Dov Levin answers 6 (+1) questions about 2020 book on foreign electoral interference. When do great powers back a specific party or candidate in another country? Can they change the electoral outcome? Find out.
In the academic community, the equivalent to ‘pics or it didn’t happen’ is ‘peer-review or it doesn’t count’. That’s why I decided to wait until I get some validation on the hypothesis about the...
One of the most predictable elections is just around the corner: even Google has already proclaimed Putin the winner of the presidential race of March 18th 2018 in Russia. The only marginal hiccup...
For Russia watchers Christmas always comes early (or Hanukkah comes right on time!) when Putin gives his annual presser in mid-December to the journalists from Russia and around the world. This year...
Polls in Kenya closed 16 hours ago, but votes continue to be counted.  Those familiar with Kenya and with the electoral crisis of 2007-2008 will know to distrust provisional results. In December 2007, challenger Raila Odinga seemed substantially ahead during much of the early voting, only to see that lead evaporate as returns came in from more remote districts. Despite this qualification, it does look increasingly likely that Uhuru Kenyatta will gain the presidency in the first round of voting.*  In the past two weeks, there was some speculation that Kenyatta might struggle to meet new...
John Quiggin at Crooked Timber
This is a guest post by Brent Sasley. Sasley is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Texas at Arlington. He blogs at Mideast Matrix and Open Zion. Follow him on Twitter. The Israeli election results are far messier than anyone had hoped, leading to furious debates about who got what right about the Israeli electorate. This seems to be especially true among Western analysts and media that aren’t close Israel watchers but do comment on Israeli politics. And it is messy. On the face of it, the religious (Shas, United Torah Judaism, Jewish Home) and...
This pic is from the TV election coverage on the Korean version of CNN. That would be the two main candidates (the liberal Moon Jae-In on the left, and conservative Park Geun-Hye, who won, on the right) as dancing electronic cartoon avatars. Yes, they do look like boogying Nintendo Miis, and yes, they are the most bizarre, hysterical election graphics I have ever seen. Who says political science is boring? So Foreign Affairs solicited me for a ‘snapshot’ essay on the Korean election. Here is the link, but I also thought it might be useful to post my first draft which is fuller: “South...
Robert provides Foreign Affairs a "snapshot" on the South Korean election -- which Park won today. An excerpt: For all the talk of the "pivot" to Asia in the United States, the idea is not widely discussed in South Korea. And South Koreans are not all that interested in containing China. Although Korea was a tributary state of China for nearly a millennium, China never terrorized it the way Japan did. A January 2012 poll from the Dong-Anewspaper found that more South Koreans disliked Japan than disliked China -- 50 percent and 40 percent, respectively. And the dispute over the Liancourt...
"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Â So spoke Winston Churchill, after the Allied victory in the Second Battle of El Alamein. Â We could say much the same of his defeat in the 1945 general election. Â A core assumption underlying most of the work analyzing the impact of domestic politics on international relations is that leaders want to remain in office. Â Insofar as ensuring national survival, territorial integrity, and policy autonomy might help leaders retain power, focusing on political ambition often does not tell...
Amazing how the Simpsons is still pretty funny after 25 years… In the interest of full disclosure, I thought I’d list the reasons why I voted the way I did. I know conservative media regularly accuse professors of politicizing the classroom, but an honest discussion of why one chooses the way one did can also be useful exercise of citizenship. (See Drezner for an example of what I was thinking of.) So with that goal, not demagoguery, in mind, here we go: 1. The Tea Party Scares Me This is easily the most important reason for me. Regular readers of my own blog will know that I vote in...
On Interstate 71, south of Columbus; Ohio’s most famous sign So it’s election time, which means CNN, etc. will be filled with pundits with only the vaguest credentials – never any PhDs - telling you why the outcome inevitably had to be such-and-such. (Retrodiction is so insufferably smug.) And they’ll explain it as if these tired clichés are real insights and not the same flim-flam they pedal every November. So let me predict the future: here are the five worst clichés you’ll hear Tuesday – the lamest, most recycled, simplistic, and least analytically useful (because they’re so...