Blog: The Monkey Cage

I received the following email: I just moved to NY from Texas last month to attend graduate school **, and I was wondering if it would be better to register to vote for the fall election here locally, or if I should ask for an absentee ballot from ** County back home in Texas. I’m […]

One presumed cause for the near absence of foreign policy issues at last week’s Republican Convention is that the party is just too divided internally. As Brian Katulis put it in the New York Times: Today’s Republicans are as divided on foreign policy as they’ve ever been, and Mr. Romney is finding it hard to […]

We are delighted to welcome the following guest post by Helen Milner (Princeton), Daniel Nielson (BYU), and Michael Findley (UT-Austin) in which they discuss the implications of a new working paper not presented at APSA. *********************************************************** Is foreign aid effective? Much research on this question has focused on quantitative measures of large-scale outcomes like a […]

Eduardo Porter in the New York Times talks with some experts who have written things such as that “most companies do not get any return from their lobbying expenditures” and that “campaign finance had a tiny effect.” Porter’s article is good: although he quotes some research that claims campaign spending has little effect, he also […]

… it might look something like this: Yes, that is Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, dressed up like a crane and flying a hang-glider to lead Siberian cranes on a preferred migratory path to Asia. Putin, of course, has a history of macho stunts/photo ops, many of which are laid out in this fantastic photo […]

Courtesy of Seth Masket: 1) You do not need to be a poli sci major to go to law school. 2) You do not need to go to law school if you’re a poli sci major. 3) You do not need to go to law school.

Featuring a guest appearance by Laurence “ten-strike” Tribe!

Why don’t our political parties tell us exactly what they plan to do if they win in November?

The New York Times has an article today on the foreign consequences of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. A law intended to prohibit the payment of bribes to foreign officials by United States businesses has produced more than $3 billion in settlements. But a list of the top companies making these settlements is notable […]

Some exciting news regarding our Election Reports series: we have now officially entered into a partnership with the journal Electoral Studies. The agreement covers two areas. First, authors who write “Notes on Recent Elections” for the journal will also be encouraged to write Election Reports for The Monkey Cage, which should bring us additional content […]