David Dagan
Director of Editorial and Academic Affairs, Niskanen Center
Chapter Member: Maryland-Washington, D.C. SSN
Areas of Expertise:
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About David
Dagan is Director of Editorial and Academic Affairs at the Niskanen Center in Washington, D.C. He is co-author, with Steven Teles, of Prison Break: Why Conservatives Turned Against Mass Incarceration. He was previously a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at George Washington. He received his PhD in political science from Johns Hopkins University.
Contributions
How Unlikely Allies Can Roll Back America's Prison Boom
Key Findings Brief,
No Jargon Podcast
In the News
Opinion: "How Far Can Jeff Sessions Take His Crime War?," David Dagan, The New Republic, May 22, 2017.
Publications
"The Social Construction of Negative Feedback: Incarceration, Conservatism and Policy Change" (with ), American Political Science Association and Policy History Conference, 2012.
Argues that the success or failure of earlier policy choices is too often assumed to be self-evident. In fact, it is frequently subjective and susceptible to framing by activists. In a polarized environment, effective framing speaks to ideological principles rather than assuming a centrist posture.
"Locked In? Conservative Reform and the Future of Mass Incarceration" (with ). The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 651, no. 1 (2014): 266-276.
Argues that mass incarceration, long subject to self-entrenching effects, may be entering a cycle in which it undermines itself. Finds that, in order to seriously shrink the prison population, conservatives will have to accept the construction of alternative government structures; liberals will have to accept that these will remain more paternalistic than they might like.