Last updated October 14, 2026.
Over the past months, Popular by Design (PbD) has published several guest essays, and their success convinced me that this should be a larger part of the project. The newsletter is also turning into the public face of a research lab I'm starting at Notre Dame with new postdoctoral and research associates. PbD keeps growing, and we're now open to guest posts on policies that work. So I'm making it official: if you have something that fits, I'd like to consider it. This post is going to be the one link I give to everyone for the guidelines, so if you're reading it months from now, it still applies.
We are primarily looking for pieces that are too evidence-heavy for an op-ed and too timely for an academic paper. Immigration and public opinion will still remain the spine of this newsletter, but we especially welcome posts that complement our expertise on adjacent topics like population change, housing, energy, and AI. The overarching theme for all of them is the same: policies that actually work and bring progress, made popular by design.
We primarily publish 2,000-4,000-word pieces of three kinds: a case study of an overlooked issue, an evidence review that takes a novel position, or an original empirical finding. Co-authored pieces are welcome, especially when they pair a researcher with a practitioner. The main test is whether a thoughtful reader of any persuasion would be glad they spent ten minutes on it.
Contribution formats
A case study looking at one overlooked policy, program, election, event, or live debate, here or abroad, and what we should learn from it. These pieces are especially valuable when they come from people close to the subject, whether they run a program or analyze the field. I saw Aubrey Westfall’s presentation at CES in Dublin, for instance, was blown away by it, and wanted to feature it in Popular by Design. Her piece on how Canada lets its provinces select their own immigrants was built on her own field interviews.
An evidence review explaining what the literature actually shows on a contested question and taking a position, no matter where it lands politically. Hanno Hilbig’s piece on accommodating the far right is a good example. Accommodation can work, which is why parties try it. The problem is that it can also become a lose-lose: some voters gained, others lost, and the far right legitimized.
An original empirical finding presenting a novel result from your own administrative data, survey, or sharpened re-analysis that hasn’t been published anywhere else. If you could share some new quality data on a question packaged in an accessible format (and explain why it’s better than existing data), that’d be great. The data should be open or shareable so the result is replicable. We can provide a template, and you can just email me your CSV, since we will redo any charts in our house style.
What we don’t run are vibes-only hot takes that add no new evidence or argument, jargon-heavy theory, or anything already published or under review elsewhere. If a smart non-academic policy person cannot follow the argument, this is the wrong outlet for it.
House style
Plain and accessible. Don’t use jargon that is not necessary to advance your argument.
Pragmatic and cross-ideological. Take the other side’s best case seriously.
References as hyperlinks, always to the primary source.
Every factual claim has to survive a fact-check before publishing.
The mindful use of AI tools is encouraged for research, editing, and writing (!) as long as the argument is yours, you verified it, and you’re willing to sign onto it.
Submission and editing process
If you have something to share that fits Popular by Design, send your pitch to submissions@popularbydesign.org with a longer paragraph on what you’d write and a shorter paragraph on why you’re the person to write it. Our readership has some of the best policy folks in the US and other countries, so if you have something to say, it’s going to be a good, targeted way of reaching those audiences.
When your piece is solicited or your pitch is accepted, please share your Google Doc draft with me as an editor. I’ll then add a number of suggestions alongside some fact-checking and copyediting, and you can update everything right there without needing to track changes. Accepted pieces get one light developmental edit and one copyedit, with every change yours to approve, and we commission a custom cover image and write a short note introducing you and your work. Once it’s ready, I’ll send you an invite to be the guest author on Substack. You keep the copyright and can republish anywhere with a credit line—we only ask that the piece run here first.