Institutions

History vs. Political Science? Temporally Constrained Studies and Generalizability.

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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

Trading Statehood for Votes: The Early Decline of the Democratic Party in the Idaho

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Since I recently moved to Boise, I decided to learn more about the political history of Idaho. I discovered that there are several cases in the formation the Idaho political system that are relevant to the study of Comparative, American, and state politics today, and so I am going to devote a few blog posts to … Read more

Tom Coburn’s Grudge, Part II

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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

Chuck Hagel and Bipartisanship in Foreign Policy

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The news surrounding Obama’s nomination of Chuck Hagel and John Brennan as Secretary of Defense and Director of the CIA (respectively) has primarily been focused on the “controversial” Hagel’s previous statements and positions. Republican commentators have been complaining about Hagel’s nomination, claiming that his nomination sends a powerful signal that the Obama administration is putting more … Read more

Changing the Rules to Get the Outcome You Want

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For the last 15 years, more Americans have opted to take advantage of early voting opportunities (either through early in-person voting or mail ballots). By 2008, early voting compromised one third of the vote. Early voting seemed to help Democrats more than Republicans in 2008, as Democrats were more likely to vote early than Republicans.  … Read more

Gotham City as the Paris Commune

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A spoiler warning before I get to the heart of the discussion: This blog entry is being posted the Monday after the release of The Dark Knight Rises.  The blog post deals with material presented in the film, plot elements, as well as some dialogue, so consider this a warning.  While I am not going to … Read more

(Mis)Understanding Political Science and Some Other Stuff

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Let me preface this by saying that I started writing this post a little while ago, so some of the content is a bit dated at this point. That said, over at the Duck, Steve Saideman has a post up that continues the ongoing discussion on political science, its utility, and its relationship with the … Read more

Human Rights and NGOs

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I've been working recently on quite a few projects that deal with human rights and NGOs, and today's BBC podcast has quite a bit of material that is relevant to these topics.  First, there's a story regarding a new law that is being debated in Russia that would require NGOs receiving funding from external sources … Read more

Military Capabilities

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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

On the Utility of IR Research

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At the Duck of Minerva, Josh Busby has a post on the gap between political science research/IR and the policymaking community. I don't have a whole lot to say about the specific content of Busby's post, aside from the fact that I think this is an interesting an important debate to have. (Also, please note that the links in the quotations were provided in Busby's original post).

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