Even as the partial shutdown of the federal government came to an end, many Americans were left baffled.
Why didn't Congress and the president strike a deal sooner?
Hundreds of thousands of federal employees were asked to work without pay because of a fight over a border wall. The full economic cost of the shutdown is likely to be far larger than the amount politicians are fighting over.
From our perspective as social scientists, this shutdown is an example of the powerful forces that make political bargaining very different than bargaining over, say, the price of a new car.
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