Thread by @donmoyn

Started a substack this year (I know, I'm sorry) on the overarching theme of threats to governance.

Here were the three stories that drew the most interest and some reflections.

#1 discusses the bullshit/branding combo fueling educational gag orders: donmoynihan.substack.com/p/bullshit-bra…

First observation: my most popular piece was about the culture wars! But my interest is how culture war politics affect governance, so I followed this up with a series of stories about how the anti-CRT movement is affecting school officials and leading to book bans. 2/

Tracing the effects of the CRT moral panic 3/
The book bans will continue until patriotism improves: donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-book-ban…

How school officials en up both siding the Holocaust donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-lessons-…

Making public jobs impossible donmoynihan.substack.com/p/making-publi…

Second reflection: part of what compelled me to start writing is the sense that populism is having a real and tangible effect on the ability of public officials to use expertise to do their jobs. Will be writing more about this in the domains of public health & elections 4/

Second most popular piece: review of Fox News coverage.
By sifting through the evidence and focusing on a series of high-quality social science studies, I make the case that Fox is *causing* worse pandemic health outcomes. 5/
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/fox-news-is-…

Third reflection: a lot of governance outcomes are co-produced, i.e. depend on coordinated action btw government, civil society and the individual. The pandemic has underlined this point. But anti-government outlets like Fox make that coordination much less likely in the US. 6/

Third most popular story: very insider baseball story about how the Biden administration puts the citizen experience of government at the center of its administrative reform agenda. 7/
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-biden-ad…

This was followed by two more pieces about efforts to improve user exeperiences in specific policy domains like health
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-biden-ad…
and a new Biden customer experience order. 8/ donmoynihan.substack.com/p/understandin…

Fourth observation: it's really exciting to write about wonky govt administration topics in a way that explains their relevance to a broader public. Thats a journey I've been on over the last decade as a scholar, and the goal of the substack is to do it in a different venue. 9/

Fifth observation: writing a piece once a week or so is a challenge. I have new-found respect for those who do this full time! But it feels like good governance has never been more relevant, and so there is an obligation on those of us who study it to reach out 10/

Sixth observation: I was skeptical about substack but was propelled when - all the way back in Sept! - I was struggling to place an op-ed piece about Manchin going after the Child Tax Credit. Lot of value in just being able to post something quickly. 11/
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/save-the-chi…