GOVT 86.55: Building Big Things — The Politics of Infrastructure

Dartmouth College — Winter 2026 Class Meetings: 10 (10:10–11:15); 10X (12:15–1:05) Instructor: Kirun Sankaran Office hours: M 11:30–12:30; T 11–12

Policies

Attendance and Participation. You may miss two class periods with no repercussions. Each successive missed class docks your participation grade by a third of a letter grade.

Technology. Laptops, tablets, and cell phones are not permitted in class, except with explicit permission for a specific activity or as an SAS-instructed accommodation. I encourage you to print the readings and take handwritten notes.

Grading and Assignments

  1. Six (6) short essays (mostly due Sunday nights) plus three (3) oral quizzes — 30% total. Each essay asks how that week's readings help you think about the nature of democracy. Oral quizzes are 10-minute appointments answering three questions drawn from your essays: What is your thesis and why should we believe it? Why did you organize the paper as you did? Can you respond to an objection?
  2. Group presentation — 20%. Groups of four present on one class theme (Housing; Energy; Urbanism and Transit; State Capacity and Innovation), introducing the material as if to bright but uninformed newcomers.
  3. Attendance and Participation — 20%. Includes asking intelligent questions during classmates' presentations, and both quality and quantity of in-class contributions (see Olivia Bailey, "But How Do I Participate," on Canvas).
  4. Final Exam — 30%. Much like the oral quizzes: you'll be asked to improve on something from the quarter and to write about the final class theme.

Reading List

Week 1: What Is This Democracy Thing, Anyway?

Klein, "A Close Examination of the Most Infamous Public Toilet in America" (NYT); Shanahan, "Decades of Delay Culminate in Emergency Closure of West Lebanon Bridge" (Valley News); Mansfield, "I Will Not Leave" (Yankee); Madison, Federalist No. 10; Heath, "The Benefits of Cooperation"

Week 2: Why Is Building Things Hard?

Caro, The Power Broker I & III (The New Yorker); Liscow, "Getting Infrastructure Built"; Schleicher, "Why We Can't Build"; Bagley, "The Procedure Fetish"; Potter, "How NEPA Works"; Hochman, "NEPAStats"

Week 3: Housing

Myers, Bowman, and Southwood, "The Housing Theory of Everything" (Works in Progress); Glaeser and Gyourko, "The Economic Implications of Housing Supply"; Teles, "Minoritarianism is Everywhere"; Einstein, Glick, and Palmer, Neighborhood Defenders

Week 4: Housing, Part II

Schleicher, "Stuck!"; Lemar, "Overparticipation"; Fischel, Zoning Rules, Ch. 2, 6

Week 5: Energy and Permitting

Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations, Ch. 2–3; MacKenzie, "How NEPA Will Tax Clean Energy"; Lewis, "Patchwork Policies, Spillovers, and the Search for Oil and Gas"; Foster and Warren, "The NIMBY Problem"; Elmendorf, Hubbard, and Liscow, "Policies to Reduce Federal Budget Deficits By Increasing Economic Growth"; Liscow, "Reforming Permitting to Build Infrastructure"; Green Tape "Right of Way" Podcast, Ep. 2

Weeks 6–8: Transit and Urbanism

Goldwyn, Levy, and Ensari, "The New York Case (Second Avenue Subway)" (NYU Marron Center Transit Costs Project); Goldwyn, "Costly Lessons from the Second Avenue Subway" (NYRB); Goldwyn, "Prioritizing Politics Ahead of Transit Projects"; Statecraft Podcast, "How to Save DC's Metro"; Adler, "New York's Long Road to Congestion Pricing" (Works in Progress); Cook et al., "The Short Run Effects of Congestion Pricing in NYC"; Brooks and Liscow, "Infrastructure Costs"; Statecraft Podcast, "What Is America's Infrastructure Cost Problem?"; Schleicher and Hills, "How the Gentry Won"; Appelbaum, "How Progressives Froze the American Dream" (The Atlantic)

Weeks 8–9: State Capacity, Science, and Technology

Lindsey, "State Capacity"; Bush, "Science: The Endless Frontier"; Kremer, Levin, and Snyder, "Advance Market Commitments: Insights from Theory and Experience"; Kremer, Levin, and Snyder, "Designing Advance Market Commitments for New Vaccines"; D'Souza et al., "Can Operation Warp Speed Serve As a Model for Accelerating Innovations Beyond COVID Vaccines?"; Statecraft Podcast, "How to Shape a Market"; Statecraft Podcast, "Did the CHIPS Act Everything Bagel…Work?"; CHIPS Act Office, "CHIPS Act Vision for Success" (and "…Two Years Later")

Institutional boilerplate (religious observances, accessibility, mental health, socioeconomic support, consent-to-record) included in the distributed syllabus per Dartmouth requirements; omitted here for brevity.