Fred Block | Research professor at U.C. Davis
New Research Spotlights Political Donation Changes
Our colleagues at the Scholars Strategy Network have launched a major research project that focuses on changes in the role of donors in both the Republican and the Democratic Parties. One important focus of their research is the funding network created by the Koch Brothers that they see as bringing about a major transformation in conservative politics.
Here at the Center for Engaged Scholarship, we are particularly interested in the activities of the Koch Brothers on college and university campuses.
For extensive resources on this topic, click here to access the invaluable website Unkoch My Campus.
But it is extremely important to place the Koch’s academic strategy in the context of their larger effort to transform the U.S. political landscape and the work being done by Skocpol, Hertel-Fernandez and colleagues is indispensable.
Theda Skocpol and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Harvard University
A major new research project at Harvard University documents transformations in advocacy groups, constituency organizations, think tanks, and donor organizations operating around the Democratic and Republican parties – and asks how these shifts contribute to GOP extremism, government gridlock, and public policies that spur economic inequality.
Click here for an overview of the Shifting Terrain research project and a list of its principal participants. Preliminary results from the project document startling resource re-allocations on the U.S. right and major imbalances between organized right and left networks operating at both the national and cross-state levels in U.S. politics.
To read more on this subject, click here.