Month: March 2014

While the IR people are away, the Americanists will play.

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Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Joshua N. Zingher, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at Binghamton University. The content of this post is based on Josh’s paper, ‘An Analysis of the Changing Social Bases of America’s Political Parties: 1952-2008’, appearing in Electoral Studies. This piece is cross-posted at the London School of Economics’ USAPP Blog, which can be found here.    Demographic changes mean that traditional Republican constituencies are shrinking as the Democrats’ grow. It is difficult to discuss electoral politics in the United States without talking in terms of social groups.  Journalistic accounts of party Continue reading While the IR people are away, the Americanists will play.→

Bipartisanship and the Foreign Policy Bureaucracy

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Editor’s note: A version of this piece is cross-posted at the LSE USAPP blog, and can be found here. This post is based on my recent article, The International and Domestic Sources of Bipartisanship in U.S. Foreign Policy, in Political Research Quarterly. — The idea that foreign policy and national security issues are somehow exempt from the partisan rancor that often characterizes domestic politics is perhaps best encapsulated by the old adage, “politics stops at the water’s edge.” In American foreign policy, nowhere is this spirit better exemplified than by President Franklin Roosevelt’s appointment of Henry L. Stimson as Secretary of Continue reading Bipartisanship and the Foreign Policy Bureaucracy→

To Nobody’s Surprise…

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Last night, Idaho Governor Butch Otter signed SB 1254 into law, making Idaho the seventh state in the US to allow concealed weapons on college and university campuses. The law allows anyone with an enhanced concealed weapons permit to carry on campus. However, they are are not allowed to carry in dormitories or in public entertainment facilities. I wonder if I can start holding my classes in Bronco Stadium. But I digress. From a political science perspective, I find the passage of SB 1254 intriguing on several fronts. First, it is not at all surprising that Republicans in the Idaho state Continue reading To Nobody’s Surprise…→

Troop Deployment Research and Poland

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Interstate conflict is a rare phenomenon. Since 1816, the Correlates of War project only counts 96 different wars occurring over an almost 200 year period.  Given Russia’s incursion into the Crimean peninsula, it is of little surprise that IR scholar blogging activity has been rampant the past week; we may just have conflict 97 just around the corner. It is of little surprise that Ukraine is on the forefront of our discussions across twitter, blogs, and other forms of social media.  It is an intellectually ripe ground for explanation, prediction, and is an important teaching tool for me.  In the classroom, the Continue reading Troop Deployment Research and Poland→