Research
My research focuses on two areas. Firstly, I am interested in how technological innovations can disrupt democratic institutions, and secondly, I am interested how activists have organized for influence and taken advantage of this disruption.
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More details about my published research are available below, as well as on my C.V. Please contact me at benjamin.farrer@unlv.edu if you have any questions.
Technological Innovations
I am interested in how new technologies can disrupt one of the core functions of democratic institutions: protecting minority rights. Although majority rule embodies much of the essence of democracy, it must be tempered by institutional protections for minority rights, lest the triumphant 51% expropriate at will from the 49%. New technologies can erode these protections of minority rights, because they allow expropriation to take new forms. If a technology creates a new risk, outside of enumerated protected rights, then those risks can fall disproportionately on minority groups. When such technologies emerge, they expand the scope of conflict to include not just the technology itself, but also the very fabric of the constitution.
It is this research question that resulted in my NSF award (#1851834) of just over $300,000. This project used a recent example – over environmental policy on hydraulic fracturing – to show that democratic institutions are lagging dangerously far behind some of the technological questions that divide society.
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I am particularly interested in applying this theory to the context of social media. In Political Studies in 2022, I argued that social media technology has disrupted the democratic institution of the ‘public sphere’. This technology has made political debate less like a ‘digital town square’ and more like a digital natural resource where our attention can be harvested. Eventually the overuse of this resource leads to polarization and a breakdown of the public sphere. This piece attracted considerable attention outside of academia and was featured by Ezra Klein in The New York Times.
Organizing for Influence
The other major question in my research agenda is how organized groups can take advantage of these disrupted institutions. My book Organizing for Policy Influence develops a holistic theory of how under-represented groups gain policy influence. I highlight the role of organizational choice. Under-represented groups can choose to form either political parties, interest groups, or direct action groups, and their choice is determined by the democratic institutions that make it easier or harder for those organizations to influence policy. The book explains how variables of perennial interest in political science, like party system size, policy outcomes, and activists’ individual behaviors, can all be explained and predicted with this theory. Since the publication of the book, I have published several further papers using this framework, including work on environmental direct action, and the coalition politics of major parties.
