PapaBigears

This is a guest post by Christopher Zorn.  He is is the Liberal Arts Research Professor of Political Science, Professor of Sociology and Crime, Law, and Justice (by courtesy), and Affiliate Professor of Law at Pennsylvania State University.  He was previosuly Visiting Scientist and Program Director for the Law and Social Science Program at the […]

Sean Richey emails: I just wanted to mention that political scientists also often publish in other fields that may have more obvious concrete relevance.  Statistics is a good example. Public health is another.  Brendan Nyhan, Jason Reifler and I have a forthcoming article in a top pediatrics journal, the Journal of Adolescent Health.  We use […]

This is a guest post by Martin Edwards of Seton Hall University.   The focus of his research is the International Monetary Fund.  Although it is complicated to calculate how much the taxpayer money goes to fund the IMF, certainly that number is certainly in the billions (see this CRS report).  At a minimum, this gives […]

This project evaluates the impacts of war on presidential power and public policymaking. It takes as its starting point Clinton Rossiter’s “axiom of political science,” to which scholars ranging from Edward Corwin to John Yoo have assented, that “great emergencies in the life of a constitutional state bring an increase in executive power and prestige, […]

Here are Congressman Jeff Flake’s opening remarks in the brief debate over his amendment to defund the NSF political science program: The nation is closing in on a $16 trillion debt; deficit, more than $1.3 trillion. Nearly 40 cents of every dollar we spend is borrowed. Congress can either continue funding unnecessary programs like someone […]

Now that the House has voted to defund the political science program of the National Science Foundation, I wanted to say something about my own grant, which I officially received last month and which totals $76,160, or about 0.002% of the FY 2012 federal budget.  Although I do not know whether those who voted to […]

Earlier I suggested that anyone writing about the electoral implications of Obama’s support of gay marriage needed to think rigorously about some key questions.  This is in lieu of flabby statements about how Obama’s endorsement “could” lead “some voters” in “key battleground states” to “reconsider” their support for him.  Etc.  The upshot of that post […]

There will be much speculation on what this means for the outcome of the 2012 presidential election.  What will make such speculation even minimally informed and worth paying attention to?  Here’s a guide. The president’s announcement could affect voters in one or more of three ways: 1) Changing how they feel about gay marriage itself—perhaps […]

John Wihbey of Journalist’s Resource emails: We’re currently putting together a model political reporting syllabus for journalism schools (both covering governance issues and campaign issues), and it occurred to me that it would be great to reach out to you and see what key articles, studies and materials that every political reporter should read in […]

I have a post at 538 updating my earlier analysis of Obama’s approval rating.  Commenters both there and here, as well as Jay Cost and a couple others via email, noted that something seemed odd or amiss about the predictions I presented.  As it turns out, they were right and in my post I discuss […]