Could another government shutdown be a factor in Cantor’s defeat?

Gage Skidmore via Compfight Eric Cantor’s primary loss yesterday to unknown candidate, David Brat, was quite the spectacle. A House majority leader has never lost a primary battle. Almost immediately after his loss, media outlets began reporting that Cantor lost because he had taken a pro-immigration stance on immigration reform (or failed to take a … Read more

Competitive Equilibrium in American Presidential Politics

In the wake of the 2012 victory by Democratic incumbent Barack Obama, many within the Republican Party were deeply troubled by the election returns. Republican challenger Mitt Romney faired poorly among ethnic and racial minorities, to the point where Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus equated the party’s performance among Latinos (Romney won just 27 percent … Read more

The Rise, Decline, and Rebirth of Extra-State Conflicts

NMCB-3 participates in an eight-day jungle training program.

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 Spatial and Demographic Determinants of Racial Threat

Does familiarity with members of out-groups breed contempt or acceptance?  The relationship between the geographic distribution of ethnic and racial minorities and white attitudes has been the subject of considerable academic debate since V.O. Key’s 1949 landmark Southern Politics.  In Southern Politics, Key advanced the claim that white racial conservatism was the strongest in places … Read more

Military Deployments, Human Development, and Growth

Beyond the Horizon 2014: Guatemala

The deployment of US military forces has received a bump in attention over the past year or two. Most recently, as Michael Allen has discussed, US military forces were deployed to Poland in response to the deteriorating situation in Ukraine. In 2011 President Obama sent 100 US military personnel to Uganda to help track Joseph … Read more

The United States is Still a Democracy

Polity Map

In the last few weeks, several media outlets have reported on a new study on American democracy by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page . The headlines include: “Study: The US is an oligarchy, not a democracy” “It’s Official: America is an Oligarchy and NOT a Democracy” “Princeton Concludes What Kind of Government America Really Has, … Read more

#Propaganda

Social Media

mkhmarketing via Compfight In the last several years, there have been numerous examples of government officials placing limits on social media sites in order to prevent citizens from criticizing government behavior and organizing anti-government protests. Most recently, Turkish citizens, world leaders, and international organization have criticized the Turkish government  for shutting down Twitter in Turkey. Now it seems as though … Read more

What is Terrorism?

Free the Uighurs protest

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

QP LIVE! Where to Find Us at MPSA 2014

It's the time of year that I affectionately call "conference season," i.e. the springtime one-two punch of the annual meetings of the International Studies Association and the Midwest Political Science Association.  This week, thousands of political scientists will descend upon Chicago hoping to learn about new research, present some research of their own, and/or connect with old friends and new colleagues.  Your trusty bloggers here at the Quantitative Peace will be among those making the trek, so, in case you are interested in seeing the kind of stuff we work on when we're not blogging, I've put together a schedule of our presentations with a brief description of each.  Check it out after the jump.

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