In case you haven't seen it yet....
In case you haven't seen it yet....
US and Kyrgyz negotiators reach a deal on Manas:Kyrgyzstan said on Tuesday it would temporarily allow the US to continue using a military air base on its territory that is critical to coalition...
Three important steps in Iran over the past few days. Much of this is distilling the obvious, I think. Nevertheless...1. The State has decided to confront the People directly, with violent force. In...
The most recent Utne Reader includes a short piece from Katie Krueger about the practice of "joking cousins" in Senegal:This means that whenever we meet, as a sign of friendliness, we insult each...
Today Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered an investigation into allegations of vote fraud in the presidential election as "tens of thousands" of pro-Mousavi protesters took to the streets in a so-far peaceful march. The march suggests that despite the government's extensive attempts to disrupt counter-regime mobilization, opposition leaders and ordinary people are making headway in coordinating their activities. I still believe that events in Iran throw cold-water on network-mobilization optimism, insofar as they demonstrate that governments still enjoy, ceteris paribus,...
Mark Beissinger, in a fantastic article entitled "Structure and Example in Modular Political Phenomena: The Diffusion of Bulldozer/Rose/Orange/Tulip Revolutions" (abstract), develops an account of what he terms "modular revolutions":In the study of collective action, the notion of modularity has often been applied to the borrowing of mobilizational frames, repertoires, or modes of contention across cases. The revolutions that have materialized among the post-communist states since 2000 are examples of a modular phenomenon in this sense, with prior successful examples affecting the...
Nate analyzes some statistical analysis claiming to show fraud in Friday's elections. Short story, he is not buying the analysis (as the results are mostly an artifact of how the numbers were released), nor is he discounting the possibility that it occurred (which, I would say, is more than reasonable).Rob Farley links to a nice summary regarding what's in the air regarding the dimensions of the 'political coup'. Part of this, if true, shows an attempt to cover up data that would more than suggest outright fraud.Still waiting for a reliable statistical model of estimated electoral fraud....
I agree with Josh Tucker that Iran doesn't really fit the major categories of regime-type au currant in comparative politics, but, as I also suggest in comments, we should only lose sleep over that if we treat analytic types as filing boxes for cases rather than, say, as ideal-typifications. Still, if the analysis I'm seeing from reliable sources (and I, like Randy, have no idea what to make of the election outcome in Iran), it does seem that the regime engaged in some pretty brazen fraud of one form or another. If that's right, then we're looking at a familiar dynamic: while most observers...
Given the recently held presidential elections in Iran, and the claims from each candidate that they won the election, I am wondering if it is possible to reliably estimate the amount of voter fraud in favor of one candidate. At the very least, can we reliably estimate the amount of fraud perpetrated by the incumbent, who naturally has the advantage in terms of infrastructure and resources at their disposal? I honestly don't know and have never thought deeply about such a problem. However, my instincts tell me that there ought to be a way, depending on the quality and volume of data one has...
Via sitemeter I recently found my way to IPE at UNC. Which leads me to wonder: I know there's a fairly robust subculture of security blogs--and camps within that subculture, such as COIN and nG Warfare* blog communities--but what about IPE?*With n equaling a value between four and six, inclusive.
Tobias Harris over at Observing Japan, weighs in on the discussion regarding Japanese balancing (or lack thereof). Harris' post is an excellent addition to the discussion and includes some excellent points that require me to clarify my original post. And away we go...1) Tobias is correct that given the current and likely current state of the DPRK they are not exactly a Gilpin-esque revisionist power. However, I don't think that a state must have asperations and likely capabilities to match to be considered a revisionist state in general. A state that clearly is unhappy with the current...
There's no substantive difference between the attempts by right-wingers to define Nazism as a phenomena of the left and Marxist attempts to define Soviet Socialism as "state capitalism."Anyway, I think the speed with which the right-wing blogsphere has circled the wagons over the shooting at the Holocaust museum speaks for itself. It should be patently obvious that any disagreements your typical conservatives have with someone like Von Brunn are far more important than relative location on a one-dimensional political spectrum.So why bother? The two major theories right now:• They realize...