A Cynical Election Ploy Like Hawley and Cruz’s Looks Harmless. Until It Isn’t with Elizabeth Saunders

Washington generally shrugs at cynical theatrical gestures like the GOP Senate effort, led by Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Ted Cruz (Tex.), to object to the election results. Politicians see them as useful and harmless. Consider the regular news releases from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) making National Science Foundation projects sound ridiculous, or the House of Representatives’ decision in 2003 to have its cafeteria call french fries “freedom fries.” Wednesday’s episode in the Senate at first had the appearance of a dinner theater murder mystery in which the key suspects (Democratic operatives; sinister manufacturers of voting machines; the late Hugo Chávez) had been fingered by pro-Trump lawyers.

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Other Writing:

Chapter in an Edited Volume

“Privacy in the Digital Age: States, Private Actors and Hybrid Arrangements,” in Governing Global Electronic Networks: International Perspectives on Power and Policy – eds. William Drake and Ernest Wilson

Privacy has emerged as a key regulatory issue in the wake of the information and communications revolution. New technologies have brought new problems; they have made it more difficult for individuals to maintain their privacy (or for other actors to protect it on their behalf), while also giving rise to complex issues of global regulation. ...
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Chapter in an Edited Volume

“Constructing Mid-Range Theories of Trust: The Role of Institutions” in Whom Can We Trust? How Groups, Networks, and Institutions Make Trust Possible (the Capstone volume of the Russell Sage Foundation project on Trust) – eds. Karen Cook, Russell Hardin and Margaret Levi

The last fifteen years have seen an explosion in research on trust, but there are still important gaps in our understanding of its sources and consequences.1 In particular, we know relatively little about the relationship between trust and the other sources of cooperation that social scientists have identified, most prominently institutions, sets of rules that ...
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