Category Archives: Religion

Calling All Martyrs: Recruitment Incentives & Terror Attack Casualties

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Graig R. Klein. Graig is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at Binghamton University. His research focuses on domestic conflict, protest, and terrorism. This post is based on his article entitled “Ideology Isn’t Everything: Transnational Terrorism, Recruitment Incentives & Attack Casualties,” which is forthcoming in Terrorism and Political Violence. Since the al-Qaeda attacks on September 11th, 2001 and the subsequent War on Terror, much of the media, policy makers’, and, academics’ attention has focused on the increase in religious motivated terror groups and attacks since the 1990s. Prior to 1993, there Continue reading Calling All Martyrs: Recruitment Incentives & Terror Attack Casualties→

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

Posted on by — 1 Comment ↓

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.→

Historical Cartography

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Uri Friedman at the Atlantic has a nice piece entitled "12 Maps that Changed the World." It's based on a book by Jerry Brotton, professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University. It's worth checking out if you haven't seen it already. This article is interesting for a few reasons. First, it gives you some sense as to how views of the earth have changed over time. Second, Friedman's snippets for each map help to show how politics, culture, and religion all influenced the evolution of these views. And related to that previous idea, it points to that ever-present issue Continue reading Historical Cartography→

Trading Statehood for Votes: The Early Decline of the Democratic Party in the Idaho

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Since I recently moved to Boise, I decided to learn more about the political history of Idaho. I discovered that there are several cases in the formation the Idaho political system that are relevant to the study of Comparative, American, and state politics today, and so I am going to devote a few blog posts to some interesting aspects of Idaho history. In this first blog post, I discuss the early rise and decline of the Democratic Party in Idaho. Today Idaho is one of the most Republican states in the country. It has the second largest percentage of Republicans in a Continue reading Trading Statehood for Votes: The Early Decline of the Democratic Party in the Idaho→

CRACK

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

I found this link via Andrew Gelman's blog the other day: CRACK Mapmaking software for Mac I haven't had much of a chance to play with it, but it looks like it could be useful.  I've had a few instances in class this semester where I've wanted to make some maps of the US to illustrate various points, but alas, have not known how to do so.  Rather, I've wanted to make customizable maps, but have not known how.  It seems like this program is pretty simple to use–just drag and drop a CSV file with the relevant data onto Continue reading CRACK→