A defining feature of democracy is that voters reward or punish incumbents at the ballot box in response to the policies and general conditions that they observe. By doing so, they can encourage politicians to implement better policies. In times of crisis, this might not be that easy. Adopting adequate measures in response to an …
Effective lawmakers are the workhorses of the U.S. Congress, but does this legislative effort translate into electoral success? That is, are members of Congress rewarded at the ballot box for the work that they put into advancing their bills through the lawmaking process? In today’s polarized political climate, gridlock is pervasive and elected officials are …
The Primary Path for Turning Legislative Effectiveness into Electoral Success Read More »
Political theorists have a number of different tools in their methodological toolkits. A great deal of political theorising is done with reference to empirical data, whereas others look to history to show how certain ideas were shaped by the historical contexts from which they emerged. Other theorists draw on tools like archival sources; however, one …
Are Intuitions Reliable Enough for Political Theorising? Read More »
On the front cover of one of its 2016 issues, The Economist depicted Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the guise of an emperor. It explained the choice thus: Not since the era of imperial Rome has the “thumbs-up” sign been such a potent and public symbol of power. A mere 12 years after it was …
In most democracies, including the USA and UK, voting is voluntary. This usually results in low and unequal electoral turnout, which some take to threaten the ideals of democratic responsiveness and political equality. Some have suggested that these problems could be solved by making voting compulsory, as it is in countries such as Australia and …
Making Non-Voters Pay: Prices as an Alternative to Compulsory Voting Read More »
It is an open secret in international politics that governments sometimes use money to buy political support from other governments. As an example, take this unusually frank remark from former US President Trump: “These nations that take our money and then they vote against us at the Security Council … We’re watching those votes. Let …
Governments use international organizations to hide contentious foreign policies Read More »
We propose a method to estimate sub-national public opinion from national survey data. Our approach extends the current gold-standard, multilevel regression, and post-stratification (MrP), with standard machine learning techniques to improve prediction accuracy. We also provide a package for the R statistical computing environment that implements our approach. This package, called autoMrP, is available for …
What is often referred to as ‘ideal theory’ in political philosophy, represented by theorists like John Rawls, is under attack from critics stressing that it is rather useless: since ideal theory presumes a world which is very different from our own world, it generates principles that do not tell us what we ought to do …
Who’s afraid of ideals? A defence of ideal theory Read More »
Social unrest often begins suddenly and spreads quickly. How does social unrest diffuse? This is the question we address in our forthcoming article. Our starting point is that riots diffuse when information about them spreads to new locations and reaches new individuals. This raises a number of important research questions: what are the networks that …
In November 2015, the Syria-based Islamic State terrorist organization perpetrated a large series of attacks in Paris, France, at a rock concert, football stadium, and the city’s cafes and restaurants. The attacks were the largest in an advanced democracy in over a decade and resulted in the deaths of 130 civilians. The attacks also coincided …
In a new paper titled “Can the Party in Power Systematically Win a Majority in Close Legislative Elections? Evidence from U.S. State Assemblies,” Dahyeon Jeong and Ajay Shenoy find evidence that parties can systematically win a slender majority of seats in close legislative elections, at the cost of winning fewer seats. Most states pass new …
How important is political ideology to the way judges decide cases? Are judges merely “politicians in robes,” or are they faithfully interpreting and applying the law? Political scientists have long been interested in these questions. We’re interested too, but we’re asking—and answering—these questions in a different way. The first difference is our focus. The US …
The President that Appoints Judges Matters for Civil Rights Read More »
When the media reports on federal judges, it often refers to the presidents who appointed them. This tendency reflects that many people think that ideology influences judges’ decisions. A wealth of research supports this sentiment. We believe something is missing in this account: the importance of interpersonal relationships among judges in determining the influence of …
Appeals Judges Only Rely on Ideology When Reviewing Judges They Don’t Know Well Read More »
Though formal and empirical research has established the importance of large protests, their dynamics remain less understood. Empirical investigations have generated contradictory results for decades, making repression and protest dynamics an enduring puzzle. Studying these dynamics has been difficult because existing methodologies generate coarse (ordinal) estimates of violence and have difficulty measuring the size of …
How State and Protester Violence Affect Protest Dynamics Read More »
Today, the US media market is both “high choice” and fragmented. This situation stands in stark contrast to the information environment of the 1970s and 1980s, when the three major television networks (i.e., ABC, CBS, NBC) and the similarity of their news programming created a true “information commons” shared by virtually all Americans. Today’s media …
Partisan Enclaves and Information Bazaars: Mapping Selective Exposure to Online News Read More »
Does information about government performance and corruption shape voter behaviour? Canonical theories of retrospective accountability suggest that it should, as voters reward their politicians for good performance and punish them for bad performance. Audits of financial management in government are an increasingly prominent source of such information in countries around the world, particularly when conducted …
Audits strengthen electoral accountability in South Africa Read More »
In fiscal year 2020, the U.S. federal executive branch employed approximately 97.07% of civilian employees (excluding those employed in The U.S. Postal Service or serving in uniformed military positions) housed within the three branches of the U.S. federal government (Federal Workforce Statistics and Sources: OPM and OMB 2021: 6, Table 3: https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R43590.pdf). In short, the …
A known critical element of executive authority involves how power is allocated among the president and administrative agencies. Less appreciated is how the allocation of powers between presidents and the bureaucracy is vital for understanding both coordination and power-sharing that takes place between governmental branches. The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 (BAA) reforms sought …
Coup attempts are frequent events: Since 1945, there have on average been around 7 coup attempts each year. This is unlikely to change anytime soon. In 2021, coup attempts have taken place in Niger, Sudan, Myanmar, and several other places. While successful coups often make the headlines, half of all coup attempts fail. This is …
The Morning After: Minister Purges after Failed Coup Attempts in Dictatorships Read More »
One of the most robust empirical facts in the political science literature is that children resemble their parents along with a number of political behaviors and attitudes. In this study, we focus on such parent-child similarities (or so-called intergenerational transmission) in voter turnout. Differences in political participation related to family background carry special significance because …
International relations theories often assume that actors make military conflict decisions unemotionally, weighing the costs and benefits as a computer might. However, abundant historical examples suggest this is not the case. According to Bob Woodward’s account, President Trump responded to the news that the Syrian regime, led by Bashar al-Assad, had used chemical weapons by …
Major-power interventions in civil wars are extremely common: since the 1950s, close to half of the civil conflicts involve a major power and a third feature intervention by multiple powers. While scholars have amassed considerable evidence that rebel groups indeed anticipate the responses of potential interveners on the eve of conflict, the impact of an …
Do Major-Power Interventions Encourage the Onset of Civil Conflict? Read More »
Standing committees play a crucial role in the work of modern legislatures. A casual glance at recent news headlines makes this clear: in the current 117th Congress, the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure has been hard at work on the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the House Ways and Means Committee recently presented a …
How Petitioning is Linked to the Origins and Development of Standing Committees Read More »
In this year’s German federal election campaign, voters with an immigrant background, who constitute ten percent of the electorate, played a remarkably small role in the appeals and mobilization efforts of the major parties. When representatives of the Turkish community asked the Bundestag candidates about their positions on topics important to immigrant voters, less than …
Do Politicians Discriminate Against Constituents with an Immigration Background? Read More »
In a new paper at the Journal of Politics, “Agricultural Comparative Advantage and Legislators’ Support for Trade Agreements”, Francesco Amodio, Leonardo Baccini, Giorgio Chiovelli, and Michele Di Maio find evidence that comparative advantage in agriculture predicts how legislators vote on the ratification of preferential trade agreements in Congress. Implementing trade liberalization is often a controversial policy …
Agricultural comparative advantage explains US legislators’ support for trade agreements Read More »
What happens when a government attempts to shut down one of the most popular social media platforms to combat foreign propaganda? In my recently accepted article for The Journal of Politics, I examine the effect of the Ukrainian ban on Russian social media to draw lessons on the use of censorship against information threats in …
The three reform acts in the UK (in 1832, 1867, and 1884) are among the most consequential events in 19th century British politics: they expanded the franchise and reformed the electoral system – essential steps for the UK’s trajectory towards modern-day politics as we know it. Thanks to the Eggers-Spirling database of British Political Development, …
The emergence of modern-day careers in Westminster systems Read More »
Can states “shop” between international organizations to secure more favorable deals from them, and if so, when? These questions are central to understanding the role that these organizations play in world politics. If international organizations can constrain state behavior in meaningful ways, we ought to care a great deal about the sorts of policies they …
Can International Organizations Constrain States? Read More »
Accelerating the adoption of renewable energy is vital for the fight against climate change. But domestic political support for transitioning toward sustainable energy is far from guaranteed. Renewable energy infrastructure, such as wind turbines, delivers broad socioeconomic benefits but the costs are often concentrated. These perceived local costs could create powerful interest groups and coalitions …
Not in My Backyard? Wind Power Benefits Pro-Renewables Democrats in Congress Read More »
Elections are cornerstones for societies transitioning from civil war to democracy. The success or failure of these elections is shaped by the strategies former rebels employ to mobilize voters. Of those strategies, clientelism is particularly important. Clientelism denotes a strategy in which political elites target potential voters with selective goods, such as vote buying or …
How wartime legacies can undermine democratic quality after civil war Read More »
The Black Lives Matter Movement is officially more than a decade old. In its longevity, it has proven itself an enduring force in American politics. It has certainly been an enduring force in the research trajectory that has led to our new Journal of Politics piece: “Contact and Context: How Municipal Traffic Stops Shape Citizen …
When is policy made unilaterally rather than legislatively? Previous work focuses on the president’s so-called “first-mover advantage”, by which the president can issue an executive order and force other actors to respond. But in many notable cases, the president has moved second. Specifically, Congress often has had an opportunity to pass legislation first, after which …
Why doesn´t Congress preempt the president´s unilateral policies? Read More »
States across the US have increased their minimum wage rates in the past few years, yielding pay increases for workers paid the minimum wage. Getting a raise because the minimum wage goes up can affect one’s economic outcomes; we wanted to know whether it could also shape political behavior. In a forthcoming article in the …
Increasing the minimum wage also increases voting by affected workers Read More »
