A Change in Focus

When I started this blog in late July, there was a very specific reason I titled it "Publius Endures." Specifically, the title came from my long relationship with the Federalist Papers, and especially Madison's Federalist No. 10, which is perhaps my favorite essay (if you want to call it that) of all time.

My goal at the time was to make this something of a Conlaw blog. However, that quickly fell by the wayside and I wound up writing about libertarianism and politics more generally, as well as increasingly about the horse race specifically.

As much as I enjoy writing about all of those things, I'm realizing that I have a very specific interest that I am undercovering with this blog. I'm also realizing that such a general focus is perhaps too broad. and I don't think I contribute enough unique material to make it useful.

So, effective immediately, I'm going to give this blog more direction and focus than I have been. Specifically, I am going to gear it towards a topic I should have focused on in more detail from the beginning, which is an area in which I have an unusual amount of expertise, experience, and interest. As I allude to with my mention of Federalist Number 10, this area is the study of interest group politics and political corruption more generally. Indeed, my favorite series of posts here at PE has been my still uncompleted discussion of why most anti-corruption "reforms" fail and actually create more corruption or just legitimize it.

To a certain extent, much of what I already write about falls under this umbrella, so this won't mean too many changes to my topics. I will still cover the horse race as I have been, but to a large extent the reason I find the horse race fascinating is what it says about interest group politics and about both our systemic benefits and our systemic flaws. Of course, I will continue with the Education Debate with Kyle at Comments From Left Field, and will participate in similar such debates in the future if possible.

But on the whole, I want to re-focus this blog on a specific area where I think I can make my best contribution to political debate in this little corner of the blogosphere I seem to occupy.