Blog: The Monkey Cage

Full details are available on the APSA website here.

Javier Sajuria, a political science PhD student at University College London, has mapped the social networks surrounding tweets using the #APSA2012 hashtag. His full report (repeatedly being updated with notifications, not surprisingly, through his twitter feed) is available here, but here’s the basic picture (as of 5:49 EST on August 28th): (And yes, I’m in […]

Republicans say yes.  Steven Benen agrees.  I think that conclusion is premature.  The Democrats and Obama retain key advantages on this issue—that is, this particular fight is not yet a draw.  The Republicans continue to fight an uphill battle.  Here is why. 1) Do people know what Ryan’s Medicare plan is? Most do not.  In […]

This is a guest post from James Igoe Walsh , a political science professor at UNC-Charlotte. ——— America’s wars are increasingly fought by drones, not soldiers. Drones reduce the costs of conflict to the United States by eliminating the possibility of American military casualties. Does this make political leaders and the American public more willing to […]

I saw this graph posted my Tyler Cowen: and my first thought was that the bar plot should be replaced by a line plot: Six lines, one for each income category, with each line being a time series of these changes. With a line plot, you can more easily see each time series (these are […]

We are delighted to welcome a guest post from Jeff Colgan, an Assistant Professor at the School of International Service at American University, on how a new SEC rule may just help to prevent war. ******************************************************** The concept of the resource curse is gradually moving from academia to the policy world.  The U.S. Securities and Exchange […]

There is a lot of discussion about the upcoming political science meeting in New Orleans, which is due to begin on Thursday.  See, for example, the #APSA2012 hashtag.  With the goal of moving from a possibly unrepresentative sample of political scientists who are tweeting to a possibly less unrepresentative sample of political scientists who read […]

Here is Shafer’s blog.  Here is Shafer.  Here is a selection from the first post: What observers at home are less able to judge for themselves is the vast array of other politics, that is, electoral politicking not directly involving the presidential candidates, along with the vast array of interest group argument and intended policy […]

Here is something you don’t hear too much: voters view Mitt Romney about as favorably as Barack Obama.  At least if voters are asked about whether the candidates are knowledgeable or decent or intelligent or moral or a strong leader.  Those are important qualities, and perceptions of Romney and Obama don’t differ much. One of […]

From APSA’s website ———————————- Weather Alert: Hurricane Isaac Updated: August 27, 2012 (2:30pm) UPDATE: Meeting to Start on Thursday. Following Mayor Landrieu’s press conference (8/27) affirming that the city is prepared for the storm, and from our own independent inquires, we will continue with the official start of the meeting on Thursday as announced. We […]