Blog: The Monkey Cage

Given my research interests in Russian politics, I will offer my own pre-election report on the March 4, 2012 first round of the Russian presidential elections. I will, however, do so in the time-honored Monkey Cage fashion of a Q&A with myself. Readers should note that the dialogue (minus this introductory paragraph) originally appeared on […]

It seems like the Netherlands has emerged as the exemplar of all that is wrong with modern secular liberalism. First there was Fox News’ campaign against the free love, pot smoking, anarchists who have turned Amsterdam into a Disney World for every questionable person in Europe (the video above is worth watching alone for Bill […]

The Monkey Cage checks in with that other presidential election.

The Monkey Cage takes a question from a reader. 

Norm Ornstein and others have long been concerned about the US government’s poor record at planning for the continuity of government in case of disaster, terrorist or otherwise. So, we probably shouldn’t poke too much fun at Wyoming’s recent efforts to think ahead in the event of the apocalypse. (After all, both the Mayans and […]

This is a guest post by political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus. ***** The Romney campaign recently came under scrutiny for first suggesting that, because of his history in the state and as a frontrunner for the nomination, Michigan was a “must win”—but then backtracking.  The campaign claimed they were not altering their strategy based on a […]

This is a guest post by former guest-blogger and University of Chicago political scientist Paul Staniland: ***** Anne-Marie Slaughter has a provocative op-ed in today’s New York Times calling for intervention in Syria. She argues that simply arming the opposition will trigger a proxy war. Instead, she advocates creating “no-kill zones” that are explicitly defensive, […]

New research tackles Citizens United and campaign finance.

We are able to uncover considerable evidence of a religious left among Christians, and the big news is that it matters electorally.  Having a strong communitarian view of faith is associated with voting for Democratic candidates. That is political scientist Ken Wald in this interview.  For more, see Jordan Ragusa’s post at Rule22.

There were some good comments on my earlier negative ads zombie post, and Phil Arena has also posted a reply.  Let me make a few more observations. At least one commenter wonders how I can claim that there is any zombie at work here.  After all, I note that the literature on negative advertising certainly […]