Who enters politics?
24 min
Three in four people in Africa say elections are the best way to choose their leaders. Only 37% are satisfied with how their democracy works. In the US, 16% of people trust the federal government, and when asked to name the biggest problem with the political system, the most common answer is politicians. Voters have not lost faith in democracy, but they are less sure about the people it puts in charge. Rohini Pande (Yale) and Katherine Casey (Stanford) tell Tim Phillips about the experiments to fix that problem. Higher pay for politicians, better information about what citizens want for party gatekeepers, and quotas that put women into office have all had an effect, even if there's a long way to go to improve political selection, representation, voice, representation and inclusion. The research behind this episode: Casey, Katherine, and Rohini Pande. 2026. "Political Selection, Representation, Voice and Inclusion." Lecture 7, BREAD-IGC virtual PhD-level course on political economy, 20 October 2026. The course page also has the lecture reading list. To cite this episode: Phillips, Tim, Katherine Casey, and Rohini Pande. 2026. "Who enters politics?" VoxDev Talks (podcast).About the guestsKatherine Casey is the RoAnn Costin Professor of Political Economy at Stanford Graduate School of Business, faculty director of the King Center on Global Development, and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Her research spans the role of information in political accountability, the effects of foreign aid on economic development, and the provision of public infrastructure, much of it based on fieldwork in Sierra Leone. Rohini Pande is the Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Economics and director of the Economic Growth Center at Yale University, and faculty director of Inclusion Economics at Yale. Her research spans how formal and informal institutions shape power and economic and political advantage, including political representation, gender, accountabi...
