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2024 Yearly Roundup: Editors’ Picks
2024 Yearly Roundup: Editors’ Picks
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The Political Economy of the Urban-Rural Divide

Though the urban-rural divide can sometimes appear like a primordial fault line in American political life, it is in fact a relatively recent development. The Democratic Party’s collapse in the countryside was the predictable consequence of decisions to prioritize certain constituencies to the neglect of others, as it championed the shift to the metropolitan knowledge economy.

Recent

Weekly Roundup: Dec. 20

Matthew Lawrence on the political influence of super groups, and Henry Tonks on The Quiet Coup. Plus, Katie Wells and Funda Ustek Spilda on Uber for Nursing, Kate Redburn on 303 Creative, David Stein on economic austerity and intersectional analysis, an interview with Thomas Ferguson on the 2024 US election, and an episode of the inequality podcast. . .

Presidents Are Strong, But Super-Groups Can Be Stronger

Is the power wielded by interests groups ultimately good or bad? To answer this question, we need to distinguish ordinary interest groups from super-groups, like the American Medical Association, whose legal empowerment makes them legitimate targets for democratic contestation and provides a principled basis on which to assess their political influence.

Weekly Roundup: Dec. 13

Beau Baumann and James Goodwin on the LPE of Congress, Shai Karp on landlords as petty tyrants, and a listicle of our favorite LPE posts on technology. Plus, Tara Raghuveer and Ruthy Gourevitch on tenant unions, Suzanne Kahn on feminist progressive populism, good news from the trenches of the EPA and FTC, Alvin Velazquez on bankrupt cities and federal disaster. . .

From the Vault: LPE & Tech

To accompany your new holiday gizmos and gadgets, we reach into the vault and highlight some of our favorite posts on technology, featuring Salomé Viljoen, Veena Dubal, Frank Pasquale, Yochai Benkler, Raúl Carrillo, Meredith Whittaker, Genevieve Lakier & Nelson Tebbe, Matthew Bodie, Elizabeth Joh, and Julie Cohen.

Rent Strikes as a Righteous Form of Resistance

Landlords wield significant power over tenants — including the power to set prices, surveil, neglect, harass, and evict — while legal processes offer little to tenants in terms of protection or means of redress when their rights are violated. Withholding rent in response to mistreatment is one righteous way of resisting such domination.