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While Americans continue to fret about whether Paul Ryan will help or hurt Mitt Romney’s presidential chances, a remarkable drama is unfolding in the Russian political sphere. Three members of the Russian “feminist punk-rock collective” Pussy Riot have been on trial and are due to be sentenced on Friday. Here’s some background from the AP […]

Once again, we bring you Alastair Ruffles, with an insider’s view of the 2012 London Olympics: ********* Aside from the obvious things you find at the Olympic Park venue (sports stadia, merchandise sellers, overpriced beer) the London site at Stratford has incorporated a number of pieces of ‘art’ in to the design. Foremost amongst these […]

In introducing our man-on-the-street reporting from the 2012 London Olympics, I noted the conspicuos lack of writing on The Monkey Cage regarding the Olympics. Fortunately, this post caught the eye of political scientist Dr. Will Jennings, Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Southampton and a Research Associate at the Centre for Analysis of […]

The following is a guest post from Princeton political scientist Grigore Pop-Eleches on recent political developments in Romania that culminated in a referendum to confirm the impeachment of the president. The material is particularly timely, as the Romanian Constitutional Court is currently hearing challenges to the results of this referendum on the basis of electoral […]

Once again, we bring you Alastiar Ruffles on the 2012 London Olympics: ************** Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (or ‘Bo Jo’, or plain ‘Boris’ for short) is perhaps the most recognisable figure in current British politics, partly thanks to his trademark disheveled hairstyle but also due to his remarkable ‘off the cuff’ style when dealing […]

Readers of The Monkey Cage may have noticed in the last few days a conspicuous lack of coverage of the Olympics on our blog. While for some of you this may have been greatly appreciated, others may have been left wondering if this was appropriate behavior for one of the seven most powerful blogs in […]

The following is a guest post from Mona Yacoubian, a Senior Advisor on the Middle East at the Stimson Center. *********** With heavy fighting in Syria’s two largest cities and international diplomacy faltering, Syria is poised to descend into a protracted civil war.  The regime’s collapse, whether sudden or protracted, will not herald a peaceful […]

When I was about to leave for college, my father was excitedly looking through my course catalogue for the coming year when he came across a class entitled “Ethics and International Affairs”. Without missing a beat, he looked up at me and said “well, I imagine that will be a pretty short class….” It is […]

Tolga Sinmazdemir, a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Washington University in St. Louis in the Department of Political Science, sends along the following response to Alberto Simpser’s now very well read Monkey Cage guest post on the 2012 Mexican elections. In the post, Simpser attempted to estimated the cost of purchasing enough votes to swing the […]

In view of the large amount of attention yesterday’s post on the potential for vote buying in the 2012 Mexican presidential election has received, we are very pleased to have a second follow up post-election report on this election from  Marco A. Morales, a Ph.D candidate in the Department of Politics at New York University, that […]