Recent Essays and Op-Eds:

• On Corruption and the 2020 U.S. Election
  • “Who is Donald Trump, really? And how are we supposed to process his presidency?” The Big Q (The University of Auckland), December 3, 2020
  • “Will Trump’s Coup Succeed?”, Public Seminar (The New School), November 5, 2020
  • “The Oligarchs’ Charter,” Public Books (Columbia University), October 2020; “La charte des oligarques,” le vie des idées (Collège de France), October 2020
  • “Trump’s dirty money,” Newsroom, September 28, 2020
  • “Why Trump Could Win Again: Democrats Must Respond to Rising Inequality and the Working Class,” (with Benjamin I. Page), Public Seminar (The New School), September 17, 2020

• On New Zealand:
  • “Reputation vs. Reality: how vulnerable is New Zealand to systemic corruption?” The Spinoff, March 6, 2020
  • “Peeling back the shroud on political lobbying” (with Maria Armoudian), New Zealand Herald, October 23, 2019

Book chapters:

•  ***The Third Coming of American Plutocracy*** How important is campaign finance reform? How significant is the role played by democracy reformers today? Government by and for the wealthy has ruled the United States during three historical eras: the slavery era, the industrial era (including the Gilded Age), and today’s neoliberal era. I argue that the importance of campaign finance reform cannot be understood without examining the parallels between these categorically unjust periods and our own moment in history. Democracy remains unfinished. To guarantee freedom, equality, and self-government for all, a new stage of the civil rights movement is required. This chapter appears in Democracy by the People: Reforming Campaign Finance in America (Eugene D. Mazo & Timothy K. Kuhner, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2018).

• ***The Abolition of Class Government*** Every political system has a foundational principle–a core structural prescription about how the economy and the state are supposed to operate. Take as examples ‘the abolition of private control of the means of economic production’ and ‘the establishment of communist party control over the means of political production.’ Those foundational principles define Marxism and communism. Or consider ‘the abolition of public control of the means of economic production and the consolidation of private control of the means of political production.’ Those foundational principles define capitalist democracy. In this chapter, I propose a foundational principle for social democracy: the abolition of private control over the means of political production, including elections and appointments, campaign and party finance, popular participation, and legislative and policy-making processes. Or, for short, the abolition of class government. This chapter appears in The Constitution of Social Democracy (Alan Bogg, Jacob Rowbottom, and Alison Young, eds., Hart Publishing, 2020). Also available on Amazon.com

Essays on the United States prior to Trump:

• Salon.com: This Is Not a Democracy
• Stanford University Press Blog: A New Era of Political Exclusion
• Common Cause’s Democracy Wire: Free Market Democracy (Part I),  Wealth as the Last Lawful Means of Political Exclusion (Part II), and A Path Forward (Part III)
• Stanford University Press Blog: A Roberts Court Re-Write of Rawls
• World Financial Review: The New Tyranny: A Preface to the U.S. 2016 Elections

Articles about campaign finance and corruption published in law journals:

• American Kleptocracy: How to Categorise Trump and His Government – King’s Law Journal (2017)
• The Market Metaphor, Radicalized: How a Capitalist Theology Trumped Democracy – Election Law Journal (2017)
• The Next American Revolution – ClassCrits IX symposium, Western New England Law Review (2017)
• Plutocracy and Partyocracy: Oligarchies Born of Constitutional Interpretation – The Review of Constitutional Studies (2016)
• The Corruption of Liberal and Social Democracies– Fordham Law Review (2016)
• American Plutocracy – King’s Law Journal (2015)
• The Separation of Business and State –  California Law Review (2007)
• Citizens United as Neoliberal Jurisprudence – Virginia Journal of Social Policy and Law (2011)
• Consumer Sovereignty Trumps Popular Sovereignty – Indiana Law Review (2013)
• The Democracy to which We Are Entitled – Harvard Human Rights Journal (2013)
• Political Finance as the Central Issue of Our Time -ClassCrits VI Symposium, Southwestern Law Review (2014)