Publications

Working Paper
Carpenter D. Approval Regulation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence: Pitfalls, Plausibility, Optionality. Working Paper.Abstract

Observers and practitioners of artificial intelligence (AI) have conjectured the possibility of catastrophic risks associated with its emergence and development, risks that have led some to propose an FDA-style licensing regime for AI. In this essay I explore the applicability of approval regulation – that is, a model of product intro- duction that combines experimental minima with government licensure conditioned partially or fully upon that experimentation – to the regulation of frontier AI. There are a number of reasons to believe that approval regulation, simplistically applied, would be inapposite for frontier AI risks. Domains of weak fit include the difficulty of defining the regulated “product,” the presence of Knightian uncertainty or deep ambiguity about harms from AI, the potentially transmissible nature of risks, and the potential for massively distributed production of foundation models with min- imal observability of production. I consider four themes for future theoretical and empirical research: (1) the proper mix of approval regulation and other models such as liability or intellectual property regimes; (2) the possibility that deep ambigu- ity or Knightian uncertainty may require a kind of speculative pathology in which conjecturing scenarios is at least as important as placing probabilities upon them, in part because of the Lucretius problem; (3) the likely structure of industry and foundation-model generation, as the feasibility of approval regulation is higher with fewer producers, and much of the future of AI regulation may consist in labs and models monitoring one another; and (4) the possibility of community option value in the incremental development of AI regulation (including approval regulation), as regulatory policies may be more reversible in AI than in other settings, experimen- tation generates important public goods, and regulatory learning by doing is likely to be a property of any portfolio of policies in this arena.

approval-regulation-for-frontier-ai-regulation-20240111.pdf
In Press
Carpenter D. Empire, Ministry, Indigeneity. In Press. empire_ministry_indigeneity_20240114.pdf
Libgober B, Carpenter D. Lawyers as Lobbyists: Regulatory Advocacy in American Finance. Perspectives on Politics. In Press. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Administrative agencies have undertaken an increasingly substantial role in policymaking. Yet the influence-seeking that targets these agencies remains poorly understood. Reporting exceptions under the Lobbying Disclosure Act allow many of the most powerful advocates to characterize their activity as lawyering, not lobbying, and thereby fly under the radar. Using agency-generated records on lobbying activity, financial reporting, and personnel databases specific to lawyers, as well as LinkedIn, we describe a vast subterranean world of regulatory influence-seeking that the social-science literature has (mostly) ignored. Regulatory lobbying is systematically different from legislative lobbying. It involves different kinds of people and different lobbying firms that bring specific forms of expertise and distinct networks. Our key findings about how regulatory lobbying differs include the following: (1) the regulatory lobbying sector is highly segregated from the reported lobbying sector, with many regulatory advocates failing to consistently register or report earnings commensurate with their activity level, (2) the number of unregistered regulatory advocates working on the implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act plausibly exceeds 150% of the registered lobbyists working on that law, (3) the most effective regulatory lobbyists and law firms involved with regulatory lobbying have incomes that dramatically outpace leading reported lobbying firms (which are also mostly law firms), and (4) back-of-the-envelope calculations and more sophisticated decomposition regressions imply that aggregate expenditure on lawyer-lobbying is several multiples of reported lobbying spending. We introduce the case of a particular lawyer-lobbyist and provide a theoretical discussion to situate and contextualize these findings. Collectively, this work opens a window into neglected domains of politics and reveals an important and understudied form of political inequality.

lawyers-as-lobbyists-regulatory-advocacy-in-american-finance_copy.pdf
2023
Rand LZ, Carpenter D, Kesselheim AS, Bhaskar A, Darrow JJ, Feldman WB. Securing the Trustworthiness of the FDA to Build Public Trust in Vaccines. The Hastings Center report. 2023;53 (S2) :S60-S68. Publisher's VersionAbstract

The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the need to examine public trust in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) vaccine approval process and the role of political influence in the FDA’s decisions. Ensuring that the FDA is itself trustworthy is important for justifying public trust in its actions, like vaccine approvals, thereby promoting public health. We propose five conditions of trustworthiness that the FDA should meet when it reviews vaccines, even during emergencies: consistency with rules, proper expert or political decision-makers, proper decision-making and noninterference, connection to public preference, and transparency of both reasons and procedures. The five conditions provide a roadmap of procedural and substantive requirements, which the FDA has variably implemented, focused on ensuring appropriate influence of political interests. While being a trustworthy agency cannot guarantee the public’s trust, implementing these conditions build a groundwork for public trust.

securing_the_trustworthiness_of_the_fda_to_build_public_trust_in_vaccines_-_abstract.pdf
Carpenter D. Just How Much of History is Countable?. Political Science Quarterly. 2023.Abstract
How can historical perspective be brought to the quantitative social sciences? The question has proven immensely popular, but answers that deal squarely with historical context and narrative remain elusive. An important recent book by Gregory Wawro and Ira Katznelson—Time Counts—provides an important new direction and a kit of useable tools. Using Wawro and Katznelson's approach and methods puts social scientists in a better position to appreciate the historicity of their data and to avoid common errors in statistical execution and inference. Time Counts also raises questions every bit as vital as those it answers, especially when it comes to the boundaries between narrative and quantitative work. An important concern is that inference from a particular historical setting (or what I call a “regime”) cannot be reduced to a special case of inference from large-sample statistics. Historical judgment is at least partially incommensurable with the idea of probability, cases are often important precisely because they are not countable, and scientific rigor may demand avoiding quantification for part of the social scientist's approach.
carpenter_-_just_how_much_of_history_is_countable_psq_2023.pdf
Carpenter D. Agenda Democracy. Annual Review of Political Science. 2023;26 :193-212. Publisher's VersionAbstract

The study of agenda setting has become curiously disconnected from democratic theory and democratization. Following Schattschneider, Dahl, and recent developments in political theory, I call for its reintegration in theoretical and empirical realms. The concept of agenda democracy allows for better understanding of contests over institutions, significant historical-institutional transformations, the study of inequality and its mechanisms of generation and maintenance, and the building and undermining of democracy. Agenda democracy requires a broad understanding of agendas (beyond a mere menu of final policy choices), recognizes that many democratic regimes have institutions that systematically render agendas nondemocratic, and compels us to look at the interstices of institutions and society (party transformation, petition and grievance mechanisms, advocacy campaigns, initiatives to expand what I call the shortlist of the possible) for moments of significant change. Agenda democracy compels the examination of democratizing agenda restrictions, the study of conservative organizations in politics, and the consideration of decomposing the term “movement.”

agenda_democracy_final_published_2023_-_annurev-polisci-051921-102533-2_copy.pdf
2022
Strategic Realism, not Optimism: Bayesian and Indigenous Perspectives on the Democratizing Petition. Social Science History. 2022. Publisher's Version strategic-realism-not-optimism-bayesian-and-indigenous-perspectives-on-the-democratizing-petition.pdf
Strategic Realism, not Optimism: Bayesian and Indigenous Perspectives on the Democratizing Petition. Social Science History. 2022. Publisher's Version strategic-realism-not-optimism-bayesian-and-indigenous-perspectives-on-the-democratizing-petition.pdf
The Petition between Lobbying and Litigating (Balkinization Response to Levinson and Suk). 2022. the_petition_between_lobbying_and_litigation_balkinization_response_to_levinson_and_suk_20220419.pdf
Petitioning, Strategy and Agenda Democracy (Balkinization Response to Frances Lee and Robert Tsai). 2022. petitioning_strategy_and_agenda_democracy_20220419_balkinization_response_to_lee_and_tsai.pdf
Scholarship and Office: Some Thoughts on the Academic Freedom Alliance. 2022. some_thoughts_on_the_academic_freedom_alliance.pdf
Benjamin Schneer, Tobias Resch MBDC. The Popular Origins of Legislative Jurisdictions: Petitions and Standing Committee Formation in Colonial Virginia and the Early U.S. House. Journal of Politics. 2022;84 (3) :1727-1745. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Committee formation in early American legislatures happened when those assemblies were inundated with petitions, a relationship unexamined in institutional political science. We develop a model where a floor creates committees to respond to topic-specific petitions, predicting committee creation when petitions (1) are topically specific, (2) are spread across constituencies, and (3) have complex subject matter, and predicting committee appointments from petition-heavy constituencies. Analysis of case studies and with two original datasets – petitions sent to the Virginia House of Burgesses from 1766 to 1769, and over 100,000 petitions sent to Congress and recorded in the House Journal (1789-1875) – shows petitions, their complexity and their geographic dispersion predict committee creation. Our theoretical argument embeds asset specificity in legislative institutions, and helps reinterpret the entropy of political agendas and the origins of standing committees in American legislatures.
commpet_web.pdf
2021
Carpenter D. Democracy by Petition: Popular Politics in Transformation, 1790-1870. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press; 2021. Publisher's Version
2020
Blackhawk M, Carpenter D, Resch T, Schneer B. Congressional Representation by Petition: Assessing the Voices of the Voteless in a Comprehensive New Database, 1789–1949. Legislative Studies Quarterly. 2020. Publisher's VersionAbstract
For much of American political history, the electoral franchise was restricted to only a portion of the population. By contrast, the right to petition was considered universal and enshrined in the First Amendment, giving voice to the voteless. Petitioning thus served as a fundamental mechanism of representation. Still, fundamental questions remain: How was petitioning used, how did Congress respond to petitions, and did the petition allow for partial representation of the marginalized and unenfranchised? We address these questions by analyzing the Congressional Petitions Database (CPD), an original endeavor tracking virtually every petition introduced to Congress from 1789 to 1949. Our analyses document how (1) two important groups of unenfranchised constituents—Native Americans and women—petitioned regularly and (2) Congress's initial treatment of Natives' and women's petitions was similar to that of all others, thus offering systematic evidence highlighting the petition's role as a mechanism for representation among otherwise unenfranchised groups.
congressrepbypetition_lsqforpublication20200721.pdf
Carpenter D. Authoritarian Electoral College Underpopulation: Historical Reflections and a Possible Countermove under Article I, Section 5. 2020.Abstract

The possibility of a contested presidential election in November 2020 to January 2021 is real, and one of the most common scenarios (discussed in a widely shared Newsweek article and by the legal scholar Lawrence Lessig) involves states refusing to certify or report slates of electors to the Electoral College with the result (and, in all likelihood, the intent) of throwing the election to the House of Representatives. I call this scenario authoritarian Electoral College underpopulation.

In this memorandum, I advance two points. First, neither Article II nor the Twelfth Amendment was designed for such scenarios, being rather intended for situations where multi-candidate or multiparty dynamics lead to no single candidate gaining a majority in the College (as occurred in 1800 and in 1824). Absent a multi-candidate scenario where no third candidate materializes, or absent an Electoral College tie, no contingent vote of the House should occur, because states should faithfully report their Electoral College slates in keeping with republican principles, that is, state popular majorities.

Second, I then argue that the House of Representatives could respond by reconfiguring its members using its powers under Article I, Section 5, with a combination of selective delegation seating or selective delegation reconstitution, to produce in the House contingent vote the result that would have been produced by a legitimate (republican) Electoral College vote and/or the national popular vote.

While Article I, Section 5 powers are subject to abuse, they could be used under extreme circumstances to rectify unrepublican actions among state authorities. Indeed, some such Section 5 powers have been used before in a similar corrective manner, to counter unrepublican actions at the state level. While reform of our Electoral College institutions is a more desirable “first-best” aspiration, this argument points to ways of protecting the republican principle in near-term presidential elections.

constitutionalcountermove_memo20200801.pdf
Blackhawk M, Carpenter D, Resch T, Schneer B. The Contours of American Congressional Petitioning, 1789-1949: A New Database. 2020.Abstract
We introduce the Congressional Petitions Database (CPD), an original endeavor tracking virtually
every petition introduced to Congress from 1789 to 1949. Exploiting Congress’s ritual reading of
petition prayers, we leverage a supervised machine learning algorithm to create a database comprising
over 537,000 petitions. For each petition we code the prayer and its subject matter, geographic origin,
initial disposition and other information. Initial analyses suggest that (1) per-capita petitioning peaked
nationwide in the mid- and late-nineteenth century and remained at higher levels until World War I,
declining appreciably thereafter; (2) the South exhibits lower petitioning from 1802 to 1870 (but not
before 1800), cratering in the 1840s through 1860s and again later in the Jim Crow Era; and (3) the
unenfranchised petitioned regularly and their petitions were afforded process similar to all others. The
CPD will be useful for studies of legislative development, social movements, interest group advocacy, federalism and sectionalism.
contours.pdf
2019
Carpenter D. La réputation organisationnelle de l’État fédéral dans un contexte général de malaise politique. Revue française d’administration publique. 2019;170 (2) :385-396. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Après un demi-siècle de critique presque continuelle, les organes qui composent l’État fédéral aux États-Unis souffrent aujourd’hui d’un profond malaise en termes de réputation. La loyauté des citoyens, les marques de respect social, l’attractivité en ce qui concerne le recrutement de jeunes fonctionnaires, tous ces éléments positifs de la relation des Américains à l’État fédéral semblent disparaitre. En même temps, on constate que certaines agences fédérales jouissent d’une meilleure réputation que d’autres. Pendant un moment, au cours de la crise financière et économique de 2007-2008, certaines d’entre elles ont même bénéficié d’un regain de popularité. Quelles leçons pouvons-nous tirer de cette évolution ? En ce qui concerne la période actuelle, faut-il s’attendre à une renaissance des attentes du citoyen à leur égard, ou même une réaction du deep state face aux critiques des tenants de M. Bannon et du Président Trump ? Ou bien la société américaine est-elle condamnée à la constante détérioration de l’image des organisations qui composent l’État fédéral ? Le présent article montre que la défiance des citoyens américains à l’encontre de l’État est profondément ancrée dans une société marquée par les clivages partisans et une longue tradition de dénigrement.
carpenter-rfap20190818preprint.pdf
Carpenter D, Brossard D. L’éruption patriote: The Revolt against Dalhousie and the Petitioning Explosion in Nineteenth-Century French Canada. Social Science History. 2019;43 :453-485. Publisher's VersionAbstract

As much as any other site in the nineteenth century, Francophone Lower Canada saw immense waves of popular petitioning, with petitions against British colonial administration attracting tens of thousands of signatures in the 1820s. The petition against Governor Dalhousie of 1827–28 attracted more than 87,000 names, making it one of the largest mass petitions of the Atlantic world on a per-capita scale for its time. We draw upon new archival evidence that shows the force of local organization in the petition mobilization, and combine this with statistical analyses of a new sample of 1,864 names from the anti-Dalhousie signatory list. We conclude that the Lower Canadian petitioning surge stemmed from emergent linguistic nationalism, expectations of parliamentary democracy, and the mobilization and alliance-building efforts of Patriote leaders in the French-Canadian republican movement. As elsewhere in the nineteenth-century Atlantic, the anti-Dalhousie effort shows social movements harnessing petitions to recruit, mobilize, and build cross-cultural alliances.

leruption_patriote_the_revolt_against_dalhousie_and_the_petitioning_explosion_in_nineteenthcentury_french_canada.pdf
Pham-Kanter G, Carpenter D LMLM. U.S. Nationwide Disclosure of Industry Payments and Public Trust in Physicians. Journal of the American Medical Association – JAMA Network Open. 2019. Publisher's Version kanter_2019_oi_190093.pdf
Pham-Kanter G, Carpenter D, Lehmann L, Mello M. Effect of the Public Disclosure of Industry Payments Information on Patients: Results from a Population-Based Natural Experiment. British Medical Journal – BMJ Open. 2019. Publisher's Version kantercarpenteretalbmjopen2019.pdf

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