POSTPONED-The Price of Democracy

Date
Tue April 7th 2020, 12:00am
Event Sponsor
McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society
Location
Levinthal Hall 424 Santa Teresa Street Stanford, CA 94305
POSTPONED-The Price of Democracy

One person, one vote. In theory, everyone in a democracy has equal power to decide elections. But it’s hardly news that, in reality, political outcomes are heavily determined by the logic of one dollar, one vote. We take the political power of money for granted. But does it have to be this way? In The Price of Democracy (English edition, Harvard University Press, March 2020), Julia Cagé combines economic and historical analysis with political theory to show how profoundly our systems in North America and Europe, from think tanks and the media to election campaigns, are shaped by money. She proposes fundamental reforms to bring democracy back into line with its egalitarian promise.

Cagé is an Assistant Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at Sciences Po Paris, and a Research Affiliate at the Center for Economic Policy Research. She is also co-director of the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Evaluation of Public Policies (LIEPP)’s “Evaluation of Democracy” research group. Her research interests focus on political economy, industrial organization, and economic history. She is particularly interested in media economics, political participation and political attitudes, and has authored two books on the subject: Saving the Media. Capitalism, Crowdfunding and Democracy, Paris, Le Seuil, 2015, translated in eleven different languages (English translation: Harvard University Press, 2016), and L’Information à tout prix (with Nicolas Hervé and Marie-Luce Viaud, INA Editions, 2017).