What a fantastic interview! I can't wait to incorporate this into my honours political parties syllabus for the spring. I'm a political scientist but I work in Scotland, rather than the US, and you see similar-ish patterns of privilege in campaigns here and among parliamentary staff (although I suspect women are better represented), and I'd love to see survey data within and between parties.
Fascinating. I've been involved in this milieu in Australia and the party politics which produces that type of engaged participant is identical, and similarly unrepresentative of the average voter. Where our campaigns, and our overall political landscape diverge is we have compulsory attendance at a ballot booth (once in there, you can do whatever you want because secret ballot etc). We don't need to spend resources to get people to vote because we ALL vote and this drives centrism: we don't have extreme positions. But.... I am still floored by how often people vote against their best interests!
omg - haven't read this interview yet but I have been WAITING for this book. I just did a big research proposal in one of my grad classes about why political staff (and campaign staff in particular!) needs to look more like the world (women, people of color, etc) and the structures that prevent that. It came from a place of personale experience - having worked on6 campaigns myself. I relied a lot on the articles Laurison wrote in making my argument so I am HYPED to see this.
Being able to share it with him would be a dream come true.
What a fantastic interview! I can't wait to incorporate this into my honours political parties syllabus for the spring. I'm a political scientist but I work in Scotland, rather than the US, and you see similar-ish patterns of privilege in campaigns here and among parliamentary staff (although I suspect women are better represented), and I'd love to see survey data within and between parties.
Fascinating. I've been involved in this milieu in Australia and the party politics which produces that type of engaged participant is identical, and similarly unrepresentative of the average voter. Where our campaigns, and our overall political landscape diverge is we have compulsory attendance at a ballot booth (once in there, you can do whatever you want because secret ballot etc). We don't need to spend resources to get people to vote because we ALL vote and this drives centrism: we don't have extreme positions. But.... I am still floored by how often people vote against their best interests!
omg - haven't read this interview yet but I have been WAITING for this book. I just did a big research proposal in one of my grad classes about why political staff (and campaign staff in particular!) needs to look more like the world (women, people of color, etc) and the structures that prevent that. It came from a place of personale experience - having worked on6 campaigns myself. I relied a lot on the articles Laurison wrote in making my argument so I am HYPED to see this.
Being able to share it with him would be a dream come true.
Love the phrase “feel comfortable in a cauldron of assholes…”. It describes the key to success in so many lines of work.