Clark, Tom S., Adam N, Glynn, Michael Leo Owens, and Eric Dobbie. “Police respond to violent crime more lethally in Black neighborhoods than in White neighborhoods” (working paper)
Public, political, and academic attention has focused on the concern that Black communities are over-policed. Critics typically point to glaring racial disparities in the use of force by police, but serious debate remains about the nature and source of those disparities. Are they driven by racial discrimination (taste-based discrimination), or are they a by-product of police targeting areas of crime that are correlated with race due to residential segregation in American cities (statistical discrimination)? We study the relationship between police shootings and the racial composition of urban neighborhoods in the United States. Our evidence shows that racial disparities in police shootings cannot be attributed to differences in crime or socioeconomic conditions alone. Specifically, we find that police respond more lethally to violent crime in neighborhoods with larger Black populations, even after accounting for socioeconomic conditions. As crime increases, the rate of police shootings increases faster in Census tracts with larger Black populations than in Census tracts with smaller Black populations. This pattern is evidence that racial disparities in the rate of police using force against citizens cannot simply be attributed to differences in the social conditions of the neighborhoods where most Black Americans reside. The findings have implications for proposed reforms for reducing racial disparities in policing and increasing more equitable policing across urban neighborhoods.Clark, Tom S., and John W. Patty, “Which Issues Should We Decide? Coalitions and Agenda Setting” (working paper)
The study of politics involves not just how the government decides questions but when it decides to act and on what subjects. We propose a model of collegial agenda-setting in which issues can be packaged together for resolution. We situate the model in the context of the US Supreme Court to investigate how collective choice and discretionary review interact to shape what problems get resolved. Our model yields novel insights into the ways in which cases can interact with each other to affect which cases are selected for review and the timing in when open questions are resolved.England, Sam, and Tom S. Clark. “Influential Dissents” (working paper)
We study the incentives for writing dissenting opinions that try to shape the law. We model the interaction between a minority and majority in a collegial court setting. Dissenting judges calculate how much effort to put into a dissenting opinion with an expectation that their work can probabilistically affect how the law is applied in the future. That calculus can influence how a majority opinion author writes an opinion and the dynamics of collegial decision-making and coalition formation. We evaluate comparative statics about the content of opinions and the conditions under which dissenting opinions should emerge from collective choice.Clark, Tom S., and John W. Patty. “Managing Intractable Problems” (working paper)
Intractable problems are inherent to governance and politics. A problem is “intractable” if it is not only difficult to agree on a solution, but also difficult to agree on what a potential solution will lead to. Intractable problems are characterized by broad and persistent low public satisfaction. We introduce two related, but distinct, notions of why reform might be pursued in a political system: complexity and complicatedness. Complexity centers on the difficulty of understanding the problem itself, and complicatedness focuses on the difficulty of making accurate decisions to mitigate the problem. Additionally, we also consider how these notions are caused and/or ameliorated by having an “outsider” reconfigure the decision process. In addition to offering a specific definition of a political outsider, the theory provides insight into how each of these can emerge in real-world political decision-making processes, and how their presence affects the potential costs and benefits of reform by an outsider.