PolicyCast

Harvard Kennedy School
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PolicyCast

PolicyCast explores research-based policy solutions to the big problems and issues we're facing in our society and our world. Host Ralph Ranalli talks with leading Harvard University academics and researchers, visiting scholars, dignitaries, and world leaders. PolicyCast is produced at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

  1. AI can make governing better instead of worse. Yes, you heard that right.

    6D AGO

    AI can make governing better instead of worse. Yes, you heard that right.

    Danielle Allen and Mark Fagan say that when tested, thoughtfully deployed, and regulated, AI actually can help governments serve citizens better. Sure, there is no shortage of horror stories these days about the intersection of AI and government—from a municipal chatbot that told restaurant owners it was OK to serve food that had been gnawed by rodents to artificial intelligence police tools that misidentify suspects through faulty facial recognition. And now the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE say they are fast-tracking the use of AI to root out government waste and fraud, while making public virtually no details about what tools they are using or how they’ll be deployed. But Allen and Fagan say that, while careless deployment creates risks like opening security holes, exacerbating inefficiencies, and automating flawed decision-making, AI done the right way can help administrators and policymakers make better and smarter decisions, and can make governments more accessible and responsive to the citizens they serve. They also say we need to reorient our thinking from AI being a replacement for human judgement to more of a partnership model where each brings its strengths to the table. Danielle Allen is an HKS professor and the founder of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation. Mark Fagan is a Lecturer in Public Policy and faculty chair of the Delivering Public Services section of the Executive Education Program at HKS. They join PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to explain the guidelines, guardrails, and principles that can help government get AI right. Danielle Allen’s Policy Recommendations: * Federally license firms leading AI development in the same way other national high-risk labs are licensed, and require close reporting out of what they are discovering on an ongoing basis. * Support the "people's bid" for TikTok and generally promote an alternative, pro-social model for social media platforms. * Establish AI offices in state governments: Create offices that use AI to enhance openness, accountability, and transparency in government. Mark Fagan's Policy Recommendations: * Implement "sandbox" spaces for regulatory experimentation that allow organizations to test different policy ideas in a controlled environment to see what works. * Adopt a risk-based regulatory approach similar to the EU that categorize AI regulations based on risk levels, with clear guidelines on high-risk activities where AI use is prohibited versus those where experimentation is allowed.

    42 min
  2. Ricardo Hausmann on the rise of industrial policy, green growth, and Trump’s tariffs

    MAR 5

    Ricardo Hausmann on the rise of industrial policy, green growth, and Trump’s tariffs

    For market purists, any mention of the term industrial policy used to evoke visions of heavy-handed Soviet-style central planning, or the stifling state-centric protectionism employed by Latin American countries in the late 20th century. But that conversation turned dramatically over the last several years, as President Joe Biden’s signature legislative achievements like the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act showcased policies designed to influence and shape industries ranging from tech to pharma to green energy. My guest today, Harvard Kennedy School Professor Ricardo Hausmann, is the founder and director of the Growth Lab, which studies ways to unlock economic growth and collaborates with policymakers to promote inclusive prosperity around the world. Hausmann says he believes markets are useful, but have shown themselves inadequate to create public benefits at a time when public objectives like the clean energy transition and shared prosperity have become increasingly essential to human society. In a wide-ranging conversation, we’ll discuss why industrial policy is making a comeback, tools that the Growth Lab has developed to help poorer countries and regions develop and prosper, and the uncertainty being caused by President Trump’s pledge to raise tariffs and protectionist barriers. Policy Recommendations: * Encourage governments to track industries that are not yet developed but have the potential for growth and monitor technological advancements to identify how new technologies can impact existing industries or create new opportunities. * Develop state organizations that are deeply embedded in understanding societal trends and industrial potential, similar to Israel’s office of the Chief Scientist or the U.S. Presidential Commission on Science and Technology. * Encourage governments to develop a pre-approved set of tools—including training, educational programs, research programs, and infrastructure—that can be quickly mobilized for specific economic opportunities. * Teach policy design in a way that mirrors medical education (e.g., learning by doing as in a teaching hospital), because successful policy design requires real-world experience, not just theoretical knowledge.

    59 min
  3. Oligarchy in the open: What happens now as the U.S. confronts its plutocracy problem?

    FEB 13

    Oligarchy in the open: What happens now as the U.S. confronts its plutocracy problem?

    Ten years ago, political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern took an extraordinary data set compiled by Gilens and a small army of researchers and set out to determine whether America could still credibly call itself a democracy. They used case studies 1,800 policy proposals over 30 years, tracking how they made their way through the political system and whose interests were served by outcomes. For small D democrats, the results were devastating. Political outcomes overwhelmingly favored very wealthy people, corporations, and business groups. The influence of ordinary citizens, meanwhile, was at a “non-significant, near-zero level.” America, they concluded, was not a democracy at all, but a functional oligarchy. Fast forward to 2024 and a presidential campaign that saw record support by billionaires for both candidates, but most conspicuously for Republican candidate Donald Trump from Tesla and Starlink owner Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. That prompted outgoing President Joe Biden, in his farewell address, to warn Americans about impending oligarchy—something Gilens and Page said was already a fait accompli ten years before. And as if on cue, the new president put billionaire tech bro supporters like Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg front and center at his inauguration and has given Musk previously unimaginable power to dismantle and reshape the federal government through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. So what does it mean that American oligarchy is now so brazenly out in the open? Joining host Ralph Ranalli are Harvard Kennedy School Professor Archon Fung and Harvard Law School Professor Larry Lessig, who say it could an inflection point that will force Americans to finally confront the country’s trend toward rule by the wealthy, but that it’s by no means certain that that direction can be changed anytime soon. Archon Fung is a democratic theorist and faculty director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at HKS. Larry Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School and a 2016 presidential candidate whose central campaign theme was ridding politics of the corrupting influence of money. Archon Fung’s Policy Recommendations: ● Involve the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in monitoring executive orders and changes to the federal government being made by President Trump, Elon Musk, and other Trump proxies. ● Demand transparency from Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency about their actions in federal agencies, what changes and modifications they are making to systems, and an accounting of what information they have access to. Lawrence Lessig’s Policy Recommendations ● Build support for a test court case to overturn the legality of Super PACs, which are allowed to raise unlimited amounts of money from corporations, unions, associations and individuals, then spend unlimited sums to overtly advocate for or against political candidates. ● Experiment with alternative campaign funding mechanisms, such as a voucher program that would give individuals public money that they could pledge to political candidates. ● Urge Democratic Party leaders to lead by example and outlaw Super PAC participation in Democratic primaries.

    47 min
  4. What the EU must do to compete—and become the leader the world needs

    FEB 7

    What the EU must do to compete—and become the leader the world needs

    Alexander De Croo became Belgium’s prime minister in October of 2020. It’s a relatively small country, with about 12 million inhabitants—slightly less than the city of Los Angeles—but it’s very much the face of Europe with the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, and NATO all calling Brussels home. Prime Minister De Croo, who saw the country through the COVID pandemic, says that the geopolitical and economic upheavals already being instigated by the “America first” ethos of President Donald Trump will present another stiff test for the leadership of not only his country but the EU. In this episode of HKS PolicyCast with host Ralph Ranalli, De Croo says the key to Europe not just surviving that challenge but also thriving will depend on its ability to raise its level of economic competitiveness significantly in the coming decades. While still a powerful trading bloc, the EU’s economic growth has been slowing since the year 2000 and it’s an also-ran to the US and China in the vital tech sector, with only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies being based in Europe. It’s also facing the challenge of long-term demographic trends—by 2040 the EU’s workforce is projected to shrink by 2 million workers a year. So, as the US retreats from global leadership on fronts ranging from the green energy transition to human rights, De Croo says Europe must make urgent economic policy changes to maintain both its values and its status a leader on the world stage. Programming note: As this discussion was being recorded, a coalition of five parties—led by the separatist New Flemish Alliance and not including Mr. De Croo’s center-right Open VLD party—agreed to form a new government, effectively ending his tenure as prime minister. Alexander De Croo’s Policy Recommendations: - Eliminate excessive corporate reporting systems like CSRD (the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) that add bureaucratic burdens to businesses without improving corporate behavior. - Implement a non-permanent migration system that allows young people to study in Europe and stay for a set period of time, after which they are required to return to their home countries. - Maintain Europe's openness to the world while protecting core European interests, and act assertively in areas—trade, climate sustainability, development, diplomacy—where the EU is already a global leader.

    36 min
  5. The policy changes needed now to avoid a climate-driven global food crisis

    JAN 24

    The policy changes needed now to avoid a climate-driven global food crisis

    The warning lights are blinking for the world’s food supply. At least that’s what 150 Nobel Prize and World Food Prize laureates said in a recently-published open letter calling for a “moonshot” urgency effort to start the immediate ramping up of food production to meet the global demands of 9.7 billion people by 2050. Harvard Kennedy School economist Wolfram Schlenker, the new Ray A. Goldberg Professor of the Global Food System says doing that will require urgent policy changes and, in some cases, policy reversals to meet those goals against the headwinds of climate change. Even as crop yields are under stress due to rising temperatures and extreme weather events, Schlenker says spending on research and development of new, climate-resistant crops and other food technologies has declined. Countries are also starting to put up more protectionist barriers around their domestic agricultural sectors, undermining the global free trade in staple food commodities that is essential to preventing severe agricultural shocks that can result in civil upheaval, mass migration, and global instability. Schlenker is the co-author of a groundbreaking study in 2009 which found that crop yields fall precipitously after reaching a certain heat threshold. The study’s conclusions were validated just three years later when a heat wave over the U.S. corn belt saw yields drop by 25 percent. With 700 million people globally already classified as undernourished and the world having at least temporarily breached the crucial 1.5 degrees Celsius warming standard in 2024, it may be the most important problem nobody’s talking about. Schlenker joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to talk about the ticking global food crisis clock and policy changes that could make a difference. Wolfram Schlenker’s Policy Recommendations: - Reinforce World Trade Organization rules around free trade in agriculture and limit beggar-thy-neighbor policies to cushion food supply shocks when climate shocks hit. - Reverse the current decline in public R&D funding for agricultural technologies. Private companies, which currently conduct most of the R&D, do not have the correct incentives to innovate when there are positive spillovers on others. - Ensure that the Social Cost of Carbon — the cost of emitting an extra ton of CO2 — reflects its impact on all countries and not just the U.S., as climate change is a global problem.

    39 min
  6. From insight to impact: Dean Jeremy Weinstein wants the Kennedy School to embrace and solve complex public problems

    JAN 8

    From insight to impact: Dean Jeremy Weinstein wants the Kennedy School to embrace and solve complex public problems

    Jeremy Weinstein became the newest dean in the 88-year history of the Harvard Kennedy School this past June, arriving from Stanford University, where he was an award-winning scholar and the founding faculty director of the Stanford Impact Labs. The pursuit of deep scholarly curiosity and roll-up-your-sleeves impact has been a theme in his life and career, as well as an approach he intends to accelerate schoolwide at HKS under his leadership. Growing up, Weinstein experienced a family run-in with government policy gone horribly wrong—one that could have inspired a deep cynicism about the role of government in people’s lives. He found inspiration instead and embarked on a career that has encompassed field research on the ground in post-conflict countries including Uganda, Mozambique, and Peru; wide-ranging scholarship in areas including political violence, the political economy of development, migration, and technology’s proper role in society; government service at the National Security Council and as Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations during the Obama administration. He has also been an academic leader who has led major initiatives including the Stanford Impact Labs and the Immigration Policy Lab. His new job marks a return to HKS, where he earned both his master’s and PhD in political economy and government. He joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to talk about his life experiences, how they shaped him as a scholar and leader, and what he believes the role of the Kennedy School should be in challenging times for academia, the United States, and the world. Jeremy Weinstein’s recommendations for restoring trust in public institutions, expertise, and scholarship: ● Reclaim the civic purpose of higher education and prioritize its role in serving democratic institutions and solving societal problems. ● Reconnect to the real-world problems people are experiencing and ensure that the questions being asked and answered by scholars and researchers are ones that can help public institutions make progress. ● Leverage expertise and use science and innovation to tackle pressing challenges including economic insecurity, housing insecurity, food access, access to health care, and geographic disparities in economic development. ● Realign incentives and allocate resources to position higher education institutions as active problem-solving partners, particularly at the state and local level where governors, mayors, and county leaders design policies that directly impact people’s daily lives. ● Demonstrate the value of science, expertise, and policy innovation by producing results people can see and benefit from, and emphasize their value in ensuring that government dollars at all levels are spent efficiently.

    56 min
  7. Legalized gambling is exploding globally. What policies can limit its harms?

    11/21/2024

    Legalized gambling is exploding globally. What policies can limit its harms?

    Turbocharged by the internet and mobile technology, legalized gambling has exploded across the globe, leaving behind ruined lives, broken families and financial hardships, and should now be classified as a major public health concern. A four-year study by a public health commission on gambling convened by The Lancet, the respected British journal of medicine, found that net global losses by gamblers could exceed $700 billion by the year 2028, and that 80% of countries now allow some form of legal gambling. But HKS Professor Malcolm Sparrow, a leading scholar on regulating societal harms, says that in reality the percentage of countries where gambling is practiced is closer to 100% because internet- and mobile-based gambling—often using cryptocurrencies—can easily circumvent borders. Among the commission's more concerning findings is that a significant portion of virtual gamblers are teenagers, and that more than 1 in 4 teens are at risk of becoming compulsive or problem gamblers. Sparrow tells PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli that the harms are also widespread, since the suffering from each problem gambler also affects on average six to eight people around them—ranging from spouses to relatives to friends to employers and co-workers. Sparrow says the commission has identified a number of policy solutions to mitigate the growing fallout from gambling expansion, ranging from limiting the speed and intensity of virtual gambling products to prohibiting gambling with credit cards and banning gaming companies from offering loans. Policy Recommendations from the Lancet Public Health Commission on Gambling: - Push governments to define gambling as primarily a public health issue, and prioritize health and wellbeing over economic gains when crafting gambling policies. - Adopt effective regulation in all countries—regardless of whether or not they have legalized gambling—including limiting promotion and marketing, providing accessible support for betting-related harms, and denormalizing gambling through public awareness campaigns. - Create independent regulators in jurisdictions where gambling is legal to enforce protections including safeguards for young people, consumer protections, and mandatory limits on gambling activities. - Shield development of gambling policies, research, and treatment from industry influence through a shift to independent funding sources. - At the international level, require UN entities and intergovernmental organizations to address gambling harms as part of broader health and wellbeing strategies. - Create an international alliance of stakeholders to lead advocacy, research, and collaboration on gambling-related issues. - Adopt a resolution recognizing the public health impacts of gambling at the World Health Assembly.

    43 min
  8. How emotion science could help solve the leading cause of preventable death

    11/07/2024

    How emotion science could help solve the leading cause of preventable death

    The World Health Organization says smoking is the leading cause of global preventable death, killing up to 8 million people prematurely every year—far more than die in wars and conflicts. Yet the emotions evoked by national and international anti-smoking campaigns and the impact of those emotions has never been fully studied until now. HKS Professor Jennifer Lerner, a decision scientist who studies emotion, and Vaughan Rees, the director for the Center for Global Tobacco Control at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, say their research involving actual smokers in the lab shows that sadness—the emotion most often evoked in anti-smoking ads—can actually induce people to smoke more. Lerner and Rees’ research also found that evoking gratitude, an emotion that appears to function in nearly the exact opposite manner to sadness, made people want to smoke less and made them more likely to join a smoking-cessation program. Lerner and Rees join host Ralph Ranalli on the latest episode of the HKS PolicyCast to discuss their research and to offer research-backed policy recommendations—including closer collaboration between researchers who study emotion science, which is also known as affective science, and agencies like the Centers for Disease Control. Jennifer Lerner’s Policy Recommendations: ● Promote active collaboration between researchers and public health agencies (e.g., CDC, FDA) to develop health communications that leverage the most current, research-backed findings from affective and decision science. ● Rigorously assess not only the benefits of public service announcements but also potential harms. Assessments often overlook the emotional distress these messages can cause, despite the potential of distress to undermine desired outcomes. Vaughan Rees’ Policy Recommendations: ● Expand research into integrating emotion-based strategies, such as gratitude exercises, into school-based prevention programs for adolescents to reduce the risk of tobacco and other substance use, as well as risky sexual behaviors. ● Introduce research-backed, emotion-based components in cessation counseling and support systems, helping individuals better manage high-risk situations and maintain abstinence after quitting.

    43 min
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About

PolicyCast explores research-based policy solutions to the big problems and issues we're facing in our society and our world. Host Ralph Ranalli talks with leading Harvard University academics and researchers, visiting scholars, dignitaries, and world leaders. PolicyCast is produced at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

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  • Creator
    Harvard Kennedy School
  • Years Active
    2012 - 2025
  • Episodes
    212
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2022 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
  • Show Website
    PolicyCast

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