Teles

Steven M. Teles

Professor of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University
Chapter Member: Maryland-Washington, D.C. SSN
Areas of Expertise:

Connect with Steven

(410) 516-7540

About Steven

Teles’ central interest is in the interaction of public policy and processes of organizational genesis and change. How do movements create new kinds of organizations; how do funding processes influence the kinds of organizations that are created; how do those organizations take (and change) positions; and how do all these actions eventually influence what government actually does? He attacks these larger theoretical questions by talking directly with political activists and funders (among others); and digging into organizational papers. He has written for a number of popular publications; but his most important civic involvement today is as an editorial board member of The Washington Monthly; where he also contributes most of his non-academic writing. He also gives talks to Federalist Society chapters on a fairly regular basis; which gives him a chance to meet conservatives across the country and; he hopes; build some bridges to them.

Contributions | No Jargon Podcast | In the News | Publications

Contributions

How Unlikely Allies Can Roll Back America's Prison Boom

  • David Dagan
Key Findings Brief,

No Jargon Podcast

Episode 105:
The Captured Economy

In the News

Interviewed in "How Conservatives Won the Law," The Wall Street Journal, July 20, 2018.
Quoted by Peter Baker in "A Conservative Court Push Decades in the Making, With Effects for Decades to Come," The New York Times, July 9, 2018.
Research discussed by Alex Verkhivker, in "Housing Is The Real Culprit For America's Inequality," Forbes, June 4, 2018.
Interviewed in "The Power Line Show, Ep. 66: The Telos of Teles," Powerline Blog, April 16, 2018.
Quoted by Young Voices Advocates in "Free Market Cures for Wage Stagnation," Townhall, April 6, 2018.
Guest on NPR: Planet Money, March 9, 2018.
Quoted by Jonathan Band in "Captured Copyright Law," InfoJustice.org, January 18, 2018.
Research discussed by Steven Pearlstein, in "What’s to Blame for Slower Growth and Rising Inequality?," The Washington Post, November 22, 2017.
Opinion: "Trump Made the Swamp Worse. Here’s How to Drain It.," Steven M. Teles (with Brink Lindsey), New York Times, October 26, 2017.
Opinion: "Even the Intellectual Left is Drawn to Conspiracy Theories about the Right. Resist Them.," Steven M. Teles (with Henry Farrell), Vox, July 14, 2017.
Quoted by Daniel W. Drezner in "The Tricky Thing about Studying the Politics of Philanthropy," Washington Post , July 26, 2016.
Interviewed in "The Precarious New Republican Orthodoxy on Crime," The Atlantic, July 19, 2016.
Guest on The Federalist Radio Hour, July 11, 2016.
Quoted by Leon Neyfakh in "A Koch and a Smile," Slate, February 19, 2015.
Quoted by Elena Weissman in "Scholars Debate Incarceration," Brown Daily Herald, November 13, 2014.
Interviewed in "Is America a ‘Kludgeocracy’?," Washington Post, January 26, 2013.
Opinion: "Philanthropy in a Time of Polarization," Steven M. Teles (with Heather Hurlburt and Mark Schmitt), Stanford Social Innovation Review, Summer 2014.

Publications

"Locked In? Conservative Reform and the Future of Mass Incarceration" 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.
"The Elusive Craft of Advocacy Evaluation" (with Mark Schmitt). Stanford Social Innovation Review (2011).
Examines the challenges of evaluating foundation investments in advocacy, questions the applicability of linear models of change, and proposes ways for philanthropists to assess long-term efforts at political and social change.
Conservatism and American Political Development (edited with Brian Glenn). (Oxford University Press, 2009).
Explores how conservatism changed the course of American political development, but was in the process changed itself. Organized around cases of the environment, Social Security, and K-12 education.
"Transformative Bureaucracy: Reagan’s Lawyers and the Dynamics of Political Investment" Studies in American Political Development 23, no. 1 (2009): 61-83.
Offers an historical study of the Reagan Justice Department which shows the conditions under which political appointees can “invest” in the future success of an allied political movement.
The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement (Princeton University Press, 2008).
Shows how the conservative legal movement arose in reaction to legal liberalism, and how through a long, slow process of puzzling and trial and error, developed an impressive network of organizations in the law. Built upon a completely original collection of conservative internal organizational papers and exclusive interviews.