Reminder: Deadline for Heisler Graduate Student Paper Award

via the ISA blog:

The Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Section (ENMISA) of ISA is seeking submissions for its 2012 Martin O. Heisler Graduate Student Paper Award. This award recognizes the best paper presented at a panel or poster session by a graduate student at the 2011 ISA Annual Convention in Montreal. Students matriculated in a graduate program (masters or doctorate) are eligible. Submissions must focus on at least one of the topics that are at the center of the ENMISA research agenda, such as ethnicity, citizenship, nationalism, religion and migration. Students who wish to enter the competition may submit papers and their contact information on or before October 1st, 2011 to the Heisler Award Competition Coordinator, Dr. Nukhet Sandal. Please see the award website for more information.

IRCPPS in the Links: Andrew Gelman and Nate Silver on Predicting Presidential Elections

via Gelman's blog and Silver's 538:

Both are responding to articles about Alan J. Lichtman, a presidential historian at American University who offered up a model for predicting winners in his 1992 book 13 Keys to the Presidency, claiming in an interview that Obama is a lock to win in 2012.

IRCPPS in the Links: Does Appearance Matter? Assessing US Male Political Candidate's Weight vs. Their Political Success

In a Monkey Cage blog post, John Sides rips up an article by Michael Kinsley that posits Chris Christie won't be a successful candidate because he is too obese:

It’s because he prefers to toss off some musings instead of just reading some political science.  Here again is my post from three weeks ago.  And here is the paper it discussed, by Beth Miller, Jennifer Lundgren, Diane Filion, and Lauren Thompson.  In their study, obese male candidates were actually evaluated MORE POSITIVELY than non-obese male candidates.  This is hardly the last word on the subject, but, you know, it seems relevant.  Maybe Beth Miller and colleagues deserve a Bloomberg column.

IRCPPS in the Links: The Chinese Leadership Transition's Implication for Chinese Foreign Policy

Dan Drezner responds to a National Interest piece by Bruce Gilley:

[Gilley writes,] "It may be time to concede that China’s leader-in-waiting, Xi Jinping, is not the moderate that many have assumed. Indeed, evidence from his past suggests that Xi is going to steer China in a more aggressive direction, both domestically and internationally..."

...Gilley's hypothesis is certainly plausible, but can I suggest an alternative?  China is in the middle of a leadership transition -- and when politicians are trying to move on up but ain't there yet, they often have the freedom to make all kinds of crazy, out-there, irresponsible foreign policy statements secure in the knowledge that foreign policy statements are not all that binding once politicians assume power . 

IRCPPS in the Links: Terrorism in Democracies: A Response to Chenoweth

In the Monkey Cage, Peter Rosendorff responds to Erica Chenoweth's piece on terrorism in democracies:

Brock Blomberg and I beg to differ. In a book edited by Gregory Hess, Blomberg and I have a chapter that shows that the impact of being a democracy or participating in the WTO/IMF for a source country decreases the number of terrorist strikes by about 2 to 3 per year, which is more than two standard deviations greater than the average number of strikes between any two countries in a given year...

Conference Announcement: 6th Global Conference: Ethics, Evil and the State

via PSRT-L:

6th Global ConferenceEthics, Evil and the State
Sunday 6th May-- Tuesday 8th May 2012Prague, Czech Republic
Call for Papers:Ethics, evil and the state is an interdisciplinaryproject that seeks to interrogate issuessurrounding the relationship between the state,the concept of evil and alternative ways ofthinking about the state,

IRCPPS in the Links: A Cautionary Tale for US Government Employed Bloggers

Peter Van Buren offers a cautionary tale in Foreign Policy about his experience after posting some blog entries critical of US involvement in Iraq, based on his experience as a Foreign Service Officer:

toward the end of the summer, the wrath of Mesopotamia fell on me. The Huffington Post picked up one of my blog posts, which was seen by someone at State, who told someone else and before you know it I had morphed into public enemy number one -- as if I had started an al Qaeda franchise in the Foggy Bottom cafeteria. My old travel vouchers were studied forensically, and a minor incident from my time in Iraq was blown up into an international affair. One blog post from late August that referenced a Wikileaks document already online elsewhere got me called in for interrogation by Diplomatic Security and accused of disclosing classified information. I was told by Human Resources I might lose my job and my security clearance...

Summary: Comparative Politics - Volume 43, Issue 4 - July 2011

In this issue of Comparative Politics:

• Pop-Eleches and Tucker present a new framework for considering the effect of communist-era legacies on postcommunist political values and behavior.
• Maleski, Abrami, and Zheng compare the impact of institutions on income inequality in China and Vietnam.
• Green offers a new theory explaining patronage allocation based on the logic of institutional choice, whereby political leaders allocate patronage in accordance with the varying political threats they face.
• Day examines the structural factors that influence the outcomes experienced by failed rebel groups, with a case focus on Uganda.
• Balán examines the political dynamics that lead to corruption scandals, focusing on cases in Chile and Argentina.
• Nylen composes a review essay  on the next generation of literature on participatory institutions in Latin America.

IRCPPS in the Links: Success Rates of Regime Change

via the Monkey Cage:

Alex Downes, who has just joined the department at GWU, has a great piece on this topic, with this title, in the new Boston Review. Key paragraph:

Is the bloody aftermath of regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq the exception or the rule? Does regime change work? 

The short answer is: rarely. The reasons for consistent failure are straightforward. Regime change often produces violence because it inevitably privileges some individuals or groups and alienates others. Intervening forces seek to install their preferred leadership but usually have little knowledge of the politics of the target country or of the backlash their preference is likely to engender. Moreover, interveners often lack the will or commitment to remain indefinitely in the face of violent resistance, which encourages opponents to keep fighting. Regime change generally fails to promote democracy because installing pliable dictators is in the intervener’s interest and because many target states lack the necessary preconditions for democracy.

Conference Announcement: Millennium: Journal of International Studies Annual Conference

via the ISA blog:

The organizers invite attendance at the annual conference of Millennium: Journal of International Studies. Planned to take place on 22-23 October 2011 at the London School of Economics and Political Science, this year's conference theme is Out Of The Ivory Tower: Weaving the Theories and Practice of International Relations. The conference will address the ways in which theory informs practice and vice versa in today's world politics. The conference is open to all with an interest in IR. Please see the CONFERENCE WEBSITE for the registration form and fees.

IRCPPS in the Links: Terrorism in Democracies

In the Monkey Cage, Erica Chenoweth writes that the current wave of thwarted terrorist plots forces us to ask:

(1) Will the current wave of jihadist terrorism be replaced? (2) If so, by what kind of terrorism? (3) Where?

My answers: (1) Probably. (2) Who knows? (3) Largely in democratic countries, most likely. 

One of the most important continuities during the past forty years is the fact that terrorism tends to occur much more in democratic countries than in nondemocratic ones...

Abstracting: The Side Effects of Food Aid

via Chris Blattman:

The Price Effects of Cash Versus In-Kind Transfers 

Jesse M. Cunha, Giacomo De Giorgi, Seema Jayachandran
NBER Working Paper No. 17456
Issued in September 2011
NBER Program(s):   PE  

This paper compares how cash and in-kind transfers affect local prices. Both types of transfers increase the demand for normal goods, but only in-kind transfers also increase supply. Hence, in-kind transfers should lead to lower prices than cash transfers, which helps consumers at the expense of local producers. We test and confirm this prediction using a program in Mexico that randomly assigned villages to receive boxes of food (trucked into the village), equivalently-valued cash transfers, or no transfers. The pecuniary benefit to consumers of in-kind transfers, relative to cash transfers, equals 11% of the direct transfer.

IRCPPS in the Links: Dan Drezner on Networked Political Movements

via Drezner's blog:

...unless the people in these movements actually vote in elections, then their agenda will be thwarted in the long run. Even if these kinds of networked movements are new, the political imperative to get elected and re-elected is not...

...For foreign policymakers, the here and now is what matters. What I want to see is whether these movements can sustain themselves over time. For international relations theorists, the persistence of trends matters too.

Summary: American Journal of Political Science - Volume 55, Issue 3 - July 2011

In this issue of the American Journal of Political Science:

• Butler and Broockman attempt to determine whether race affects US politician's constituent services, by conducting a field experiment using using "black" and "white" aliases to send e-mails requesting assistance to a selection of state legislators.
• Anzia and Berry find that female members of Congress outperform their male counterparts.
• Harbridge and Malhotra explore the impact of partisan conflict on citizens' perceptions of the US Congress.
• Jeong, Miller, Schofield, and Sened examine why minorities raise wedge issues and how wedge issues result in partisan realignment in legislative politics.
• Trager and Vavreck study the political costs of crisis bargaining in the US presidential system and the ability of democratic leaders to make credible threats in a crisis situation.
• Hetherington and Suhay show the links between fear of violence and susceptibility to sanctioning authoritarian countermeasures.
• Rudolph offers a theory about how citizens ambivalence towards US president candidates changes over the course of an election cycle.
• Lenz and Lawson present further research confirming that candidates often receive support based on their appearance from less informed voters, particularly when they receive significant television exposure.
• Triesman finds that "It's the economy, stupid" is as valid in hybrid, semi-authoritarian regimes as it is in more liberal democracies when it comes to presidential approval ratings.
• Dewan and Hortala-Vallve put forth a new model for explaining how a Prime Minister chooses her or his cabinet.
• Davis and Meunier argue that normal political tensions no longer significantly impact economic relations between countries.
• Lipsmeyer and Zhu present a theoretical model that illustrates the interactive relationships between immigration, EU labor market integration, and domestic institutions.
• Robertson and Teitelbaum explore the relationship between FDI, regime type, and strikes in low- and middle-income countries.
• Linos examines the impact of domestic political pressure and public opinion on the diffusion of international norms.
• Gibler and Randazzo attempt to determine whether independent judiciaries prevent democratic backsliding.
• Seagrave negotiates a pathway between the seemingly diametrically opposed positions of self-ownership and divine ownership through a political theory piece on the thought of John Locke.
• Gaines and Kuklinski offer a new experimental method that combines random assignment of treatment or control with self-selection of condition, and argue that this is superior to classic random-assignment experimentation.

IRCPPS in the Links: Democratic Consolidation and Time

At Dart-Throwing Chimp, Jay Ulfelder re-considers the relationship between a democracy's age and the likelihood of if breaking down.  In two separate posts, he argues that:

 traditional thinking about the relationship between the passage of time and democratic consolidation is biased by a selection effect. Yes, the risk of a reversion to authoritarian rule is lower in older democracies than it is in younger ones, but that’s really because the democracies most susceptible to breakdown have already been weeded out. For fragile democracies, the risk of breakdown actually increases over time, unless and until they manage to transform themselves into lower-risk cases by producing an alternation in power or deepening protections for civil liberties. After that, there is essentially no association between the passage of time and the prospects for regime survival...

Humor: Stuff Political Scientists Like #10 - a Degree from an Elite School

Via The Duck of Minerva:

Political scientists like other political scientists with Ph.D. degree from a good school. Those who go to Harvard or Yale or Berkeley are ‘well-trained.’ This means that they have successfully completed coursework in rigorous quantitative methods, not that they don’t pee on the floor. Schools with a good pedigree degree offer no guarantees on the latter. In fact, continence is unlikely...

Call for Proposals: 70th Annual MPSA Conference, April 12 - 15, 2012, in Downtown Chicago

Received via e-mail:

Proposal Submission Deadline: October 7.    Submit a Proposal

• More political science research papers are presented here than any  conference - a thousand panels in all sub-fields.
• Networking - Opening Reception on Wednesday; Reception in the Exhibit Hall on Thursday; President's Reception on Saturday.
• Everything happens in the newly restored Palmer House Hilton in Downtown Chicago.
• Large Exhibit Hall to view new textbooks & discuss manuscripts; Job Placement service for any interested attendees.

Please forward this Call for Proposals to colleagues you think may be interested.

Founded in 1939, the MPSA is located in Bloomington, Indiana (101 W Kirkwood Ave, Suite 207).  Visit our website here

IRCPPS in the Links: Expert Coverage of Putin's Decision to Run for a Third Term as Russian President

Excellent roundup of coverage from The Monkey Cage, in three posts:

Putin in 2012: More Expert Analysis
Putin in 2012: Guest Commentary
Putin in 2012: More Expert Analysis

IRCPPS in the Links: Post-Election Analysis: United Arab Emirates

via The Monkey Cage:

Following on this previous post, here is Zachary Smith on the recent UAE election.  Zachary is the opinion editor of The Daily Nebraskan and was a 2010 Boren Scholar in Jordan. 

On Saturday, September 24, the United Arab Emirates held its second-ever parliamentary election. Given the small size of the electorate in the 2006 election (just under 6,000 citizens were given the right to vote), it was hard to predict the results of this election, in which voters selected half—20—of the Federal National Council...

Conference Announcement: The Asia-Pacific Century: Overcoming the Strategy Gap

via the ISA blog:

As part of the Air Force Symposium Series and in support of Air Force Research Institute, Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base will host a two-day conference December 6-7, 2011 that is designed to bring leading scholars and practitioners together for an open discussion on the future of the Indo-Pacific region. The objective is to capture the perspectives of speakers, panelists, and conference attendees. Partners for the conference are the Royal Australian Air Force—Airpower Development Centre (RAAF), Air University (AU), and Air Education Training command (AETC). Additional details on this conference, including presenters and registration rates, can be found on the CONFERENCE WEBSITE.

Call for Papers: Democracy & Society, Volume 9, Issue 1 - Ten Years into the War on Terror

via PSRT-L:

We are seeking well-written, interesting submissions of 1500-2000 words on the themes below, including summaries and/or excerpts of recently completed research, new publications, and works in progress. Submissions for the issueare due Friday, October 21, 2011.

Reminder: APSA Council Elections Open October 3rd

via APSA:

At the 2011 APSA All Member Business Meeting, the chair of the elections committee, Julie Novkov, certified the candidancies of additional nominees for council, whose nominations are properly qualified. As a result, the APSA membership will determine who will fill the vacant eight council seats. The candidates have provide a biography of themselves and a statement of views. Additionally, the nominating grou of agent has also provided information on their candidates. 

Also during the business meeting, the present members voted to send a constitutional amendment to the entire membership for its consideration. The amendment will be adopted if a majority of voting members approve it. 

The election will open on October 3 and close on November 2, 2011. In order to be eligble to vote, the member must be a current member as of September 26....

Summary: American Political Science Review - Volume 105, Issue 03 - 01 August 2011

In this issue of the American Political Science Review:

• Snyder and Borghard explore whether democratic leaders pay domestic political costs for failing to carry out public threats made during an international crisis.
• Croco examines whether leaders who are culpable for bringing their country into conflict are more or less successful in achieving favorable war outcomes than non-culpable leaders, and also whether voters punish culpable or non-culpable leaders more severely for poor outcomes.
• Cederman, Weidmann, and Gleditsch study the role of horizontal inequality in promoting ethnonationalist conflict.
• Bullock presents two experiments that test the impact of elites on the policy views of citizens in democracies.
• Mathis offers a new model for understanding how voting rules and uncertainty over preferences influence the full sharing of information during deliberations.
• Shor and McCarty share a new ideological mapping of American state legislatures.
• Folke, Hirano, and Synder consider the role that control of patronage jobs plays in increasing a political party's chance of winning US state elections.
• Fukumoto and Horiuchi detail a natural experiment that they argue can be used to detect electoral fraud .
• Hughes analyzes how gender and minority quotas actually perform in terms of increasing the political influence of minority women.
• Mansbridge responds to Rehfeld's critique of her model of representation by offering a modification, and Rehfeld responds with further critiques.

Call for Papers: Journal of Strategic Security

via the ISA blog:

The Journal of Strategic Security (JSS), a publication of Henley-Putnam University, seeks manuscripts for an upcoming special issue on how nations have fared in their development and implementation of strategic security plans – for better or worse – since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 (9/11). Submissions are being accepted ONLINE until December 1, 2011.

Call for Papers: Western Empirical Legal Studies Conference

via PSRT-L:

The UCLA School of Law Empirical Legal Scholars Association (ELSA) is
proud to announce the First Annual Western Empirical Legal Studies
Conference, February 18, 2012. The WELS Conference is open to law and
graduate students (political science, sociology, economics, etc.), and
provides them with a forum to present their empirical legal research.
The deadline for submission is October 21, 2011.
Further information and a submission form are available at the UCLA-ELSA
website<http://orgs.law.ucla.edu/elsa/Pages/WELS_2012conference.aspx>.

Call for Applicants: Georgetown University Post-Doc Fellowship

via the ISA blog:

The GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN SERVICE IN QATAR'S CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL AND REGIONAL STUDIES (CIRS) invites applications for the 2012-2013 post-doctoral fellowship. The fellowship will support a recent Ph.D. recipient in any discipline working on the Middle East.  Priority is given to projects with demonstrated relevance to the Persian Gulf. Interested candidates should submit a cover letter, a current curriculum vitae, three letters of recommendation (including one from the chair of the dissertation committee), and a short synopsis of the Ph.D. dissertation. Also, candidates should provide a statement outlining the precise nature of the intended work during the period of the fellowship, the final product’s significance for the relevant literature, and when the completion of the project for publication may be expected. Application materials should be sent to cirspositions@georgetown.edu. Review of applications begin January 5, 2012.

Reminder: APSA 2012 Annual Meeting Call for Proposals

The 2012 Call for Proposals is open as of September 15th - proposals are due by December 15th.  See APSA's website for more information.

Summary: International Organization Volume 65 - Issue 03 - 28 July 2011

In this issue of International Organization:

• Alleea and Peinhardt discuss the impact of investment treaty violations on FDI. 
• Coggins analyzes how new states emerge from secessionist movements.
• Trager presents a new model of multidimensional international crisis bargaining.
• Ramsay revisits the data on the "natural resource curse".
• Biglaisera and Lektzian examine the impact on US FDI of US trade sanctions towards the targeted country.
• Staton and Moore review the literature on judicial power in domestic and international relations. 
• Gartzkea and Naoi dissent from Keohane, Macedo, and Moravcsik's argument that multilateral organizations (MLO) could actually be good for democracy, and KKM respond.

Prospectus

This blog is proposed as a clearing house of information about the academic fields of international relations, comparative politics, and political science.  As a student of these disciplines I have found that there is no one-stop shop for information that focuses on these three inter-related fields.  Having spent the time and effort to compile a list of news sources for my own purposes, I felt that it would be helpful to aggregate and share this in a blog format.  I conceive of this blog as a place to post abstracts and links to interesting articles from major academic journals (as well as academically oriented subject appropriate articles from more popular sources), as well as related information about the field (conference dates and deadlines, fellowships, etc.).  If you see an interesting article or have an opportunity that you'd like me to share, please contact me via e-mail (davism81@gmail.com) or  @davism81 on twitter  for inclusion in the links.  Academics of all stripes (faculty, grad students, undergrads, independent researchers) are the target audience, but all are welcome to participate.  Comments are not just welcome, but encouraged - please share these articles with your friends and colleagues.  At its best academia is a vibrant community where the free flow of ideas spurs further innovation - this blog hopes to be a node on the web where such discussions can flourish.