Blog: The Monkey Cage

Hermain Cain’s somewhat unusual ads have inspired some to come up with all-time lists of bizarre political ads from the U.S.. I wonder if we could use the collective wisdom of Monkey Cagers to find some of the most bizarre political ads across the globe. I accept nominations in the comments and via e-mail. I […]

I just wanted to clarify Josh’s post on the baseball “world series” for our non-American audience. Josh was not writing about the improbable run that the Dutch national honkbal team made last week to defeat Cuba, the US, and others to become the first European world champion in baseball since 1938. No, Josh was referring […]

RETIREMENT. This week the New York Times reported that Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), who caucuses with the Democrats, has been speaking with previous contender Linda McMahon, a Republican campaigning for her party’s nomination for Lieberman’s seat, drawing the ire of many establishment Democrats.  Lieberman’s retirement and that of other members of Congress this year raises this […]

With the Supercommittee back in the news (see here and here, for example) after weeks of secrecy, it seems a good time to ask the question of whether all this secrecy is good for policy making. After all, it seems antithetical to traditional notions of openness and transparency in government, things we often seek to […]

In the “picture is worth a thousand words” department, the following graph shows the probability that each team will win at each moment of the game: Of course, this picture is pretty good too: Source for win probabilities (and more explanation available at): Fangraphs. H/t for the photo to Grantland.

Nate Silver, over at fivethirtyeight, objects to the conventional wisdom that Herman Cain, despite his place in the polls, has little chance of becoming the Republican presidential nominee. That wisdom, consistent in this case with our book, The Party Decides, is that that Cain may have some appeal with some elements of the party, but […]

In the Wall Street Journal, of all places! What happened? They couldn’t get John Yoo to write something on short notice?

From the Washington Post: (link from here) As Jay Livingston points out, the Post’s lolcat is not only ridiculous on its own, it also doesn’t fit with the first paragraph of the news story.

In his most recent New York Times column, David Brooks falls into a common trap of political reporting, mixing concerns of policy and campaigning. Brooks writes: Democrats can win elections in this climate if they defuse the Big Government/Small Government ideological debate. With his Third Way approach, Bill Clinton established that he was not a […]

Continuing our series of articles from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section, Newsletter, today we present the following article on the “Ethical Challenges of Embedded Experimentation” by Macartan Humphreys of Columbia University. Since posting the first article from the newsletter on Monday, I have subsequently learned that the entire newsletter is free and […]