Michael A. Allen

Michael A. Allen is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Boise State University. His research focuses on international conflict, military alliances, and quantitative methods in international relations and comparative politics.

Evolutionary Path Dependency

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A few colleagues and I have started to delve into Richard Dawkins The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.  Apparently, our leisure reading involves reading science based books.  For those of you who are still reading the book, this blog post goes into detail about Chapter 11 and this introduction will serve as my official spoiler alert (in case you do not want your science spoiled); for others, we can venture on.

 

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Does language change the way we play games?

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A friend posted a link to a list of 20 words that were not directly translatable into the English language. Most of the words appear to come from Altalang.com, a website that focuses on linguistics and understanding. A few highlights include:   Ilunga: Tshiluba (Southwest Congo) – A word famous for its untranslatability, most professional … Read more

Wikistrat Competition

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I received an email this afternoon from Wikistrat inviting political scientist graduate students to participate in a competition for $10,000.  Before this email, I have heard nothing about this program/website and I am still relatively ignorant about their presence and history, but it seems, at the very least, worth getting a bit more information about. … Read more

Gift List for Political Scientists, 2010

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Mind Your Decisions has done an annual gift list for economists for the last few years, and Presh just put together his 2010 list.  Using his list as inspiration, I have compiled my own list of possible gifts for Political Scientists. Given my proclivity for strategic leisure, I believe I can construct this with some … Read more

A few technical updates

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I've changed a few features on the blog to make access and moderation easier. 1) The RSS feed now features the entirety of posts as opposed to just the first sentence.  I have been told this will increase the amount of material that is actually read, but will decrease what we know about our readers.  … Read more