Offline: How to defeat political populism

A Political Theory of Populism

When voters fear that politicians may have a right-wing bias or that they may be in‡uenced or corrupted by the rich elite, signals of true left-wing conviction are valuable. As a consequence, even a moderate politician seeking reelection chooses ‘populist’policies— i.e., policies to the left of the median voter— as a way of signaling that he is not from the right. Truly right-wing politicians r...

Learning from cancer how to defeat bacteria.

Bacteria Strike Back A rich variety of microorganisms are found in soil. Life in this highly competitive habitat involves both cooperative and antagonistic interactions between species. Over the course of evolution, soil bacteria have developed sophisticated strategies using a wide variety of chemical weapons to survive. These toxins provide rich sources of potential antibiotics, as well as sca...

Nber Working Paper Series a Political Theory of Populism

When voters fear that politicians may have a right-wing bias or that they may be influenced or corrupted by the rich elite, signals of true left-wing conviction are valuable. As a consequence, even a moderate politician seeking reelection chooses “populist’ policies i.e., policies to the left of the median voter as a way of signaling that he is not from the right. Truly right-wing politicians r...

How Political Science Can Contribute to Public Health: A Response to Gagnon and Colleagues

How to Defeat Dictionary Attacks without Encrypting Public Keys

Classical cryptographic protocols based on shared secret keys often are vulnerable to key-guessing attacks. For security, the keys must be strong, diicult to memorize for humans. Bellovin and Merritt 4] proposed \encrypted key exchange" (EKE) protocols, to frustrate key-guessing attacks. EKE requires the use of asymmetric cryptosystems and is based on encrypting the public key, using a symmetri...