption of COVID-19 Pandemic

Richardson

2024

SEC

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The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019 led to a global crisis of unprecedented scale and complexity that disrupted almost every aspect of human life. The pandemic has taken people, institutions and governments by surprise, so the impact of the virus has been profound and far-reaching. The rapid and relentless spread of the pandemic has challenged global health systems, strained economies, altered daily routines in educational settings and at work, and tested the resilience of communities worldwide. Different studies have identified vulnerabilities in the world’s ability to respond to health emergencies at the individual and societal levels. This study presents a systematic literature review and theoretical analysis of the disruptions caused by COVID-19 to help formulate strategies that encourage flexibility and resilience in the face of such complex and interconnected disruptions. The article analyzes the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic through the prism of two main theories: the theory of situational crisis communications (type of crisis, its history, responsibility, perceived seriousness, predictable probability, crisis communications strategies, post-crisis reputation), as well as the theory of social learning (learning through observation, modeling and imitation, positive and negative reinforcement in the formation of behavior). In addition, the nature of society’s adaptation to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic is also considered through the prism of the theory of subversive innovations (progress in communication technologies, new methods of remote work and education, the entry of social networks into the business world, the introduction of asynchronous communication). The article summarizes the scientific progress on the following main consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in the workplace, healthcare system, and education. The study provides recommendations on the steps that individuals, institutions and governments can take to increase readiness and ability to adapt to the next crisis (interdisciplinary cooperation, analysis of communication strategies, system analysis). The analysis conducted in the article also made it possible to outline the most promising directions for further qualitative intervention studies (in-depth case studies taking into account the specific context of regions, organizations or communities to identify effective and ineffective policies and practices; qualitative interviews with key stakeholders to understand the intricacies of decision-making in the context of the pandemic crisis); qualitative action studies (building community resilience, collaborative research efforts involving policymakers, health experts and community representatives to develop crisis response policies jointly) and quantitative studies (analysis of pandemic spread, impact of vaccination on disease control, analysis of the economic effects of the pandemic, etc.).

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Section: A)mentioning

confidence: 99%

An Analysis of the Great Disruption of COVID-19 Pandemic

Richardson

2024

SEC

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“…As long as Trump remained in power, that agency acted only slowly and reluctantly to curb even grotesque examples of employer neglect in meat packing, hospitals, nursing homes, and other industries in which rates of death and sickness soared (Ferguson et al, 2021).…”

Section: Figure 13mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many focused on safety; others also sought hazard pay or simply higher wages. A few protested dismissals of other workers (Ferguson et al, 2021).…”

Section: Figure 13mentioning

confidence: 99%

Myth and Reality in the Great Inflation Debate: Supply Shocks and Wealth Effects in a Multipolar World Economy

Ferguson¹,

Storm²

2023

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This paper critically evaluates debates over the causes of U.S. inflation. We first show that claims that the Biden stimulus was the major cause of inflation are mistaken: the key data series – stimulus spending and inflation – move dramatically out of phase. While the first ebbs quickly, the second persistently surges. We then look at alternative explanations of the price rises. We assess four supply side factors: imports, energy prices, rises in corporate profit margins, and COVID. We argue that discussions of COVID’s impact have thus far only tangentially acknowledged the pandemic’s far-reaching effects on labor markets. We conclude that while all four factors played roles in bringing on and sustaining inflation, they cannot explain all of it. There really is an aggregate demand problem. But the surprise surge in demand did not arise from government spending. It came from the unprecedented gains in household wealth, particularly for the richest 10% of households, which we show powered the recovery of aggregate US consumption expenditure especially from July 2021. The final cause of the inflationary surge in the U.S., therefore, was in large measure the unequal (wealth) effects of ultra-loose monetary policy during 2020-2021. This conclusion is important because inflationary pressures are unlikely to subside soon. Going forward, COVID, war, climate change, and the drift to a belligerently multipolar world system are all likely to strain global supply chains. Our conclusion outlines how policy has to change to deal with the reality of steady, but irregular supply shocks. This type of inflation responds only at enormous cost to monetary policies, because it arises mostly from supply-side difficulties that require targeted solutions. But when supply plummets or becomes more variable, fiscal policy also has to adapt: existing explorations of ways to steady demand over the business cycle have to embrace much bolder macroeconomic measures to control over-spending when supply is temporarily constrained.

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“…In his Investment Theory of Party Competition, Ferguson [16,19] proposes instead that political parties compete in a marketplace of investors whose financial contributions are necessary to secure electoral victories. When designing platforms, parties must balance semi-static voter preferences with the interests of moneyed and industrial interests who can help them meet the costs of mounting a campaign [46].…”

Section: Explaining the House-senate Asymmetrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring the Impact of Campaign Finance on Congressional Voting: A Machine Learning Approach

Lalisse¹

2022

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How much does money drive legislative outcomes in the United States? In this article, we use aggregated campaign finance data as well as a Transformer based text embedding model to predict roll call votes for legislation in the US Congress with more than 90% accuracy. In a series of model comparisons in which the input feature sets are varied, we investigate the extent to which campaign finance is predictive of voting behavior in comparison with variables like partisan affiliation. We find that the financial interests backing a legislator’s campaigns are independently predictive in both chambers of Congress, but also uncover a sizable asymmetry between the Senate and the House of Representatives. These findings are cross-referenced with a Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA) linking legislators’ financial and voting records, in which we show that “legislators who vote together get paid together”, again discovering an asymmetry between the House and the Senate in the additional predictive power of campaign finance once party is accounted for. We suggest an explanation of these facts in terms of Thomas Ferguson’s Investment Theory of Party Competition: due to a number of structural differences between the House and Senate, but chiefly the lower amortized cost of obtaining individuated influence with Senators, political investors prefer operating on the House using the party as a proxy.

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The Knife Edge Election of 2020: American Politics Between Washington, Kabul, and Weimar

Cited by 9 publications

References 35 publications

An Analysis of the Great Disruption of COVID-19 Pandemic

An Analysis of the Great Disruption of COVID-19 Pandemic

Myth and Reality in the Great Inflation Debate: Supply Shocks and Wealth Effects in a Multipolar World Economy

Measuring the Impact of Campaign Finance on Congressional Voting: A Machine Learning Approach

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