ISPS Establishes Government Effectiveness Working Group at Yale

Rick Harrison
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Why is it so hard to build affordable housing in the United States? Why are the country’s transportation infrastructure costs so much higher than anywhere else in the developed world? Why do regulatory hurdles and lawsuits stifle so much progress?

Put more simply: Why does government so often struggle to accomplish big things? And what can we do about it?

To answer these big questions about our political institutions and practices, the Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS) this week announced the launch of the Government Effectiveness Working Group. This new collaboration will gather scholars from across social sciences and law to study how institutions can be designed and reformed to work more effectively for citizens.

“In America we see growing distrust of government across all levels,” said Josh Kalla, associate professor of political science and statistics and data science. “Voters were promised a Second Avenue subway line in New York and high-speed rail in California. These projects arrive decades late and billions over budget — or not at all. It’s no wonder trust in government is eroding. We want to understand why this keeps happening and what concrete reforms can fix it.”

Starting this summer, the new group will focus on barriers to building housing and infrastructure, how regulatory processes can be streamlined while maintaining protections, how institutions can be structured to work more effectively, and promoting rigorous empirical analysis to inform policy decisions.

Sponsors of the working group include the Abundance and Growth Fund at Coefficient Giving and the Democratic Innovations program at ISPS, which identifies, analyzes, and tests new ideas for improving the quality of democratic representation and governance.

Kalla, whose research focuses on political persuasion, campaign effects, prejudice reduction, and decision-making among voters and political elites, will co-lead the new group with Zachary Liscow, professor of law, and David N. Schleicher, Walter E. Meyer Professor of Property and Urban Law, both of Yale Law School.

Liscow, who in 2022-23 served as chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget at the White House, teaches and conducts research on tax policy and why U.S. infrastructure costs are so high.

“Infrastructure is extremely important for economic growth, climate, equity, affordability, and mobility,” Liscow said. “To figure out what is going on with costs, we need to examine the problem from a legal, economic, and political perspective. We need to talk about all these aspects.”

Liscow recently organized a conference on state capacity with Nicholas Bagley of the University of Michigan and hosted at Yale Law School by the Tobin Center for Economic Policy and the Niskanen Center, featuring a discussion led by Schleicher of a paper co-written by Kalla about opposition to dense housing development (PDF).

“We saw the real value and promise of concretely addressing specific problems,” Liscow said of the conference. “It’s not the case that there are always big political coalitions opposing change. In the case of infrastructure, we often just don’t have the evidence about what the specific issues are. And sometimes you don’t even know there is a problem until you have an academic study.”

Josh Kalla, Zach Liscow, and David Schleicher

(Left to right) Josh Kalla, Zachary Liscow, and David N. Schleicher have launched a group to study how institutions can be designed and reformed to work more effectively for citizens.

The working group will examine the political processes that shape policy outcomes and investigate how regulatory barriers, procedural obstacles, and institutional design choices — often shaped by politics and public opinion — constrain or enable effective governance. Researchers will examine how policy reforms can reduce costs, expand opportunity, and promote innovation.

“I’m very excited about this new group,” said Schleicher, an expert in local government law, land use, federalism, state and local finance, and urban development. “There is a huge collection of people at Yale already thinking about these issues. This is a place to convene them and continue to push the research in this direction.”

Schleicher noted the work can focus on issues, such as land use, mostly administered on a state and local level.

“State capacity is largely about states,” he said. “Almost all people who work for government work at the state and local level. People hardly ever encounter a federal official in their daily lives.”

Schleicher also noted the nonpartisan nature of the work.

“It’s about both policy and politics, but the research in this area has been found useful by all political stripes,” he said.

The working group has hired a postdoctoral associate who will teach an undergraduate class, conduct research, and contribute to papers on policy insights and research findings.

In addition, the group will provide internal research grants to support Yale faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students studying topics related to state capacity, institutional reform, and economic dynamism. Funding may be used to purchase data sets, run surveys, conduct fieldwork, or support other research activities.

To figure out what is going on with costs, we need to examine the problem from a legal, economic, and political perspective.

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Zachary Liscow

“Despite the importance of these questions, they have received limited attention from scholars in a focused, interdisciplinary approach,” said ISPS Director Alan Gerber, Sterling Professor of Political Science, who led a conference with Eric Patashnik of Brown University on government and the politics of problem solving. “We are delighted that Josh, Zach, and David have committed themselves to lead this new collaborative effort and help us to understand the role that political institutions and government practices play in creating, and potentially addressing, the large, complicated problems we face as a country.”

The new group will also host a speaker series and an annual conference to assemble scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to discuss the latest research on these topics.

“I personally have learned a huge amount from people on the ground,” Liscow said. “But, since they work within government and the private sector, they sometimes cannot easily step outside the system and see what is driving up costs and taking so long. It’s not their job. As researchers, we can think about the system, gather data, test theories, and assemble evidence to help reform it. And that’s what we aim to do.”