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This is a guest post by political scientists Michael Bailey and Forrest Maltzman. The Supreme Court has reinserted itself in the heart of domestic politics by agreeing to review the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).  How is the Court likely to rule?  Consider two scenarios. The first scenario relies on a prominent theory […]

I enjoy the London Review of Books but I’m not a fan of their policy of hiring English people to write about U.S. politics. In theory it could work just fine but in practice there seem to be problems. Recall the notorious line from a couple years ago, “But viewed in retrospect, it is clear […]

A new book by Tanni Haas interviews 20 political bloggers and gets their thoughts.  Here is one from Tyler Cowen on how to have a successful blog: It needs to be updated regularly and to some extent be self-critical or self-reflective. And the person should read widely on the Web. That’s a requirement. There are […]

The latest rounds of “nerdfight”—Seth Masket vs. Sean Trende, Nate Silver vs. Ron Klain vs. Nate Silver vs. Brendan Nyhan, and also Harry Enten—are instructive in many ways.  I want to weigh in with some points that I feel are getting short shrift. A lot of the discussion has centered on the value of particular […]

United Russia, Russia’s ruling party, saw its popularity drop by nine points this week and then released the following online add: The tag line? “Let’s Do it Together” [h/t to Brian Whitmore, Israel Marques, and Scott Gehlbach, who wants this to be immediately nominated for most unusual campaign advertisement.]

Earlier this week, I raised the issue that there might be some tension between the sudden savior status of technocratic government and traditional notions of democratic accountability. Thus it was with great interest that I read the lead to the AP story on Italy’s likely incoming new – “TECHNOCRATIC” – Prime Minister, Mario Monti: Italy’s […]

Daron Shaw, Matt Grossmann, and Keena Lipsitz, and I have a newly published text on campaign and elections that might be of interest to some readers.  It’s intended for classroom use and would, I think, be appropriate for advanced high school students or undergraduates.  We tried in the book to do three things.  First, we […]