Updating my civil war and terrorism syllabus
Syllabus update for a graduate course on civil war and terrorism, featuring new readings on rebel governance, civilian targeting, and counterterrorism.
Formal Research
Disavowing Strategy is a Strategic Move!
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
Recent Lessons from Games for Political Science
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
Educational Attainment and Race in Alabama
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
Political Science and Scientists in the News
Just a quick link to this Atlantic article. It features several works by political scientists on why and when the public is likely to support military action. Complete with graphs and everything. *Picture taken from the aforementioned and linked Atlantic article. Michael FlynnMichael Flynn is a professor in the Department of Political Science at … Read more
Follow-up
Just a quick follow-up to yesterday's post. Chad sent me a link to this paper that was recently posted on AJPS' early view. I've not read the entire article yet, but it seems apropos given the subject matter of yesterday's piece. Michael FlynnMichael Flynn is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Kansas … Read more
History vs. Political Science? Temporally Constrained Studies and Generalizability.
So this is my first post back from a prolonged break. As I mentioned in a previous—albeit brief—entry, I’ve had a busy but enjoyable summer. I got married, defended my dissertation at the beginning of July, and my wife and I have since relocated to Tuscaloosa, Alabama where I’ve accepted a position as a post-doc. … Read more
Tom Coburn’s Grudge, Part II
Via Jennifer Diascro's Twitter feed: The Economist has an article up addressing the specific targeting of Political Science Research by Senator Coburn. The article addresses a point that I've brought up a couple of times in the past (see here for example). Specifically, why only political science? The Economist: The real debate seems to be over … Read more
Updates
Just a couple of links, comments, etc. Six seismologists in Italy have recently been convicted and sentenced to six years in prison (each) for issuing a "falsely reassuring statement" prior to the 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy (BBC Article). The seismologists have been charged with manslaughter over the deaths of over 300 people in the … Read more
Military Capabilities
Phil Arena has a very cool post up wherein he explores a potential alternative to the ubiquitous CINC score for measuring military capabilities. This strikes me as something that is long overdue. And there are a couple of things that I like about the measure just from taking a quick glance at it. First, given … Read more