The Quiet Consolidation of the Governor's Office
Emergency authority was supposed to be temporary. In statehouse after statehouse, it has become the ordinary way of governing.
Against the Politics of Permanent Emergency
Treating every dispute as an existential crisis was supposed to raise the stakes. It has mostly exhausted the people who have to live inside the argument.
Who Actually Signs the Order
The people with the titles get the coverage. The people two levels below them write the language that decides what the policy means.
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The Strait That Sets the Price of Everything
A handful of narrow passages carry most of the world's traded goods. The politics of those passages is now the politics of everyone's grocery bill.
Europe Is Rebuilding Its Border Logic
The argument is described as a fight about migration. It is really a fight about which level of government gets to decide.
Deterrence Without a Doctrine
The systems have been bought and the deployments made. The theory explaining what they are supposed to prevent has not been written down.
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The Consultant Class Has Its Own Foreign Policy
Advisory firms sit between governments and the transactions that shape them. Their interests are not identical to anyone's national interest.
What the Party Primaries Stopped Measuring
Primaries were built to find candidates with broad support inside a party. They now reward a much narrower kind of appeal.
The Ballot Measure Has Become the Legislature
When lawmakers refuse to act, organizers go around them. The result is policy written by whoever can afford signature gatherers.
The Cable Map Is a Vulnerability Map
Nearly all intercontinental data moves through undersea cables. The number of ships capable of repairing them is startlingly small.
The Subsidy Race Has No Finish Line
Every major economy is now paying to attract the same handful of industries. The bidding does not stop when a plant is built.
The Border That Exists Only on Paper
Several internationally recognized frontiers are not administered by the governments that claim them. Everyone involved prefers the ambiguity.
The Briefings
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Elections, turnout, and redistricting, explained without the horse race.
See the numbersLabor Shortages Are Housing Shortages
Employers in high demand regions cannot fill roles at wages the local housing market makes viable. That is a construction problem wearing a labor costume.
Nationwide Injunctions and the Single District Judge
One trial court can halt a federal policy everywhere. Both parties have called that intolerable, in alternating years.
In Defense of the Slow Committee
Deliberation is treated as an obstacle to be routed around. Most of what it produces cannot be produced any other way.
The Appointment Nobody Contests
Confirmation fights concentrate on a handful of visible posts. The seats that decide the most tend to be filled without a hearing.
The Press Release Is Now the Story
Institutions have larger communications staffs than the newsrooms covering them. The output ratio shows up in what gets published.
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From the archive
What Ringing the Bell Used to Mean
Our founding essay (From March)
Institutions Are Habits, Not Buildings
An argument (From April)
Plea Bargaining Is the Criminal Justice System
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