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...

IRCPPS in the Links: Does Secrecy Make Good Policy?

The Monkey Cage considers the question:

...Greater openness by the panel, officially known as the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, would actually be harmful to the public interest. Private meetings are essential to give the committee’s six Republicans and six Democrats the freedom to step away from party orthodoxies, conduct serious negotiations and search for common ground, rather than engage in political posturing….

IRCPPS in the Links: Arendt, Foucault, and Occupy Wall Street

Xavier Marquez writes in Abandoned Footnotes about his forthcoming article in Polity:

Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault developed different but complementary theories about the relationship between visibility and power.  In an Arendtian “space of appearance,” the common visibility of actors generates power, which is understood as the potential for collective action.  In a Foucauldian “space of surveillance,” visibility facilitates control and normalization.  Power generated in spaces of appearance depends on and reproduces horizontal relationships of equality, whereas power in spaces of surveillance depends on and reproduces vertical relationships of inequality.  The contrast between a space of appearance and a space of surveillance enhances both Arendt’s and Foucault’s critiques of modern society by both clarifying Arendt's concerns with the rise of the “social” in terms of  spaces of surveillance, and enriching Foucault's notion of “resistance.”

IRCPPS in the Links: Herman Cain, Outlier or the "New Normal"?

The Monkey Cage considers a Nate Silver article on Herman Cain's chances of clinching the nomination:

...I think I look at Silver’s data differently than he does. Cain is an outlier in the relationship between poll standing and insider support. But that’s not the relationship that matters. What matters is the relationship between these factors and winning the nomination. Figuring that out is hard, though, precisely because they are so related to one another. Polls and elite support (and media coverage, and money raised) are what we call multicolinear. In such a case, it’s hard to say if raising more money is more important than getting insider support, because the people who get one also get the other, and then they win...

Report: APSA Task Force on Political Science in the 21st Century

via APSA:

...the Task Force assessed the practice of political science to determine whether it is living up to its full potential as a scholarly discipline to enrich the discourse, broaden the understanding, and model the behavior necessary to build strong nation-states in a rapidly changing world where population shifts and related issues regarding race, ethnicity, immigration, and equal opportunity structure some of the most significant conflicts affecting politics and policymaking....

Call for Applicants: Erasmus Mundus Doctoral Fellowships

via ISA:

The GEM PhD School invites applications for 3-year long Erasmus Mundus Doctoral Fellowships offered by the PhD School on Globalisation, the EU and Multilateralism (GEM PhD School), which is coordinated by the Institut d’Etudes Européennes de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles and funded by the European Commission. The fellowships cover the period ranging from September 2012 to September 2015. Interested parties are invited to APPLY ONLINE by way of the School's Automated Registration System. The GEM PhD School includes 9 leading universities from across the globe engaged in a transnational education, research and mobility exercise. Applications should be received by January 16, 2012. The school also has 10 PhD scholarships set aside for non-EU applicants.