Quantitative and formal analysis of international relations, comparative politics, and American politics.
Michael Touchton Some recent attention has focused on the difficulty of getting a tenure-track position in Political Science and thus the desirability of enrolling in a Ph. D. program in the first place. Dan Drezner in blog posts here and here has done an excellent job chronicling the long odds of getting a tenure-track job after earning … Read more
I’ve spent the last few years teaching quantitative methods to undergraduate majors at Boise State. Ours is one of the few Political Science departments to require a two-course statistics sequence for our majors and we’re always seeking ways to improve the experience. As you might imagine, very few students become political science majors because they’re … Read more
Like many of you, I’ve been thinking a lot about the politicization of race and ethnicity lately. Most of this has surrounded the emerging national conversation on systemic racism present in America and its impact on racial minorities in the country. This is an important, necessary conversation, but I’ve been especially interested in the ways … Read more
The results of the midterm elections on November 4th have generated considerable hand-wringing in some circles over the Democrats’ loss of the Senate and the expected legislative gridlock that will result as in this piece in the Washington Post. Political polarization and the gridlock that may result can harm countries that would benefit from necessary reforms … Read more
I was recently reflecting on Political Science as a discipline as I attended APSA along with many of you this past week. In particular, I had many discussions surrounding the seeming impossibility of placing certain articles in certain top journals compared to the relative ease of placing otherwise-comparable articles, but in different subfields or with … Read more
The story of this World Cup has been the matches – high scoring, surprise exits, unexpected advances and exciting play. Yet, several weeks before the Cup began, most coverage of the tournament fell into two camps. The first emphasized popular outrage at Brazil’s extensive spending on soccer stadiums and other improvements meant to streamline the … Read more
My first post for the Quantitative Peace highlights the pervasive problem registering a business poses for economic development around the world. Entrepreneurs in developing countries often operate in the informal marketplace: transactions occur in a cash economy, taxes are rarely collected and enterprises are not represented in any formal, legal sense. These countries feature vibrant … Read more