Skip to main content

Politics and Policy

Inside the 25-Year Mission to Give India’s City Dwellers a Voice in Government

Drawing on his experience at Yale SOM, his career in finance, and his first encounter with a New England town meeting, Ramesh Ramanathan ’89 returned to India with his wife, Swati, to help citizens shape the future of their communities.

An aerial view of Bangalore, India.
  • Connecticut Charts a New Course on Affordable Housing

    Yale SOM’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and co-author Stephen Henriques write that a new comprehensive housing law gives Connecticut towns a clearer, more flexible framework for developing housing growth plans.

    An apartment building under construction
  • A Different Kind of Wedge Issue: What Golf Reveals About Working Across Ideological Lines

    How do political differences affect workplace performance? A study of professional golfers, co-authored by Yale SOM’s Balázs Kovács, suggests that working alongside someone of the opposite political orientation may dampen the ability to execute tasks successfully.

    A drawing of golfers in blue and red shirts
  • When State Neglect Turns Weather into Revolution

    In a new study, Professor Mushfiq Mobarak and co-author Sultan Mehmood analyze newly uncovered satellite imagery of the 1970 Bhola cyclone, and show that the storm affected voting patterns and induced more citizens to take up arms in a guerrilla war that led to the founding of Bangladesh.

    Sheikh Mujibur Rahman surrounded by a crowd
  • How Millions of Simulated Maps Can Help Us Make Electoral Districts That Feel Fair

    Part of resolving the political redistricting stalemate, writes Professor Jamie Tucker-Foltz, is creating congressional maps that align with human intuition about fairness.

    Voters behind privacy screens in a polling place
  • What Are the Consequences of Resuming Nuclear Testing?

    President Donald Trump said recently that he had ordered the return of U.S. nuclear testing, prompting a warning from Russia. We asked Professor Paul Bracken what test explosions could mean.

    A black and white photo of people observing a nuclear explosion in the desert
  • The China Summit Revealed the Limits of Trump’s Tariff War

    Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and co-author Stephen Henriques write that a successful campaign to reduce China’s market manipulation would require the kind of collective action that Trump has systematically undermined through his indiscriminate use of tariffs.

    Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in a summit meeting
  • Closed Borders Choke America’s Innovation Engine

    A growing, dynamic economy desperately needs smooth, legal pathways for highly skilled immigrants, says Doug Rand ’10, co-director of the Talent Mobility Fund.

    A U.S. Customs and Border Protection sign in an airport
  • Are Elon Musk’s Politics Driving Away Tesla’s Customers?

    A new Yale working paper sets out to quantify the effect of the controversies over Musk’s transformation of Twitter and his time leading DOGE, and finds that they may have cost Tesla one million sales.

    A Tesla with a bumper sticker reading “I bought this before we knew that Elon was crazy."
  • Trump Boasts of Peace Through Strength in the Middle East. Can He Achieve the Same in Ukraine?

    Trump emphasized U.S. military and economic strength in his Knesset speech, write Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Stephen Henriques. Can he also confront Russia from a position of power?

    Donald Trump posing with a "Peace 2025" sign
  • How Nations Use Economic Power to Shape the World Order

    Yale SOM’s Christopher Clayton is helping to pioneer the field of geoeconomics, which explains how countries wield economic weapons to reshape global power dynamics—and what happens when they go too far.

    An illustration of two figures playing poker on a table with a world map