Good Authority’s mission is to bring insights from political science to a broader audience. Here, political scientists draw on their expertise and the discipline’s research to provide in-depth analysis, illuminate the news, and inform the political conversation.
Good Authority is the successor to The Monkey Cage, a site that was founded in 2007 and published at the Washington Post from 2013-2022.
Everything we publish is freely available with no paywall or subscription fee. All pieces are under a Creative Commons license and can be copied and redistributed as long as the work is attributed to us and any changes are noted. Instructors may want to consult our teaching resources page to find explainers and more.
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Publisher & Editor-in-Chief
John Sides is professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. He specializes in public opinion, voting, and American elections. His most recent book is The Bitter End: The 2020 Presidential Campaign and the Challenge to American Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2022).
Editors
Sarah Binder is professor of political science at George Washington University and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. She studies American political institutions, especially Congress. Her most recent book (co-authored with Mark Spindel) is The Myth of Independence: How Congress Governs the Federal Reserve (Princeton University Press, 2017).
Nadia Brown is professor of government at Georgetown University. She studies identity politics and legislatures, with a focus on Black women. She is co-author of Sister Style: The Politics of Appearance for Black Women Political Elites (Oxford University Press, 2021).
Christopher Clary is associate professor of political science at the University at Albany, State University of New York and a nonresident fellow with the Stimson Center’s South Asia program. He is the author of The Difficult Politics of Peace: Rivalry in Modern South Asia (Oxford University Press, 2022).
Kim Yi Dionne is associate professor of political science at the University of California, Riverside. She studies African politics and public health. She is the author of Doomed Interventions: The Failure of Global Responses to AIDS in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
Stacie E. Goddard is Betty Freyhof Johnson ’44 Professor of Political Science and Paula Phillips Bernstein ’58 Faculty Director of the Madeleine K. Albright Institute for Global Affairs at Wellesley College. Her research focuses on issues of international security, especially great power competition and its effects on international institutions. Her most recent book is When Right Makes Might: Rising Powers and World Order (Cornell University Press, 2018).
Alexandra Guisinger is associate professor of political science at Temple University. She is co-principal investigator of the Foreign Policy in a Diverse Society project, housed in Temple University’s Public Policy Lab. She studies public, market, and governmental responses to foreign economic policy, and is the author of American Opinion on Trade: Preferences without Politics (Oxford University Press, 2017).
Danny Hayes is professor of political science at George Washington University. He studies the media, gender politics, and public opinion. With Jennifer Lawless, he authored News Hole: The Demise of Local Journalism and Political Engagement (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Jeremy Wallace is the A. Doak Barnett Professor of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He studies China, climate change, cities, and statistics, and is the author of the China Lab newsletter. His most recent book is Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts: Information, Ideology and Authoritarianism in China (Oxford University Press, 2022).
Contributors
Christopher Federico is professor of political science and psychology and Beverly and Richard Fink Professor in Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. He studies political psychology, focusing in particular on the nature of ideology and belief systems, the psychological foundations of political preferences, and intergroup attitudes. He is co-author (with Christopher Johnston and Howard Lavine) of Open Versus Closed: Personality, Identity, and the Politics of Redistribution (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Danielle Gilbert is assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University and a fellow with the Bridging the Gap Project. She studies political violence, international security, hostage taking, and negotiations.
Carolyn E. Holmes is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her research interests are on democracy and nationalism.
Danielle L. Lupton is associate professor of political science at Colgate University and co-editor of International Studies Perspectives. Her research investigates the impact of political elites on international security and foreign policy, with a focus on leaders use the tools of coercion to achieve their foreign policy goals. She is the author of Reputation for Resolve: How Leaders Signal Determination in International Politics (Cornell University Press, 2020).
Zein Murib is associate professor of political science and affiliated faculty with Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Fordham University. Murib’s research and teaching interests are informed by feminist and queer theory and located at the intersection of scholarship on gender and sexuality, interest groups and social movements, and marginalized political identities in U.S. politics. Murib’s first book is Terms of Exclusion: Rightful Citizenship Claims and the Construction of LGBT Political Identity (Oxford University Press, 2023).
Andrew Rudalevige is Thomas Brackett Reed Professor of Government at Bowdoin College. He studies American political institutions, especially the presidency and executive branch. His most recent book is the award-winning By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power (Princeton University Press, 2021).
Elizabeth N. Saunders is professor of political science at Columbia University. She studies international relations and U.S. foreign policy. She is the author of The Insiders’ Game: How Elites Make War and Peace (Princeton University Press, 2024).
Brian Schaffner is the Newhouse Professor of Civic Studies in Political Science and Tisch College at Tufts University and the co-Director of the Cooperative Election Study. His research focuses on public opinion, campaigns and elections, political parties, and race and prejudice in American politics. He is co-author of the books Hometown Inequality: Race, Class, and Representation in American Local Politics and Campaign Finance and Political Polarization: When Purists Prevail, and he is currently an Andrew Carnegie Fellow.
Michael Tesler is professor of political science at UC Irvine. He is the author of Post-Racial or Most Racial? Race and Politics in the Obama Era (University of Chicago Press, 2016), and co-author of Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America (Princeton University Press, 2019).
Joshua Tucker is professor of politics and affiliated professor of Russian and Slavic studies and data science at New York University. He is the director of the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia and the co-director of the NYU Center for Social Media and Politics and the Social Media and Political Participation (SMaPP) Lab. He is the author of Regional Economic Voting (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and the co-author of Communism’s Shadow (Princeton University Press, 2017).
Erik Voeten is Peter F. Krogh Professor of Geopolitics and Justice in World Affairs in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He studies international law and institutions. He is the author of numerous articles and Ideology and International Institutions (Princeton University Press, 2021).
Kelebogile Zvobgo is the Mansfield Associate Professor of Government at William & Mary and the founder and director of the International Justice Lab. She studies human rights, transitional justice, and international law and courts. Her first book is Governing Truth: NGOs and the Politics of Transitional Justice (Oxford University Press, 2026).
Good Authority Fellows, 2025 – 2026
Meet our Good Authority fellows!
Kelechi Amakoh is a political scientist at Michigan State University, focusing on political behavior, campaign messaging, and democratic governance in multiethnic societies. His research examines how elite communication, especially negative campaign messages, affects voter perceptions and ethnic polarization. Kelechi also explores the media’s role in shaping social cohesion and preventing conflict in diverse societies.
Isabella Bellezza is a PhD candidate at Brown University and an incoming assistant professor of political science and College Fellow at Northwestern University. She studies the international politics of border control and the role of secrecy in international relations.
Isabelle DeSisto is a PhD candidate in politics at Princeton University. Her dissertation analyzes the long-term political consequences of violence in Eastern Europe. In other research projects, she studies revolutions, public opinion, and local governance in the region.
Eun A Jo is an assistant professor of government at William & Mary. She studies historical memory and nationalism with a focus on East Asia.
Eric Gonzalez Juenke is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and the Chicano/Latino Studies Program at Michigan State University. He specializes in racial and ethnic politics; U.S. federal, state, and local elections; legislative and bureaucratic minority representation; immigration politics; and democratic theory. His recent book The Presidency and Immigration Policy: Rhetoric and Reality (with Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha and Andrea Silva) examines how U.S. presidents talk about immigration. His current book project (with Paru Shah and Bernard Fraga) focuses on the election of racial and ethnic minority candidates to state legislative office in the United States.
Mert Kartal is an associate professor of political Science at St. Lawrence University. His research lies at the intersection of international organizations and European politics, with a focus on the European Union’s influence on corruption control in both its existing and potential member states. His work has been published in multiple outlets, including the Journal of European Public Policy, West European Politics, the Journal of European Integration, and Comparative European Politics.
Nicholas G. Napolio is assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Riverside. He researches American political institutions – specifically Congress, the executive branch, and the separation of powers.
William G. Nomikos is assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He conducts research on international intervention, statebuilding, and ethnic conflict. He is the author of Local Peace, International Builders: How UN Peacekeeping Builds Peace from the Bottom Up (Cambridge University Press, 2025).
Jan Zilinsky is postdoctoral fellow at the Technical University of Munich as well as a research associate at the NYU Center for Social Media and Politics and the Slovak Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on the impact of technology on politics and society, encompassing its manifestations such as anti-technology sentiment and campaigns centered on grievances, economic populism, and conspiracism.
Good Authority Fellows, 2024 – 2025
Our first cohort of Good Authority fellows (2024-2025): Emmanuel Balogun, Laura C. Bucci, Niambi M. Carter, Alexander Kustov, Brent E. Sasley, and Heather Sullivan.
Supporters
We are grateful for the ongoing support of the Carnegie Corporation and Vanderbilt University. Our previous supporters include the Democracy Fund, George Washington University, the Hewlett Foundation, and the New Venture Fund.
Site credits
Good Authority’s site is supported by Tallest Tree Digital, which provides our hosting, SEO, and TopicalBoost—the editorial AI plugin that powers our topic pages and schema structured data.