Rogan Kersh

Wake Forest University | WFU · Department of Politics and International Affairs

In the sprawling American political debates over obesity, which date back a decade and a half, 'nanny state' has been a rhetorical cudgel used to oppose those seeking even modest state action to address rising obesity rates. This essay explores obesity policy through the prism of state involvement, focusing on four possible types of response to wha...

Obesity is a pressing public health problem without proven population-wide solutions. Researchers sought to determine whether a city-mandated policy requiring calorie labeling at fast food restaurants was associated with consumer awareness of labels, calories purchased and fast food restaurant visits. Difference-in-differences design, with data col...

This chapter investigates U.S. public-policy responses to the obesity crisis, along with the complicated political debates swirling around the topic, and also addresses the principal elements contributing to the rise in obesity in the United States. Explanations for the rise of obesity are related to inactive lifestyle, and food and dietary practic...

Federalist No. 67 generally is read as a vigorous defense of the chief executive and contains intense language to alleviate fears of a dictatorial president. However, it also can be read as a much deeper explication of the blend of republican and energetic government. The author examines this defense within the larger stream of Federalist Papers an...

Introduction: Previous research found minimal or no influence of menu labeling laws on fast food choices. This study evaluates the effect of mandatory calorie labeling policy in Philadelphia, PA, on number of calories purchased by customers. Methods: Philadelphia implemented calorie labeling early in 2010. Baltimore, MD, was selected as a compariso...

Although obesity rates among US children have increased during the past 3 decades, effective public policies have been limited, and the quest for workable solutions raises ethical questions. To address these concerns, in 2010, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation convened an expert panel to consider approaches to the ethics problems related to interv...

Obesity is an enormous public health problem and children have been particularly highlighted for intervention. Of notable concern is the fast-food consumption of children . However, we know very little about how children or their parents make fast-food choices, including how they respond to mandatory calorie labeling. We examined children's and ado...

Evidence is emerging, especially from European countries, that the most effective policies to stem the tide of child obesity involve numerous concentrated interventions, implemented simultaneously. In the United States, policy change has been scattershot and episodic, and therefore minimally effective. The American polity, dominated by interest gro...

The concept of personal responsibility has been central to social, legal, and political approaches to obesity. It evokes language of blame, weakness, and vice and is a leading basis for inadequate government efforts, given the importance of environmental conditions in explaining high rates of obesity. These environmental conditions can override ind...

The relationship between political science and the "real world" of public policy and politics has long been a complicated one. Current calls for more relevance in political science research echo back to the discipline's early days. This essay traces the intertwined history of practice and ivory tower, with specific attention to the rise of economic...

... Kelly D. Brownell is founding director of the Rudd Center for Obesity and Food Policy at Yale University. ... new “default” setting, he says, “and what we're doing is working with policymakers to change the defaults.” He's thus become a crusader for a penny-an-ounce soda tax . ...

We examined the influence of menu calorie labels on fast food choices in the wake of New York City's labeling mandate. Receipts and survey responses were collected from 1,156 adults at fast-food restaurants in low-income, minority New York communities. These were compared to a sample in Newark, New Jersey, a city that had not introduced menu labeli...

The continuing rise in obesity rates across the United States has proved impervious to clinical treatment or public health exhortation, necessitating policy responses. Nearly a decade's worth of political debates may be hardening into an obesity issue regime, comprising established sets of cognitive frames, stakeholders, and policy options. This ar...

Through the nation's first century, states used their concurrent constitutional right to schedule presidential and House elections at widely varying times. Senators were also elected within the states at diverse times. This study examines the gradual establishment of uniform election dates and offers an explanation of why Congress felt it appropria...

Der Aufruf des Surgeon Generals 2 beginnt dramatisch: „Übergewicht und Adipositas haben epidemische Ausmaße erreicht.…“ (Satcher zit. nach Mokdad 2001). Wissenschaftler, Regierungssprecher, Medienexperten, Journalisten und Lobbygruppen stimmen zunehmend lauter in diesen alarmistischen Chor ein. Im Gegensatz aber zu vielen anderen Public-Health-Prob...

Research on childhood obesity has primarily been conducted by experts in nutrition, psychology, and medicine. Only recently have public policy scholars devoted serious work to this burgeoning public health crisis. Here the authors advance that research by surveying national experts in health/nutrition and health policy on the public health impact a...

Health care politics are changing. They increasingly focus not on avowedly public projects (such as building the health care infrastructure) but on regulating private behavior. Examples include tobacco, obesity, abortion, drug abuse, the right to die, and even a patient's relationship with his or her managed care organization. Regulating private be...

The USA is deeply implicated in European dreams of a more perfect union. This chapter investigates three aspects of the European-American nexus. First, it focuses on the striking gap between politics and administration in contemporary Europe, and reflects on the implications for democracy. Second, it examines recent tensions between the USA and Eur...

American Political Development (APD) is among the fastest-growing areas in political science. Barely two decades ago, the “field” consisted of a handful of works by a few scholars. Since then political scientists have been joined under the APD banner by researchers from other disciplines in issuing dozens of books and hundreds of articles, organizi...

Rogan Kersh is associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. He is author of Dreams of a More Perfect Union (Cornell University Press, 2001). 1. Rogan Kersh, Dreams of a More Perfect Union (Cornell University Press, 2001). Details on the methodology used are at ibid., 133-34 (...

Given religious leaders’ frequent opportunities to communicate to a large and receptive audience, political messages delivered during religious services have the potential to make a considerable impact on American politics—with particular significance for political education and mobilization. Social scientists routinely conclude that such messages...

Among the principal targets of criticism in recent American politics has been the alleged corruption, inequity, overall cost, and regulatory complexity of the U.S. campaign‐finance system. Scholarship has not borne out any of these criticisms, and, if anything, empirical investigation suggests that the current system does a fair job in addressing—a...

Concern is rapidly growing about obesity rates in the United States. This paper analyzes the political consequences. Despite myths about individualism and self-reliance, the U.S. government has a long tradition of regulating ostensibly private behavior. We draw on the historical experience in four other private realms (alcohol, illegal drugs, tobac...

This essay examines a familiar but still perplexing problem in U.S. political history: how a group of fiercely separatist, diverse British colonies successfully formed a separate national union. Tracing patterns in colonial and revolutionary-era political speech, I demonstrate that the origins of American political union were in important part rhet...

The much‐noted decline of “state autonomy” theories owes partly to external challenges to state power, such as globalization, supranational regimes, and the like. But advanced democratic states have also long been seen as threatened from within, especially by powerful private interest groups. The extent of private‐interest influence on policy makin...

In representing a fragmented pluralist polity, the U.S. Congress inevitably exhibits high levels of conflict and disagreement. Increasingly, the American public finds such conflict—the ordinary procedures of legislative democracy—distasteful. As members of Congress pay closer attention to approval ratings and other poll measures, their natural incl...

This Comment treats each of Spinosa, Flores, and Dreyfus's three subjects ‐entrepreneurship, democratic activity, and cultivation of solidarity ‐ in turn. Though marred by inattention to moral consequences and an accordingly unjustified meliorism, the authors’ insights reaffirm and strengthen a number of convictions obscured in current political‐th...

The Founding: Liberalism Redux - SinopoliRichard C.: The Foundations of American Citizenship: Liberalism, the Constitution, and Civic Virtue. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. 171. $32.50.) - Volume 55 Issue 4 - Rogan Kersh

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