Kenny Lowande
Associate Professor at the Univ. of Michigan
sites.lsa.umich.edu/lowande/
- I'm hiring a Postdoctoral Research Fellow! Applications due Feb 16. Please reach out to me with questions. apply.interfolio.com/178829
- More context: The American presidency and the executive branch, more broadly, are far and away the most important political institutions in American politics. Yet every year, my discipline, political science, supports and trains few (if any) people dedicated to studying how it works.
- I'm looking for someone smart and motivated who is interested in expanding their research portfolio to include the presidency and executive politics. They'll spend at least a year with me working on that research, with the possibility of a second.
- Many thanks to generous support from the Hewlett Foundation for seeing the vision. If we are in a new era when most policy is made by American presidents from the top-down, we need to invest more resources into understanding what happens after the president says "go." Send me your students!
- Putting together my grad syllabus in American political institutions. Anyone have recommendations for new "must-read" books?
- This is technically true. But if the rule of law is actually an attitude, and people believe EOs matter, then the technicality doesn't matter. This is why presidents sign symbolic orders anyway. The hope that people will believe in them.
- This policy change might also might lead Congress to, at last, defeat Taco Bell in the contest for who has a lower annual staff turnover rate.
- This isn't just a Trump thing. The presidency has been moving in this direction for decades. This is just the logical conclusion.
- i see your bat signal and respond by throwing a book
- The Trump admin owns the public narrative by taking executive action, over and over. Our new study shows this strategy has detectable impacts on Google search traffic for the incumbent president. Ballpark est. similar to pop artists when they release a new album.
- Link to full study and more info: myumi.ch/W6Pz7
- NEW STUDY: White House staff hiring over 1996-2024 shows the diploma divide is in the White House. Elite universities sent far more alumni to work for Democratic presidents. Full paper: myumi.ch/pVMM5 Details: First --> Overall, Democratic presidents tend to value more credentials... 1/6
- Even within credentials, staffers were polarized by degree field. Democrat leaning majors: 2/6
- Republican leaning majors: 3/6
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View full threadThis study is joint work with some smart undergraduates at the University of Michigan, all of whom, would make great White House staffers -- for any president! 6/6
- The DOD has billions in military hardware circulating among state and local police. Pleased to announce a tool developed to visualize and track this equipment, along with clean, historical data on all controlled items circulated between 2014-2025. police.executivepolicy.org
- We'll be updating these data as they become available, and eventually adding the billions more in homeland security subsidies that have gone out since 2007.
- Policymakers and the public need to understand how/if these programs are working. We'll soon release some of our own findings, but we hope the underlying data will help others who want to study domestic law enforcement -- and how it has been changed by shift toward homeland security.
- Counterpoint: there's never been more data available about what the government actually does. Most political scientists just have a soft spot for what happens between peoples' ears.
- My book won the 2025 Neustadt award for best book on the American presidency. Presidents enact bad policies, on purpose, because it helps them define their brand & gives the impression they're in charge. If that basic message resonates, please give it some of your reading time: lnkd.in/dVPsriXt
- and if you're considering it for a course, are a journalist, or a student of any kind, please write to me. I'll send you a copy. For free.
- When someone tells you a unitary executive will lead to more "energy" (a la Hamilton) remember that the President is a decision-making bottleneck. It's not complicated. The more things you put on his plate, the slower government moves.
- The modern White House has the annual turnover rate of a Chili's. Full paper: shorturl.at/9u1LX
- "The Purge" is not a phrase staffers want to hear, but working in this White House, it's entirely on-brand: www.thedailybeast.com/trump-is-plo...
- Why 100 days? Because humans like this number. How many policies were pushed out the door before they should have so the administration could pad its stats? More than any American should be comfortable with.
- The irony is that Congress started delegating this power a century ago because taking it out of their hands helped REDUCE uncertainty about economic winners and losers after elections.
- NEW. @jasonfurman.bsky.social on Trump's tariffs. "I don’t see how the president can get rid of what is now a massive amount of uncertainty...The only way to put that genie back in the bottle would be for Congress to take tariff-setting power back to itself." youtu.be/b6HAqPdgixE?...
- Journalists always frame stories about executive action with words that assign more credit to the Pres, relative to Congress. Executive action is a PR win, even when it's bad policy. (Dark bars: news with exec. action. Light: everything else about the pres, frm Ch 6 of my book: shorturl.at/eilg2)
- As someone educated outside the elite doctoral programs, EITM was huge for me. If you want to be good enough at finding stuff out (i.e., "research") to be paid to do it, there's no substitute for being around the best of the best and trying to learn from them.
- Applications for the 2025 EITM Summer Institute are now open! Program dates: Aug 4-15. Program location: University of Michigan. Deadline: April 15. eitminstitute.org/institute/20...
- Again: The Trump admin is showing you they have capacity constraints -- they can only do this shake-down procedure piecemeal. If these institutions want this to stop, they'll refuse to negotiate and take them to court. Hold the line, create a bottleneck.
- Someone get me a formal theorist stat, I need to know if inter-party bargains are possible when there's no credible commitment for any deal.
- Politico: "Trump and White House officials have been telling GOP holdouts who want more spending cuts that the administration will pursue impoundment...according to two Republicans who were in a recent meeting with the president." www.politico.com/newsletters/...
- Going to the bargaining table guarantees this will continue. But if the goal is to stop executive action, they'd ignore the "review" period and take the gov to court. The President needs to know that if he uses this tactic, that's all his legal counsel will be doing for months. Every time.
- This "immediate cancellation" violates the law. If the Admin thinks Columbia has violated Title VI by being deliberately indifferent to antisemitic harassment, it has to give Columbia a chance for a hearing first, make findings on the record, & wait 30 days. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/03...
- Reposted by Kenny LowandeThis opinion is a good introduction to the debate in the Appointments Clause. I have one gripe, which is just shameless self-promotion. The gripe is about whether unitary executive theory is "efficient." The efficiency argument ignores administrative capacity. 1/
