The Morning After: Minister Purges after Failed Coup Attempts in Dictatorships
Coup attempts are frequent events: Since 1945, there have on average been around 7 coup attempts each year. This is…
Strategic Power Sharing: Commitment, Capability, and Authoritarian Survival
All dictators confront threats to their survival in office. One strategy to mitigate threats is to share power with threatening…
Like parent, like child: both social and genetic factors account for parent-child similarities in voter turnout
One of the most robust empirical facts in the political science literature is that children resemble their parents along with…
How Humiliation Motivates War
International relations theories often assume that actors make military conflict decisions unemotionally, weighing the costs and benefits as a computer…
Do Major-Power Interventions Encourage the Onset of Civil Conflict?
Major-power interventions in civil wars are extremely common: since the 1950s, close to half of the civil conflicts involve a…
How Petitioning is Linked to the Origins and Development of Standing Committees
Standing committees play a crucial role in the work of modern legislatures. A casual glance at recent news headlines makes…
Do Politicians Discriminate Against Constituents with an Immigration Background?
In this year’s German federal election campaign, voters with an immigrant background, who constitute ten percent of the electorate, played…
Agricultural comparative advantage explains US legislators’ support for trade agreements
In a new paper at the Journal of Politics, “Agricultural Comparative Advantage and Legislators’ Support for Trade Agreements”, Francesco Amodio, Leonardo…
Would Helping the Poor Benefit Everybody?
John Rawls (1921 – 2002) was one of the most (if not the most) prominent political philosophers in the 20th…
Fighting Propaganda with Censorship
What happens when a government attempts to shut down one of the most popular social media platforms to combat foreign…