Academic

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

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⚠️ This post was written in March 2014. Some linked resources may no longer be available. 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 … Read more

Bipartisanship and the Foreign Policy Bureaucracy

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⚠️ This post was written in March 2014. Some embedded images and linked resources from the original Typepad blog may no longer display correctly. Editor’s note: A version of this piece is cross-posted at the LSE USAPP blog, and can be found here. This post is based on my recent article, The International and Domestic Sources … Read more

The Military and Competitive Sports

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I missed my last post, but thankfully I'm on top of this week's edition.  Kyleanne Hunter and Oliver Kaplan have a piece at Political Violence @ a Glance discussing some of the military roots of the biathlon. I've never known much about the sport's history, but it certainly makes sense that its origins are so closely … Read more

The Conversation on Political Science & Public Engagement

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As I'm sure most of you are aware, Nicholas Kristof believes that American academics (especially political scientists) don't do enough to engage with the public.  Political scientists have responded: Steve Saideman discusses how Kristof's complaints are oddly out of date, the importance of academic journals, and his role in the ISA blogging dustup; Erik Voeten points out that … Read more

Mapping Torture Allegations Using ITT

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In conjunction with a project on state capacity and repression, I’ve recently been exploring the specific allegation data from Courtenay Conrad and Will Moore‘s Ill-Treatment & Torture (ITT) Data Collection Project.  ITT’s specific allegation data are interestingly different from existing human rights data sets like the one (full disclosure) I co-direct, the CIRI Human Rights Data … Read more

The Dark Knight Rises and the Economic Impact of Bane’s Occupation of Gotham

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I started working on this post a long time ago and, for whatever reason, never got around to finishing it. So please keep in mind that this was largely written shortly after the film first came out. I should also disclose at the outset that this post will contain spoilers, so if there is some sort of unbelievably powerful force that has kept you from seeing this fantastic movie, please be warned. For those still interested, there’s more after the jump.

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Evolutionary Pscyhology in Political Science

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I’ve been thinking about the role of evolutionary psychology in political science, after it was used in a couple of recent presentations. My concern is that political scientists are borrowing a method or paradigm from another discipline without borrowing the critiques that need to go with it. Discussion of some of the normative issues around … Read more

Educational Attainment and Race in Alabama

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A part of my responsibilities as a post-doc here at Alabama entails helping faculty with seeking out external funding for projects. One of these projects has involved developing a program to promote educational outreach throughout the state. In the course of this work I’ve been digging through some data on educational attainment rates in Alabama. … Read more

Teaching Introductory Graduate Methods: Some Ideas About Understanding Sampling Distributions

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Everyone has their own way of teaching methods, but in this entry I thought I’d share a brief exercise that I thought worked well. This code was developed when I was the teaching assistant for a second-semester methods class focusing on regression. Specifically, this was a section of the class from the first few weeks … Read more

How Do You Review?

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I’ve been sending articles out for review for a few years now, and I’ve also had the opportunity to review several papers for journals. Having been through each side of the ordeal, I’ve begun to form some opinions on the peer review process as a whole. This is something other political scientists have written extensively about. For example, … Read more