IRCPPS in the Links: More on Money in Elections

Chris Blattman notes a paper by Leonard Wantchekon that indicates that spending money isn't always the most effective way to gain votes:

...The experiment took place during the March 2011 elections in Benin and involved 150 randomly selected villages. The treatment group had town hall meetings where voters deliberated over their candidate’s electoral platforms with no cash distribution. The control group had the standard campaign, i.e. one-way communication of the candidate’s platform by himself or his local broker, followed (most of the time) by cash distribution. 

We find that the treatment has a positive effect on turnout. In addition, using village level election returns, we find no significant difference in electoral support for the experimental candidate between treatment and control villages. 

…the positive treatment effect is driven in large part by active information sharing by those who attended the meetings...

IRCPPS in the Links: Does Money Affect the Outcomes of US Elections?

The Monkey Cage tackles the question:

...Candidates who raise a lot of money tend to do better, and it’s more likely than not that at least part of this relationship is due to money paying for things like ads and canvassers that help candidates win over new voters and/or turn out their bases. High-quality challengers may be deterred by large war chests, but other factors such as local political conditions and incumbent quality are more important: in most cases, a much-despised incumbent with a lot of money is in a worse position than a much-liked incumbent with very little money...

Call for Papers: Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Boundaries

via ISA:

The program chairs invite papers for the ASEN 2012 Conference on the theme: Nationalism, Ethnicity and Boundaries. The conference takes place 27-29th March, 2012 at the London School of Economics. Abstracts should be submitted ONLINE no later than November 18, 2011. Please see the conference WEBSITE for more information.

IRCPPS in the Links: Post-Election Report - Kyrgyzstan

The Monkey Cage talks Almazbek Atambayev:

...Atambayev becomes the country’s fourth president, following Askar Akaev (1990-2005, ousted during the so-called Tulip Revolution), Kurmanbek Bakiev (2005-2010, whose rule also ended abruptly) and Roza Otunbaeva, who presided over the launch of a new constitution, new parliamentary elections in October 2010, but also a dramatic and bloody descent into chaos in June 2010 as the government witnessed powerless clashes between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the southern city of Osh, which left several hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands displaced...

Call for Nominations: ISSS Governing Council

via ISA:

Nominations are invited for elections to the Governing Council of the INTERNATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES SECTION (ISSS) of the International Studies Association. Members of this council assume the broad responsibility of assisting in the governance of the section. We welcome nominations from all regions of the world. It is desirable to have diversity on the governing council across categories that include race, ethnicity, and gender.  It is also desirable to have diversity across professional pursuits including academia, think tanks, NGOs, and government organizations. This year a total of four members will be elected to the Governing Council for a three-year term. At least one of these should be a graduate student elected to the designated student representative position. Nominees must be members of the section at the time of the election. Nominations should be sent to issselections@hotmail.com and must be received by November 23, 2012.

Call for Papers: W. E. B. Du Bois 50th Anniversary Commemorative Conference

via PSRT-L:

The year 2013 will mark the 50th anniversary of the passing of Dr.W.E.B. Du Bois. On his birthday in February of that year, it is fittingthat Clark Atlanta University (CAU) celebrate his life and scholarship:Dr. Du Bois wrote his most influential works in the 23 years he spent asa professor at Atlanta University. Serving as faculty of the Departmentsof History and Economics, he taught at Atlanta University from 1897 to1910, and then returned from 1934 to 1944 as chair of the Department ofSociology. Dr. Du Bois also had impact in the area of social work and asa novelist, poet and short story writer. The W.E.B. Du Bois and theWings of Atlanta Conference will serve as a meeting at the crossroads ofvarious paths of Du Bois's work. Conference participants will engage inan interdisciplinary and international introspection of the life,scholarship and activism of one of the most influential intellectuals ofthe 20th century.

IRCPPS in the Links: Insights on the Greek Referendum from Eastern European EU Accessions

The Monkey Cage discusses the Greek bailout referendum:

...In a series of publications with a number of different co-authors,^* I have examined the causes of attitudes towards EU membership in post-communist countries considering membership in theEU (see here and here) and then again in the actual referendum on EU membership in Poland (here). In all three articles, the overwhelming empirical lesson is clear: economic winners are more likely to support EU membership, while economic losers are more likely to oppose EU membership....

Announcement: ISA-NE Conference Program

via ISA:

The annual conference of the International Studies Association-Northeast (ISA-NE) will be held this weekend, 4-5 November 2011, at the Providence Biltmore in Providence, Rhode Island. Panels will be convened on many subjects related to international studies, broadly defined, grouped under this year’s conference theme, Continuity and Change in Global Politics. The conference program has been posted HERE for your review.

Call for Applicants: U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission 2012 Research Fellowship Program

received via e-mail:

The USCC was established by Congress to look into the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.   Recent topics of interest to the Commission have included China’s 12th five-year plan, outward foreign direct investment, military modernization, and East Asian security and cooperation.

Humor: Stuff Political Scientists Like #12 - Artistic Pretensions

via Duck of Minerva:

...political scientists really bear no resemblance to painters. In fact they specialize in taking a fascinating reality and squeezing all the beauty, life and color out of politics by reformulating its elements and reducing its complexity to the most pedestrian of shapes – the two-by-two table. And no political scientist has ever, ever, sired multiple children by multiple different models. In fact they mean something very different by that term that isn’t sexual at all. Well, maybe for some...

IRCPPS in the Links: Can Libya's NTC Pull Itself Up By Its Bootstraps?

Dart-Throwing Chimp examines the challenges Libya's National Transition Council faces going forward:

...Libya is a collapsed state. It has no functioning central authority. The NTC has proclaimed itself to be the country’s national government, and the international community has endorsed that claim, but that claim is only now starting to get tested. The conventional view is that internal authority and external endorsement are intertwined, but that’s an international legal fiction, not real politics. As places like Afghanistan and Somalia remind us, international endorsement does not magically cause domestic factions to fall in line behind the anointed party....

IRCPPS in the Links: Does Prior Experience Impact Presidential Greatness?

John Sides considers the question at 538:

...A new paper by political scientists Joseph Uscinski and Arthur Simonprovides an answer. Knowing that previous studies such as this one haven’t provided much evidence that experience matters, they improve on these studies in several ways. For one, they focus on “modern” presidents, a category that begins with William McKinley (although similar results would emerge if the analysis had begun with Woodrow Wilson or FDR). This is because the modern presidency is a much different job that the presidency of the 1700s and much of 1800s. Messrs. Uscinski and Simon also expand the measurement of presidential greatness to include not just overall ratings but ratings on specific dimensions from the 2009 C-SPAN Survey of Presidential Leadership. Finally, they develop more precise measures of experience. So rather than simply note whether a president served in the military (most presidents did), they count the numbers of years each president served in both wartime and peacetime...

Call for Papers: The European Union and the World

via ISA:

The Graduate Society for International Studies and the Center for Regional and Global Studies, in collaboration with the Graduate Program in International Studies and AccessEU, are pleased to announce the 10th annual Graduate Research Conference to be held at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA on February 24, 2012. The conference title is "The European Union in the World: Global Dimensions and Dynamics." The organizers welcome abstracts from all programs including political science, economics, communications, humanities, history, public administration, business studies, criminology, women's studies, modeling and simulation, foreign languages and intercultural studies. Please send a 250-300 word abstract (double-spaced and clearly titled) to the Conference Coordinator by January 15, 2011. Include a cover sheet with the following information: name, mailing address, telephone numbers and e-mail address, academic affiliation, and paper title. Please see the CONFERENCE WEBSITE for more information.

IRCPPS in the Links: Argentina Post-Election Analysis

The Monkey Cage considers Kirchner's recent reelection victory:

...After August everyone predicted that President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) was going to win the general election by an enormous margin, there would be no runoff, and Hermes Binner would finish in second place. That is, the 2nd and 3rd places candidates would fall behind Binner who had come in 4th place in the primary. And this is what really happened...

IRCPPS in the Links: Ireland Post-Election Report

The Monkey Cage takes a look at the new political landscape:

...Michael D Higgins was elected the ninth President of Ireland on Saturday, 29 October 2011 with over one million votes. Higgins was the candidate from the Labour Party, the second largest party in parliament. A frontrunner for much of the campaign, he slipped into second place in the two weeks before the election before re-emerging as the overwhelming choice of the public, securing 39.6% of the first preference vote....

Call for Papers: Policy History Conference

via IPSA:

The Institute for Political History, the Journal of Policy History, and the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia are hosting the seventh biennial Conference on Policy History at the Marriott in downtown Richmond, Virginia from Wednesday, June 6 to Saturday, June 9, 2012. We are currently accepting panel and paper proposals on all topics regarding American political and policy history, political development, and comparative historical analysis. Complete sessions are encouraged, and individual paper proposals are welcome. The deadline for submission is December 2, 2011.

IRCPPS in the Links: Assessing Turkey's Support of the Free Syrian Army

The Monkey Cage takes a look at what the security literature has to say about Turkey's support of the Free Syrian Army:

...Ultimately, research tells us that if the Free Syrian Army is the real deal, then Turkey’s provision of sanctuary heightens the risk of protracted civil war breaking out in Syria. Before this development, civil war was already a risk. But now the risk is much higher. Before territorial protection, the group was no more than a radical flank accompanying a nonviolent campaign. But their new sanctuary will certainly help them build their strength, if not their operational effectiveness, to become a full-blown insurgency....

IRCPPS in the Links: Polling Ballot Measures

The Monkey Cage looks at when you can trust the polls, and when you can't:

...polling is especially difficult where social desirability comes into play, with respondents not wanting to seem homophobic, anti-immigrant, or pro-marijuana.  In fact, the only result that doesn’t make immediate sense from a social desirability standpoint is the null result for ballot measures on restricting gambling.  So while the polling of ballot measures is prone to significant variability, it appears to be those ballot measures that address socially sensitive groups or topics that give rise to the most predictable errors...

IRCPPS in the Links: Administrative Resource Abuse in Elections in Developing Democracies

Dart-Throwing Chimp writes on how this problem manifested itself in Kyrgyzstan:

...seeing that state resources are being used to partisan advantage does not necessarily reveal that a conspiracy is afoot. And the distinction matters. If Atambaev wins and his campaign was aided by overzealous bureaucrats, we have a structural problem. If Atambaev wins and his campaign was aided by a directed effort to take advantage of his party’s incumbency, we have a cheating problem. The first challenge for Kyrgyz watchdogs and international observers is going to be figuring out if there’s fire behind all that smoke about abuse of administrative resources.  If they do find fire, the next–and probably harder–challenge is going to be determining if it was set deliberately by Atambaev or erupted spontaneously under propitious conditions...

IRCPPS in the Links: How Influential are Public Interest Groups?

The Monkey Cage ponders the question:

...Categorizing groups as representing the “public interest” is tricky.  Even among groups typically considered “public interest groups,” a few relatively large and well-established organizations account for the bulk of opportunities for influence, such as media appearances and committee testimony. And these groups may only represent the interests of their most advantaged constituencies, ignoring the issue concerns of disadvantaged subgroups of their constituencies. “Public interest groups,” in other words, represent small portions of the public....

IRCPPS in the Links: Institutionalism and Timing

Rule22 writes about the importance of timing, from a historical institutionalist standpoint:

...Historical-institutionalists mostly study big picture questions. As their name suggests, they look at broad swaths of history to explain institutional and political developments. In short, historical institutionalism focuses on change in American politics. The irony, as Jordanpoints out, is that American politics is largely stable. Major changes are rare occurrences. Often, they occur only once in a generation. However, the fact that major developments are rare does not mean “change” is not an ongoing process. In fact, the “stable” processes and institutions that often appear very durable are marred by internal contradictions. In short, historical institutionalist illustrate that stability is not often all that stable. Beneath the surface there are several developments that slowly undermine stable foundations...

IRCPPS in the Links: Seif Gadhafi and the International Criminal Court

Emily Ritter and Scott Wolford write in to the Monkey Cage on Seif Gadhafi's possible attempt to surrender to the ICC:

 ...the ICC might view this as an opportunity to raise its profile and increase its institutional stature by prosecuting a high-profile suspect and bringing an otherwise costly period of Seif al-Islam remaining a fugitive to a quicker end. However, our paper also identifies that the benefits of pre-arrest bargaining may also come at a cost: if leaders expect that they can negotiate marginally better deals for themselves prior to surrender (which, in this case, may mean living out one’s twilight years in a country where one isn’t likely to be prosecuted again or killed), then they’ll also be marginally more willing to commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in the first place...