Stop me if you've heard this one: it appears that wars between pairs of democracies are relatively rare compared to wars between other pairs of states. Â Some people even think this relationship might be causal. In the decades since this empirical regularity first got...
Erik Voeten has a nice piece up about recent research on the benefits of nuclear superiority. Does nuclear superiority provide an advantage to states engaged in crisis bargaining? In the most recent...
The twentieth Duck of Minerva podcast features Phil Schrodt of Pennsylvania State University. The interview includes Professor Schrodt's views on a number of interesting topics,...
Ouch. This hurts. Satire by Alan Dove (via): In a groundbreaking new study, scientists at Some University have discovered that a single molecule may drive people to perform that complex behavior...
Given the news that Pope Benedict XVI will resign at the end of this month, the first bishop of Rome to do so since the middle of the last millennium, the college of cardinals will soon convene to elect his successor. Political scientists Forrest Maltzman, Melissa Schwartzberg, and Lee Sigelman researched how Pope John Paul II changed the papal constitution to force an outcome. As they wrote after Benedict's selection in 2005, Officially, Ratzinger's selection was attributed to the will of God ... The more immediate source of this outcome, however, was a factor about which political...
Good Morning, here's your linkages... Let's start the week in South Asia: Afghanistan General Allen, the 15th of 16 commanders of ISAF in a dozen years, is  delusional if he really thinks ISAF is on the road to victory in Afghanistan as he exits to become the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.  Unless of course, by the word "victory" he just means handing the ball off to the Afghans while the insurgency continues and the country crumbles.  Notably, the transfer of power from Gen. Allen to Gen. Dunford was held indoors and President Karzai didn't even bother to show. Bangladesh Remember when...