Quantitative and formal analysis of international relations, comparative politics, and American politics.
Discussing the election is all but inevitable. Given my proclivity for numbers, I gathered opinions from 11 willing "experts," including 5 political scientists, 3 bloggers from the QP, 8 PhDs, and members from other related field (Public Policy, Communication, and Planning). Nine of the members are from Boise State. Of course, to reward those who … Read more
Since tomorrow is national election day in the US, the get out the vote drives are in full swing. So, in celebration of voting, a few relevant articles on academics and voting: The rational voter paradox illustrated by Downs' An Economic Theory of Democracy suggests few should actually vote, but many do. This may be due to voters … Read more
Just some quick and dirty near-self-promotion. Michael Allen (Boise State) and Matthew DiGiuseppie (University of Mississippi)—both of whom are proud, card-carrying Binghamton PhDs—have a new piece on credit and alliance formation that is now available on International Studies Quarterly's early view. The link to the paper can be found here. Take a look.
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
So as not to appear rude, I wanted to note that we seem to be having problems on our end posting/replying to comments in the comments section. Apologies to the few individuals who do leave comments, and I hope this hiccup does not discourage future feedback.
I may be late to the ball on this one, but in discussing a project that we're working on, fellow QP blogger Michael Allen recently pointed me to the "kountry" package for STATA. The package was created by Rafal Raciborski for the purposes of facilitating the creation of country codes and switching between codes provided by … Read more
The fact that this post follows so closely on the heels of my recent post regarding the sparseness of posts over the next couple of months should in no way be taken as negating my previous point. That said, Steve Saideman at the Duck has linked to this fairly lengthy piece on the role of … Read more
Obviously posting has been a bit sparse for the last month or two, and it will likely continue in this fashion throughout the remainder of the fall semester. While we are currently running on silent, this should only be temporary. I myself am currently swamped by a range of responsibilities, including dissertating, working on projects … Read more
I have posted a list of ice breaker questions below that can be fun to use during the first week of classes. Feel free to comment if you have any more suggestions! 1. If you could meet 3 people, real or fictional, who would they be? 2. Name a political event that has impacted your … Read more
Given that there is a hurricane that is currently headed for the city of New Orleans—a city which also happens to be hosting the 2012 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association—this poll at the Monkey Cage may be of some interest to many of you out there. There currently seems to be a … Read more