Political Programming: 2020 View Other Sessions

Marlous van Waijenburg is a comparative economic historian working on the long-term development of African economies, with a specific focus on the nature and legacies of colonialism.

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Register to vote with the Ginsberg Center as part of the Big-Ten Voting Challenge! This will take place on February 4th, 11th, and 18th, from 12-2 p.m in the UMMA Cafe and inside Cullen Washington Jr.'s exhibition, The Public Square.

For more information about your options to register to vote, visit the Ginsberg Center's website.

To register to vote from home, visit TurboVote, which is a quick, customizable registration tool. You can use TurboVote to: Start the registration process in any of the 50 states. Update existing voter registration. Request an absentee ballot. Receive election day reminders.

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Free and open to the public. Reception to follow.  This event will be livestreamed. Check the event webpage for viewing details. 

From the speaker's bio:

From 2001-11, Michael Copps served as a member of the Federal Communications Commission, where his tenure was marked by a consistent embrace of the public interest. As a strong voice in opposition to consolidation in the media, he dissented in the FCC vote on the Comcast-NBC Universal merger. He has been a consistent proponent of localism in programming and diversity in media ownership. Though retired from the Commission, he has maintained a commitment to an inclusive, informative media landscape. In addition to his work at Common Causes, Michael sits on the boards of Free Press and Public Knowledge.

Before joining the FCC, Michael served as assistant secretary of commerce for trade development at the Department of Commerce and chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-SC) from the early 1970s to 1983. He has a PhD in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Learn about how to manage politically-charged conversations in an academic setting both with peers and faculty. 

RSVP is required through the "REGISTER" button below. Space is limited, and lunch will be served.

Party leaders are seen as the face and central control of a political party’s agenda (also possibly the legislature). This asks the question, with all this power why would a leader ever relinquish their position? Little work has looked comparatively at why leaders step down from office due to data limitations. We contribute to the literature on party politics and leader tenure by providing a new dataset of leadership changes in advanced industrial democracies from 1960-2017. This dataset includes approximately 1,400 party leaders, and it codes why leaders step down using primary and secondary sources. With these original data, we investigate the drivers of leadership change across time and space. We find that electoral loss and intra-party ousting are the most common forms of leadership change, suggesting that voters and party members have effective power to check leaders. Even though we analyze cases with different party systems and institutions our findings suggest similar outcomes. A leader’s survival is contingent on party member and voter support. We test the relationship between vote loss, incumbency status, and leadership change to understand the role of external drivers on party organization. This new data provides a unique tool for understanding party organization more broadly.

Julia Maynard is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan. She studies party politics and voting behavior mostly within the context of European Politics. Her interests are within the dynamics of mainstream parties and niche parties- how these parties react to each other as well as reasons why voters would choose one over the other.

Dr. Soroka is Michael W. Traugott Collegiate Professor of Communication Studies and Political Science, and faculty associate in the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research, U-M. His research focuses on political communication, on the sources and/or structure of public preferences for policy, and on the relationships between public policy, public opinion, and mass media. Current projects include work on negativity in politics, on the role of mass media in representative democracy, and on support for social welfare and immigration policy. With the 2020 elections coming up soon Dr. Soroka will provide some interesting insights.

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Adam Dahl's research and teaching interests are in American political thought, democratic theory, the politics of race and indigeneity, and political theories of empire and colonialism. His first book, Empire of the People: Settler Colonialism and the Foundations of Modern Democratic Thought (University Press of Kansas, 2018), examines the constitutive role of settler colonialism in shaping modern norms of democratic legitimacy. His current project, tentatively titled Transnational Democracy in the Americas, explores the interconnected dynamics of internationalism, anti-imperialism, and transnational citizenship in the American democratic tradition, focusing on the political thought of Ottobah Cugoano, Frederick Douglass, Randolph Bourne, W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, and Herman Melville.

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COST: $5

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The 2020 Census is closer than you think. The U.S. population census is one of the most significant processes sustaining our American democracy. Learn what it is all about, find out about the history of the census, how it’s run, the many important ways census data is used in Michigan, and the rigorous process to protect the privacy of your information.

Speaker Margaret Leary, from the League of Women Voters, will unfold the Census and explain why it’s essential that everyone is counted. There will be pertinent handouts and perhaps some interesting stories about attempts to influence some prior census results.

RSVP is required through the "REGISTER" button below. Space is limited, and lunch will be served.

Learn about the University's policies when it comes to campus events, particularly around controversial and/or political speakers or issues. 

Amir Fleischmann's work is focussed on critical and continental political theory. He is interested in questions concerning critical history, the history of capitalism, and democratic theory.

RSVP is NOT required. 

RSVP is NOT required. 

Corrine McConnaughy, "Hidden Politics: Women’s Organizing and the Shape of American Democracy"

Professor McConnaughy is Associate Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. Her research interests are in identity politics, focusing primarily on the roles race and gender play in American politics, and in the development of political institutions.

Angela X. Ocampo, “Political Pioneers: Women of Color as Candidates and Elected Officials”

Angela X. Ocampo is a LSA Collegiate Fellow at the University of Michigan. Ocampo’s research examines the political incorporation of racial, ethnic and religious minorities both as every-day participants and as political leaders within American institutions. 

Mara Ostfeld, "Why Women Oppose Policies that Support Women"

Mara Cecilia Ostfeld is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan. Her research broadly focuses on the relationship between race, media and political attitudes.

Christina Wolbrecht, "Popular views of women voters over the past 100 years, and what the evidence actually tells us about them"

Christina Wolbrecht is professor of political science, director of the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy, and C. Robert and Margaret Hanley Family Director of the Notre Dame Washington Program. Her forthcoming co-authored book, A Century of Votes for Women: American Elections Since Suffrage (Cambridge 2020), examines how women voted across the first 100 years since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Jenna Bednar, Moderator

Jenna Bednar is a professor of political science at the University of Michigan. Her research is on the analysis of institutions, focusing on the theoretical underpinnings of the stability of federal states. Her most recent book,The Robust Federation demonstrates how complementary institutions maintain and adjust the distribution of authority between national and state governments.

This event is part of the U-M Department of Political Science Rubin Speaker Series and U-M Suffrage 2020 event series.

Free and open to the public. Reception to follow.

This event will be livestreamed. Check back here just before the event for viewing details.

Please join us for a talk with Denis McDonough, former White House Chief of Staff for President Barack Obama in conversation with Associate Professor John Ciorciari, director of the Weiser Diplomacy Center and International Policy Center. McDonough will speak about transforming labor markets and the new economy, as well as leading interagency coordination and crisis responses in the White House.