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 cuckolded spouse who does not notice his partner’s flagrant infidelity. The aging athlete who believes he is still in his prime. The alcoholic who insists he can stop drinking. These cases illustrate how powerful and pervasive a force self-deception is in our everyday lives, and there are lively debates among contemporary scholars about why …
Love and Self-Deception in the Eighteenth Century: The Curious Case of Rousseau’s Julie Read More »
