PapaBigears

Steve Kolowich at Inside Higher Ed has a nice piece on Lynn Vavreck’s and my book about the 2012 campaign, for which we now have a title—The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Election.  Kolowich’s piece includes some discussion of the potential advantages and disadvantages of our plans to publish chapters electronically and serially […]

Michael Wagner reports this via Twitter.  We will follow up when further details are public.  Ostrom, of course, was a political scientist and the 2009 Nobel laureate in economics.

Seth Masket: So there’s your money effect, folks. Go from a 2:1 money advantage to a 7:1 money advantage, and it could increase your vote share by a full percentage point! Woo hoo!

I wrote Charles Lane a brief note in response to his piece and he was kind enough to respond.  In responding to him further, this is what I wrote (adapted slightly for the blog format).  Lane had observed to me that his critics had a material interest in this debate and that illustrates his point […]

This is a round-up of links.  We begin with the most recent call to eliminate federal funding from both political and social science, from Charles Lane at the Washington Post.  Here are some of today’s responses: Seth Masket, Jon Bernstein, Keith Poole, and Henry.  Let me summarize the responses thusly: What Lane dislikes about social […]

Here are a couple graphs for the next time you hear that the “independents are the largest group of American voters” and some species of “to appeal to this vast number of independents you have to take moderate positions.”  Graphs are courtesy of the new Pew Center report (p.28 and 98 of the pdf): First, […]

This is a second guest post by Ryan Enos and Lynn Vavreck.  Their first one on this subject is here. ***** In 1960, Richard Neustadt wrote Presidential Power, in which he told students of politics that presidential power was the “power to persuade.”  Neustadt wasn’t so much talking about shifting public opinion, but Sam Kernell […]

More from Hans Noel on James Madison and factions.  (See also Jon Bernstein’s thoughts.) Greg Koger on what really has changed in the Senate. Seth Masket is soaking in Barack Obama, or something like that. Seth on whether California’s top-two primary will de-polarize its politics.

Bonus tributes to Earl Scruggs and Merle Watson too.  Here is the Los Angeles Times obituary.

Monkey Cage readers in the Washington DC area may be interested in this event, presented by the National Capital Area Political Science Association: National Capital Area Political Science Association Roundtable on It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism  by Thomas E. Mann and Norman […]