Quantitative and formal analysis of international relations, comparative politics, and American politics.
Michael A. Allen A friend on twitter sent me a message about a New York Times Op-Ed piece by a game theorist that ostensibly suggests real-world limitations of game theory. Yanis Varoufakis, economist, game theorist, and current Finance Minister of Greece opined that the delicate negotiations with Greece’s debt issues is a serious issue and the game theory … Read more
During the Russian invasion of Crimea, I previously mentioned that I, Julie VanDusky-Allen, and Michael Flynn, were working on a research project that examined the effect that hosting varying amounts of foreign (i.e. US) troops has on the defense spending of local and regional governments. Earlier this week, that article became available in Foreign Policy Analysis’ Early View. If you … Read more
I am in the midst of grading the first major written assignment for my introductory political science class and, as I grade these assignments digitally, I have my finger constantly pushing one key on my keyboard: That is, the key I programmed in Microsoft Word to automatically create a comment and write “Passive voice” within that … Read more
This semester marks my seventh time teaching the introductory course to international relations and my seventh time incorporating strategic games into the course. A staple game for any political science course is the Prisoner’s Dilemma and a typical introduction of the material to students may have students explain the concept or, perhaps, play it with a … Read more
The board and video game world this past week have at least two compelling reports that offer some lessons for political science. First, David Hill did both a write up for Grantland and a segment on This American Life about the Diplomacy (the game) world championships. Players in this game have to focus on territorial control and creating/maintaining alliances. … Read more
Wookieepedia It should come as no surprise that, in addition to gaming (board, video, and card), enjoying comics and comic book movies, and about everything else that is nerdy, I enjoy speculative fiction (and fantasy) and that includes the high fantasy in space that is Star Wars. The past six months or so have been … Read more
null0 Power is often the go-to solution for many puzzles in international relations, but it also presents as many questions as it seems to answer, if not more. One of the enduring puzzles in international relations deals with the relationship between powerful actors in the international system and weak actors; for many of our theories, … Read more
Official U.S. Navy Page via Compfight In the most recent update to the Correlates of War (COW) War databases (update to v4.0), the COW project added a new category of war to include wars between non-state actors, bringing us up to a total of four different types of wars: Inter-state, Intra-state, Extra-state, and Non-state wars. For those who are … Read more
The recent shootings in Kansas, as well as various events over the past few years involving individual acts of violence, have led people to ask why some of these events are considered to be merely crimes (homicides), some considered hate crimes, and others considered to be terrorism. Anthony Lemieux engages this question directly over at Psychology … Read more
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 … Read more