Mario Guerrero

The senior senator from Arizona urged this body to trust the Republicans. Let me be clear, I don’t trust the Republicans. I don’t trust the Democrats and I think a whole lot of Americans likewise don’t trust the Republicans or the Democrats because it is leadership in both parties that has got us into this mess.

So said Ted Cruz today.  This is not the first time he’s run afoul not only of Democrats—Harry Reid called him a “schoolyard bully” a few weeks ago—but also of his fellow Republicans, conservative allies (e.g., the Wall Street Journal editorial board), and others ostensibly on his side.  You can follow the links to various stories in this Ramesh Ponnuru piece.

Ponnuru, who has known Cruz for a long time, thinks his behavior is just fine.  Confronted Cruz’s violations of Senate norms, Ponnuru asks, in essence, “so what?”

The people of Texas didn’t vote for him because he promised to keep his head down in deference to his colleagues. No senator wins election that way. Presumably voters want senators who will be as effective as they can be in advocating for the views they campaigned on.

Maybe that’s a correct theory of the voting behavior of Texans, and maybe not.  Regardless, I don’t think Cruz’s problem is in Texas.

Cruz’s problem is that he may want to be president of the United States, reports the National Review’s Robert Costa.  And to be the Republican nominee, he’ll need the support of his Republican colleagues.  The 2012 election once again showed—and despite some skepticism—that it is very hard to win the nomination unless you’re preferred by a substantial chunk, if not the vast majority of, your party’s leaders (as was Romney).  Which is to say, it pays to be nice to your colleagues.  It’s no guarantee, of course: junior Senator Hillary Clinton kept her head down and played nice, and lost the nomination.  John McCain often irritated his fellow Republicans, but still mustered enough support within the party to win the nomination.

But nevertheless, Cruz’s strategy is risky.  Just ask Santorum or Gingrich, whose surges in the 2012 primary were met by deafening silence from GOP leaders (Santorum) or vigorous, on-the-record denunciations (Gingrich).

Ponnuru, for his part, acknowledges something like this:

Cruz’s Beltway critics were horrified anew last week on reports that he is thinking of running for president. If the past few months are any guide, he would try to build a majority starting with the most conservative end of the Republican primary electorate, and argue that the party needs to nominate a true conservative rather than an establishment favorite.

Many Republicans have tried this strategy since President Ronald Reagan left the scene. None has succeeded. The right end of the party invariably splits its support among several candidates, and voters in the middle of the party usually prefer someone with more experience than the right’s favorites.

Maybe Cruz has a different strategy in mind, or has a reason for thinking this time will be different. If he runs, he will have at least one thing going for him: He has a knack for making his opponents lose their wits.

Yes, “none has succeeded.” That’s a warning sign right there.  And the other warning sign is the reason why they haven’t succeeded, which is not quite what Ponnuru states.  It’s not that the conservatives can’t coalesce on a candidate and the middle prefers someone with “experience.”  It’s that many in the party are wary of nominating a strongly ideological candidate—a “severe” conservative, if you will—because they’re afraid that this candidate will lose in the general. And rightly so!  See Table 2 of this article (pdf) by John Zaller.

In 2012, as Lynn Vavreck and I show in The Gamble (pdf), only about half of Romney’s supporters were closest to him ideologically. The other half were closer to Gingrich or Santorum—that is, to one of the more conservative candidates.  But this other half also tended to believe that Romney was the only candidate who could beat Obama in November.  Their vote was about electability, not experience. Of course, Romney didn’t win, but Zaller’s finding suggests that a more conservative candidate would have done worse, other things equal.

Cruz’s path to the presidency—if he decides to run—must consist precisely of convincing “the middle” of the party that he’s electable despite the fact that he may be the most conservative member of the Senate (pdf).  To do that, he’ll need the support of his fellow party leaders to send that signal.  It doesn’t matter if he has “a knack for making his opponents lose their wits.”  His opponents will be busy nominating Hillary Clinton or whoever.  And it doesn’t matter whether, deep in his heart, he trusts Republicans.

What matters is whether he has a knack for making his fellow Republicans trust him.

[Photo credit: Gage Skidmore]

This article in The Nation is likely to cause some considerable embarrassment to the Center for American Progress (CAP).

Though the think tank didn’t disclose it, First Solar belonged to CAP’s Business Alliance, a secret group of corporate donors, according to internal lists obtained by The Nation. Meanwhile, José Villarreal—a consultant at the power-
house law and lobbying firm Akin Gump, who “provides strategic counseling on a range of legal and policy issues” for 
corporations—was on First Solar’s board until April 2012 while also sitting on the board of CAP, where he remains a member, according to the group’s latest tax filing. … Nowadays, many Washington think tanks effectively serve as unregistered lobbyists for corporate donors, and companies strategically contribute to them just as they hire a PR or lobby shop or make campaign donations. And unlike lobbyists and elected officials, think tanks are not subject to financial disclosure requirements, so they reveal their donors only if they choose to.

However, it would be grossly simplistic to see think tanks as just clandestine lobbying shops. UC San Diego sociologist Thomas Medvetz has an interesting book on the delicate balancing acts that think tanks have to perform in order to continue and to succeed. He borrows his ideas from Pierre Bourdieu, arguing that think tanks are in a liminal position between the worlds of politics, literature and academia, trying to borrow prestige from each of these worlds while resisting being defined by them. This article provides a shorter version of Medvetz’ argument:

there is a certain danger for a think tank in achieving ‘‘too much’’ political access, or in any case, access of the wrong form. Doubtless the greatest danger is that of becoming transparently tied to a single party, interest group, or political candidate (even if the strategy may have short term advantages). Indeed, the history of think tanks is replete with cases of organizations that enjoyed a brief moment in the sun by virtue of some privileged form of access to a specific political network or agency, only to be pushed to the margins of the think tank world when that access either evaporated or lost its value. The Progressive Policy Institute, for example, a think tank once considered influential as the intellectual base of the New Democrat movement, offers a clear case in point. By the end of the Clinton presidency, PPI’s status among think tanks had fallen considerably along with that of the Democratic Leadership Council that sustained it.

While think tanks can dance along the abyss of out-and-out hackishness (indeed they often have to, both for financial resources and certain kinds of legitimation), they cannot allow themselves to fall in. Instead, they shift back and forwards between different kinds of legitimation, manipulating the exchange rates between the different kinds of social capital offered by academe, journalism and politics. Some think tanks (e.g. the New America Foundation) are closer to journalism (although perhaps that will change a little under Anne-Marie Slaughter’s presidency). Others (e.g. Brookings) are closer to the academic world. Yet none want to be defined too precisely, since that would limit their flexibility – their stock of capital rests not only on their connection to academia, journalism or whatever, but the fact that they do not belong to academia, journalism or whatever. Likely, the CAP’s ability to redefine itself in future has been significantly limited by these revelations – rightly or wrongly it will be harder for CAP in future to plead disinterested research morals, or journalistic integrity.

(lightly re-edited for clarity).

There have been various calls in recent days for the appointment of an independent counsel to explore and expunge the IRS’s selective investigation of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status after 2009.

From the right, Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal claims, for instance,that “we are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate.” If you can get past this cheap hyperbole (Ms. Noonan herself worked in a White House marked by a worse scandal, Iran-contra, and in 1998 she thought President Clinton deserved impeachment), her point is worth noting:

“Independent counsels should not often come in and distract the U.S. government from its essential business…. [but] what happened at the IRS is the government’s essential business. The IRS case deserves and calls out for an independent counsel, fully armed with all that position’s powers. Only then will stables that badly need to be cleaned, be cleaned.”

From the left, Bill Keller in the New York Times agrees: such an appointment would show the president truly takes any IRS wrongdoing seriously, he says, and “it’s the surest way to get answers the public might trust.” But most crucially, and here he intersects with Noonan, “The third reason for a special counsel is that the government has serious business to conduct, and the scandal circus on Capitol Hill is a terrible distraction.”

This all sounds very high-minded (Noonan even denounces as “shameful and shallow” any effort by “any Republican operative or operator to…turn it into a mere partisan arguing point and part of the game. It’s not part of the game. This is not about the usual partisan slugfest.”  Keller one-ups her by calling for the appointment of Clinton nemesis Ken Starr to the post.)

But if we know anything about the history of special counsel investigations, it is that we know that they are not, in fact, either high-minded or apolitical. The investigation may be nonpartisan, but the effects are not. The sideshow saga surrounding the investigation of the “outing” of Valerie Plame during the Bush II years is sufficient to give one pause on this point; but ponder, too, of course, the investigations by Starr or Lawrence Walsh or the five other independent counsels at work during the Clinton years. (Wake Forest political scientist Katy Harriger’s book on the topic gives much more detail.)

In short, appointing a special prosecutor may be the right thing to do. But the idea that this would partition off the IRS scandal from the rest of Washington and allow some sort of ‘space for governance’ is very dubious indeed.

To be sure, the structuring of any given special investigation could differ; but Noonan and Keller both call for a broad remit and total independence. Along these lines it is worth remembering the 1988 Supreme Court decision Morrison v Olson. By a 7-1 vote (Justice Kennedy did not participate) the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Independent Counsel Act (ICA), part of the Ethics in Government Act, a post-Watergate reform package passed in 1978. The ICA allowed for an odd quasi-judicial/executive appointment power for independent counsels, and IC target Ted Olson (yes, that Ted Olson) argued this structure violated the separation of powers by buffering counsels from the presidential removal power (and also wandered into Article III by the creation of a separate court). The Court held these were permissible infringements given the broader governmental interest in promoting the public trust and fighting executive branch corruption.

Only Justice Scalia dissented from this finding, a dissent which provided both a full-throated defense of “unitary executive” theory” and, more crucially for present purposes, a prescient vision of the use of the ICA as political weapon:

“The context of this statute is acrid with the smell of threatened impeachment…. [B]y the application of this statute in the present case, Congress has effectively compelled a criminal investigation of a high-level appointee of the President in connection with his actions arising out of a bitter power dispute between the President and the Legislative Branch. Mr. Olson may or may not be guilty of a crime; we do not know. But we do know that the investigation of him has been commenced, not necessarily because the President or his authorized subordinates believe it is in the interest of the United States, in the sense that it warrants the diversion of resources from other efforts and is worth the cost in money and in possible damage to other governmental interests….

“How much easier it is for Congress, instead of accepting the political damage attendant to the commencement of impeachment proceedings against the President on trivial grounds—or, for that matter, how easy it is for one of the President’s political foes outside of Congress—simply to trigger a debilitating criminal investigation of the Chief Executive under this law…. Besides weakening the Presidency by reducing the zeal of his staff, it must also be obvious that the institution of the independent counsel enfeebles him more directly in his constant confrontations with Congress, by eroding his public support. Nothing is so politically effective as the ability to charge that one’s opponent and his associates are not merely wrongheaded, naive, ineffective, but, in all probability, ‘crooks.’ And nothing so effectively gives an appearance of validity to such charges as a Justice Department investigation and, even better, prosecution….”

The brief filed in the Morrison case by three ex-Attorneys General, from the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations (Edward Levi, Griffin Bell, William French Smith) also seems apropos:

“[T]he institutional environment of the Independent Counsel—specifically, her isolation from the Executive Branch and the internal checks and balances it supplies—is designed to heighten, not to check, all of the occupational hazards of the dedicated prosecutor; the danger of too narrow a focus, of the loss of perspective, of preoccupation with the pursuit of one alleged suspect to the exclusion of other interests.”

Or, as Ted Olson himself put it, “If you are given a fishing license which has the name of a fish on it, and you don’t come back with that fish, you’ve failed.”

Certainly, in the present case, if there are criminal issues they should be investigated and charges brought. But simply calling someone a “special prosecutor” does not in itself cordon off a ‘safe space’ outside of which normal policy-solving political bargaining (if that’s normal now) can continue unaffected.  There are good reasons that the ICA was allowed to expire unceremoniously, with the blessing of both parties, in 1999.

Some candidates are thinking of running against Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper next year. Does that spell danger for him? Republicans seem to think so:

At least five candidates are officially challenging Gov. John Hickenlooper in 2014 and another three are mulling whether to jump in the race.

That so many are choosing to challenge the popular governor is, Republicans contend, a sign that a Democrat who once seemed invincible is vulnerable.

Well, that could be a sign that Hickenlooper is vulnerable, but only if the five candidates already in the race were remotely threatening to him. Yet as the Denver Post notes, they're really not a very impressive crew. Three of them are unaffiliated with a major party. No offense to independents and libertarians, but those folks tend to not do very well in statewide elections. One of them is a Republican described as "starting" a telecommunications business whose main credential is that he doesn't like Hickenlooper's stance on gun control.

The final candidate is Steve Laffey, the former mayor of Cranston, RI, whose last political claim to fame was losing the 2006 Rhode Island Republican Senate primary to Lincoln Chaffee. He moved to Fort Collins in 2010. Now, someone who has actually won a mayoral race -- twice -- should be taken seriously as a candidate, but the fact that he last won a race nine years ago, in a city of 80,000 people, in another state, suggests that he may not be keeping Hickenlooper up at night.

The other potential candidates mentioned in the article are more serious. State Sen. Greg Brophy and Secretary of State Scott Gessler could mount significant challenges to the Governor, and while Tom Tancredo couldn't defeat Hickenlooper on his own, his involvement in an election tends to bring chaos in its wake. But the fact that these candidates are potential candidates is significant. It means that they're more experienced politicians who think strategically about their careers, and they don't want to be humiliated in a landslide. (Hickenlooper has a 53% approval rating.)

So, yes, there are some people planning to run against Hickenlooper, but that's the case for basically anyone running for re-election as governor. Only when other ambitious politicians who have something to lose start running against him should he begin to worry.

It’s so disorienting to be posting on a Wednesday!

I’d like to begin with a bleg: I’m in the market for a platform that allows for easy screencasting. In other words, if you wanted to have 6 to 10 users simultaneously viewing a series of slides, but you thought that Google Hangout was just a little too laggy, what would you use? Comment below or email rpm47 atsign georgetown period edu.

• Via Inside Higher Ed, cell biologists slam the impact factor.
• Did a Fox News reporter hurt U.S. security by disclosing that Washington had a high-level DPRK mole? I thought this was the sort of thing conservatives believed was an exception to the First Amendment. (Also TPM, Jack Shafer) [Kevin Drum]
• China is preparing for war on the high seas; the U.S. Navy is prepared to bomb the Taliban, not men-o’-war [The Diplomat]
• Jay Ulfelder marks his beliefs to market and talks about how he got Syria wrong.
• Rafsanjani disqualified from running for Iranian presidency [Suffragio]

And also:

• Adobe is about to become as costly and as beloved as journal publishers: subscriptions to replace licenses for software. [Inside Higher Ed]

Lynn Vavreck and I are pleased to announce the next e-chapter of our book on the 2012 presidential election, The Gamble.  The chapter, “High Rollers,” is here (with a pdf link here) and on Amazon.

This chapter is the first of three chapters on the general election campaign.  It deals with the summer campaign, including the continuing importance of fundamentals like the economy and party identification, the candidates’ messaging strategies, Obama’s early advertising blitz, the attacks on and news coverage of Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital, various “gaffes” (“You didn’t build that,” Romney’s foreign trip, etc.), and the Paul Ryan pick—basically everything up until the conventions.  You can see parts of that analysis previewed in my most recent post at Wonkblog.

Some findings from this chapter:

• Economic conditions in the first half of 2012 still forecast an Obama victory.  Indeed, by at least one economic index, they were more favorable for Obama than for Clinton in 1996.

• Despite concerns about “divided” political parties, Democrats and Republicans coalesced very quickly around Obama and Romney, respectively.  In general, party identification helped to create a great deal of stability in candidate preferences.

• The various gaffes, as well as the attacks on Romney’s time at Bain Capital, produced at best small and temporary shifts in opinions.

• News coverage of Obama and Romney during the summer was remarkably balanced.  The media favored neither candidate.  See the chapter for the data that support this claim.

• The effects of advertising on vote intentions were visible but short-lived.  As I said at Wonkblog, we found no evidence that the early Obama advertising created durable shifts in opinion that would have benefited him on Election Day.

• In the Pollster averages, Obama’s lead over Romney the day before the Republican convention began was exactly the same as it was on May 1.

We argue that the much of the general election campaign, especially in the summer, resembled a “dynamic equilibrium”:

The general election campaign resembles a concept from the sciences called a “dynamic equilibrium.” In a dynamic equilibrium, things are happening, sometimes vigorously or rapidly, but they produce reactions that are roughly the same size or magnitude and that occur at roughly the same rates. Thus, the entire “system”—populated by candidates, media, and voters—appears stable, or at a “steady state,” to use more scientific nomenclature. Reams of news coverage and vigorous campaigning coincide with stable polls.

The implication, then, is not that the Obama and Romney campaigns were ineffective.  It is that they were roughly equally effective.

The entire book is finished and will be available by late August or early September.  Stay tuned.

Thanks to the patience of the former EJIR editorial team, PTJ and I will have an article in the forthcoming special issue on the “End of IR Theory?” Only the first 35-40% resembles the working paper (PDF) we posted at the Duck. Even the name has changed.

We still argue in favor of thinking about international-relations theory as dealing with “scientific ontologies”: “catalog[s]–or map[s]–of the basic substances and processes that constitute world politics.” As we note in both the final version and the working paper, this includes:

• The actors that populate world politics, such as states, international organizations, individuals, and multinational corporations;
• The contexts and environments within which those actors find themselves;
• Their relative significance to understanding and explaining international outcomes;
• How they fit together, such as parts of systems, autonomous entities, occupying locations in one or more social fields, nodes in a network, and so forth;
• What processes constitute the primary locus of scholarly analysis, e.g., decisions, actions, behaviors, relations, and practices; and
• The inter-relationship among elements of those processes, such as preferences, interests, identities, social ties, and so on.

Contributors are prohibited from posting further revisions online. But I thought I would share what we think the current landscape of international-relations theory looks like. Or, to clarify, what kind of a topography of implicit debates satisfies the following criteria:

• Reconstruct already existing terms of debate;
• Deal with more fundamental—and therefore much broader—concerns of scientific ontology than did the ‘isms’; and
• Involve gradations of disagreement rather that purport to describe self-contained theoretical aggregates.

The three clusters of basic scientific ontologies we flag are choice-theoretic, experience-near, and social-relational. The terms of contestation involve two questions.

First, “the degree that actors may be treated as autonomous from their social, cultural, and material environments—that actors are analytically distinguishable from the practices and relations that constitute them.” Choice-theoretic approaches tend to treat actors as autonomous from their environments at the moment of interaction, not so experience-near and social-relational alternatives.

Second, “the degree of thick contextualism—the commitment to theories that give analytic and explanatory primacy to specific features of the immediate spatial-temporal environment in which actors operate, with concomitant skepticism about generalizing or abstracting from particular contexts.” Experience-near approaches embrace thicker contextualism than either social-relational or choice-theoretic.

I am sure that, in the absence of the paper, this all seems pretty abstract.

In general, we see choice-theoretic approaches as including expected-utility theory, some psychological approaches to decision-making, and much of what passes for “logics of appropriateness” work in the field. Experience-near approaches include aspects of the practice turn and what might be called the “new anthropology” in the field. Social-relational approaches include social-network analysis, some aspects of the practice turn — most notably those that focus on the positional and relational implications of social fields — and some forms of post-structural analysis.

As I’ve already suggested, these clusters of theories bleed into one another. Disagreements often involve matters of degree. Regardless, I offer this preview for readers’ consideration.

 

I am posting this now for two reasons:
1) I am going to be at a conference for the next few days and the hotel apparently lacks wifi!
2) it is the anniversary of Youtube, which has made much of Friday Nerd Blogging possible.

So here is a tribute to the Youtube anniversary:

Here it is, courtesy of Boris Shor and Nolan McCarty.  Boris’s blog post about the data is here.  This is the first extensive data on the political views of state legislators.  Well worth digging into!

As part of our series on recent NSF-funded political science research, Rick Wilson points to . . . Yair Ghitza and Andrew Gelman. (Forthcoming). “Deep Interactions with MRP: Election Turnout and Voting Patterns Among Small Electoral Groups.” AJPS [DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12004].

Rick writes:

Accurately measuring attributes of the American public is critical to the success of government and society. This includes polls that allow lawmakers to understand their constituents’ preferences to inform their policy choices. It is also indispensible for government to accurately measure unemployment or the population itself through the Census. Yet conducting and analyzing surveys is an increasingly difficult proposition, with the growing abundance of cell-phone-only populations, the difficulty in reaching certain segments of the population, and many other challenges. New measurement techniques need to be developed for the 21st century.

This research demonstrates that standard survey analysis methods are often unstable and unsuitable for estimating values for small populations. In turn the article introduces a statistical method that combines survey and Census information that overcomes these problems. This particular research focuses on vote preferences, but the method can be applied generally to survey analysis, and as such is valuable for any person or organization with an interest in accurately measuring aspects of the American public.

This work should be viewed as a statistical innovation driven by an interdisciplinary approach to research. In a world where “big data” are becoming increasingly available, there is a temptation to think that standard statistical and computational methods can be arbitrarily pointed at large piles of data to make sense of the world; this thinking implies that funding should only go to the hard STEM disciplines, which are traditionally better trained at handling these quantitative tasks. This research demonstrates that standard data-crunching approaches often miss important structures, or can be entirely inappropriate for the question being asked. The research makes clear that scientific progress is achieved through collaboration across disciplines, such as between technical experts such as statisticians and computer scientists, and domain-specific experts such as political scientists, education policy experts, medical researchers and the like.

Greetings all. PM and I are switching linkage duty.

• Omar Ali looks at the 2013 Pakistani election at 3QD.
• Tom Nichols argues against US ambiguity on Iran and North Korea.
• Via Alana Tiemessen: international justice infographics from the Leitner Center (pdf).
• North Korean piracy and maritime disputes in Northeast Asia.
• Juan Cole on mounting sectarian violence in Iraq.
• The nexus between authoritarian rule, collective action, and disaster response in China. For more on strategies of divide-and-rule in modern empires territorially expansive composite states, see King et al.
• Tom Pepinsky’s “Notes on Long Form Research Blogging.” I was a little surprised to see Tom’s characterization of political-science scholar-blogs as “dissemination mechanism[s] for existing work.” I think a lot of us, as well as the bloggers that  he links to as examples, use the medium to work out ideas via short-form pieces. My World Politics review essay came into existence at the Duck, as well as some book chapters I’ve done on empires and liberalism. Kindred makes the same point in comments at Tom’s place. Nonetheless, long-form research blogging is a different animal, and Tom has interesting things to say about his experience doing it.
• Speaking of Kindred, here’s his take on Corey Robin’s attempt to connect Austrian economic thought to Nietzsche.

And also:

• HiLowBrow serializes W.E.B. Dubois’ science-fiction story, “The Comet.”
• Genre fiction, the long history of women in combat, and some other stuff.

Here is a video of the roundtable I mentioned previously, which attracted a big crowd at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association back in April.  This was filmed with a Macbook positioned out in the audience, so the audio and video quality is not great.  I apologize for that.  But turn the volume up and you should be able to hear most everything.

To orient you, here is the line-up from left to right: John Sides (moderator), Larry Bartels, Nate Silver, Ezra Klein, Simon Jackman, Lynn Vavreck, and Drew Linzer.  The initial minute or so of the video—in which I introduced Larry—is cut off.  The video begins with my introduction of Nate.

After the introductions, the first question is asked first of Larry and then we move down the row, with each person chiming in—if that helps match voices to blurry faces.  For example, you’ll hear Nate wishing the 2012 election had featured a depression and a Gingrich nomination, Ezra saying that he learned not to mess with Nate, and Simon saying that we should “maintain our rage.”

This was a really fun and interesting conversation, and I thank all the panelists—and especially Nate and Ezra—for participating.

The following guest post is provided by George Washington University political scientist Harris Mylonas, the author of the recently published  The Politics of Nation-Building  (Cambridge University Press, 2013).  The post originally appeared at e-IR.

*****

In my book, The Politics of Nation-Building, I explore the reasons behind a state’s choice to assimilate, accommodate, or exclude ethnic groups within its territory.[1] I develop a theory that focuses on the international politics of nation-building arguing that a state’s nation-building policies toward non-core groups — any aggregation of individuals perceived as an unassimilated ethnic group by the ruling elite of a state — are influenced by both its foreign policy goals and its relations with the external patrons of these groups. Through a detailed study of the interwar Balkans, I conclude that the way a state treats a non-core group within its own borders is determined largely by whether the state’s foreign policy is revisionist or cleaves to the international status quo, and whether it is allied or in rivalry with that group’s external patrons. However, as I admit in the book, this argument does not travel to states where the ruling elites are not motivated by a homogenizing imperative.

Some places in the world are run by core groups consisting of apparent minimum winning coalitions,[2] others by elites that go at great lengths to establish national states.[3] Why do some countries have leaders that try to make the national and the political unit overlap and others that opt to rule with a minimum winning coalition? One argument suggests that maybe the degree of diversity prevents the nation-building path in some cases, other arguments focus on the pattern of spread of nationalist ideology and/or the prevalence of competing ideologies such as communism, yet others put forth the importance of war-making and imitation of successful military tactics as a mechanism that accounts for the spread of nationalism and the nation-state system.[4] In The Politics of Nation-Building I build on some of these and suggest that the main reason that leaders adopt the nation-building option is the reality, or anticipation, of other powers using non-core groups in their state to undermine their stability or even annex parts of their territory.

The European story is well known and so are the interactions between the Russians and the Europeans. Tilly’s argument that war made the modern national state may be correct but it is also based on an understood reality: borders were constantly changing during the centuries that modern European states developed.[5] But the Westphalian principles have been adhered to more in some parts of the world than others.[6] Border fixity did not only vary tremendously over time but it also significantly varied crossnationally across the globe.[7] For example, following the Treaty of Berlin in the end of the 19th century the borders of Africa “froze” after the decision of the Great Powers.[8] This led to a completely different incentive structure for both ruling elites and counterhegemonic elites in countries with “fixed borders”. Beyond the case of Africa, however, we can point to other places with similar levels of border fixity that resulted from different geopolitical configurations, such as Latin America—the back yard of the USA—or the Middle East, where the colonial powers also left their mark on the demarcation of borderlines.[9]

Overall, areas that were part of a geopolitical configuration that guaranteed border fixity had less of an incentive to pursue nation-building policies. Within these cases the only countries that I would expect to see nation-building policies emerging involve cases where an external power (major power, regional power, neighboring state, diaspora group and so forth) attempted to cultivate a fifth column within their territorial boundaries. Moreover, it would not be surprising if this phenomenon of external backing of non-core groups would be less pronounced in regions where border fixity was perceived to be really high. However, this ‘equilibrium’ becomes more or less sustainable based on the structure of the international system and the ability—real and/or perceived—of regional actors to defy these geopolitical configurations I described above.

The crucial question today is: What is the future of border fixity in today’s world? More importantly, what is the perception of the relevant actors across the world with respect to this question? The list of border changes is longer than we want to admit. One just needs to cite former Yugoslavia and USSR;[10] but more recently we find cases beyond the traditional spaces where nation-building has already made its mark like Sudan.[11]Discussion of border changes has also emerged in the case of Iraq, Mali, and even Syria. It remains to be seen if any such plans will materialize. Granted the list of cases could have been much longer if nationalist principles were to be fully operative but this is not a satisfactory answer. Even if we only get a few dozen of the hundreds of border changes we would get based on nationalist principles, the reverberations will be felt globally. Moreover, such a situation would further push the spread of nationalism, encourage external involvement, and boost nation-building projects across these areas. We are already observing manifestations of this dynamic, but more border changes would certainly intensify it. This in turn will have the direst consequences for the well being of ethnic groups that are perceived as having ties with external powers that are perceived as enemies by core elites. Shi’as in various Sunni dominated states in the Middle East are a case in point.

What can be done? The International community can impact perceptions of border fixity by either investing resources in upholding the norm of territorial sovereignty or by promoting regional integration schemes around the globe that would indirectly guarantee existing borders and, according to The Politics of Nation-Building, would also lead to accommodationist policies. However, neither of the two solutions is sufficient without important investments in economic and political development.

_________

Jan Pierskalla and Florian Hollenbach argue that it does in a new article in the American Political Science Review.

Overall, our quantitative models demonstrate a clear positive association between cell phone coverage and the occurrence of violent organized collective action. This effect persists when controlling for a series of standard explanations of violence, as well as unobserved, time-invariant factors at the country and even grid level. Plainly, our results suggest that local cell phone coverage facilitates violent collective action on
the African continent.

This article should set off some interesting debates. I’ll leave it to those more statistically adept to assess their analysis (although I wonder whether the authors will get some pushback for their claim that regulatory efficiency is a good instrumental variable for cellphone coverage and is causally unconnected to levels of violence). Nonetheless, this piece does draw some interesting and potentially important connections between the diffusion of communication technology and ‘real world’ outcomes. As the authors note, we have seen a number of pieces over the last couple of years asserting that new communication technologies have helped e.g. foster the spread of the Arab Spring revolutions. However, we’ve seen precious little work that really tries to demonstrate systematic linkages rather than assert them. Pierskalla and Hollenbach’s piece begins to think about how we might want to investigate these linkages.

A little bit of volatility in the Federal election betting markets to report…

Over the last 12 days Labor’s price at Centrebet has recovered from $9.60 to $6.50, the Coalition out from $1.05 to $1.10. The Labor win probabilities implied by these prices are 9.8% and 14.5%, so in relative terms this is a reasonably big swing; indeed, the rate of return on a successful Coalition wager has doubled (5% to 10%).

Labor had been on 9.60 to the Coalition’s 1.04 at Centrebet from May 9 until May 17, when Labor’s price recovered to 9.00 to 1.05. Sunday night (May 19) saw the Centrebet price move again to 8.50/1.06, and to 8.00/1.07 on Monday afternoon. Between 5pm and 6pm last night the Centrebet prices moved again, to 6.50/1.10.

You can’t help but wonder who is buying Labor at these kinds of prices. True believers? Or savvy investors laying off their Coalition wagers?

A graph of the implied probabilities from Centrebet, Sportsbet and Tom Waterhouse appears below (click for a bigger view):

The Nielsen poll (and media reporting on it) is the likely culprit of Monday’s movement. And yet more evidence that poll results predict betting market predict election outcomes.

Kevin Rudd’s blog post re his evolution on same-sex marriage has a publication date on 7.15pm; if that is a valid timestamp, it suggests that Rudd’s announcement didn’t move the Centrebet price.

Betfair is also showing some modest recovery in the Labor price. The last matched prices there are 10.00/1.11.

Sportsbet and Tom Waterhouse have been exhibiting much less movement in the Federal betting market prices, which you can’t help but interpret as indicative of those bookies handling less volume than Centrebet.

I’d also point out that Centrebet has tended to have a little less profit margin built into its prices than Sportsbet or Waterhouse: for instance, with the prices currently on offer, Centrebet’s overround is about 6.3% vs 7.7% for Sportsbet and Waterhouse. In turn, this might help explain what looks like a slightly more lively market at Centrebet relative to these two competitors.

Following up my early morning nuclear option post …

I appreciate Jon Bernstein’s nuanced and thoughtful response on the credibility of minority party threats to go nuclear were the majority to employ the nuclear option.  He asks the critical question:  “After majority-imposed reform is imposed, does it makes sense to carry out that threat?”  Jon’s skepticism here is well-taken.  Still, it’s remarkable how few majorities have been willing to consider taking the gamble.  Frist and many of his fellow partisans in 2005 seemed ready, but they are nearly an historical anomaly.  I think it’s helpful to keep in mind that the GOP would not actually have to blow up every bridge to impose a steep cost on the majority party’s agenda.  With apologies for quoting at length, this is how we put it it back in 2007:

Why would the threat of minority obstruction out weigh the majority party’s threat to reform-by-ruling? The minority is not helpless. If the ruling is limited to judicial nominations, as former Majority Leader Frist insisted in 2005 that it would be, the minority could filibuster any other debatable measure in anticipation of a Republican move to bring up a controversial judicial nomination. They could object to routine unanimous consent requests, which would require the majority instead to adopt a routine motion or even force the majority to secure sixty votes to impose cloture. If used widely, such moves could radically slow Senate action on all matters, a majority leader’s worst nightmare. The minority’s leverage under existing Senate rules and practices seems to counter the majority’s technical ability to go nuclear by reinterpreting existing chamber rules via new precedents.

Hard to know for sure how much to discount a counter-threat from the GOP.

Also, Richard Arenberg—co-author, with retired Senate parliamentarian Bob Dove, of Defending the Filibuster: The Soul of the Senate—weighs in on the nuclear option here with some interesting detail and perspective.  I think his third point is worth highlighting in particular, as it reinforces questions about the precise set of parliamentary moves needed to go nuclear.  The CRS report that I mentioned in my previous post goes into nuanced detail on this matter.

We welcome this guest post from Stephen Benedict Dyson.

*****

Star Trek Into Darkness, the number one movie in America, is rife with political resonance. Political scientists have taken to analyzing popular cultural entertainment, and Star Trek, in its classic and current incarnations, is perhaps the most fertile ground of all for this. It was always deeply political. The original 1960s television series reflected cold war tensions, featuring border strife between the idealistic good guys and other belligerent, mysterious superpowers. This was married to an uplifting vision of a future of gender and racial equality, an absence of avarice, and a military with a primary mission of exploration and peacekeeping. The central governance structure, the Federation, was an interstellar United Nations. Member planets made collaborative decisions, were accorded absolute equality, and pooled their resources in pursuit of collective security and cultural exchange rather than plundering conquest.

Later movie versions continued this idea-driven focus, dealing with weapons of mass destruction, the strange human lust for damaging our habitat, religious fanaticism, and the end of the cold war. Although these new Star Trek movies – this is the second in the series directed by JJ Abrams – have altered the ratio of ideas to action in favor of the latter, there is a lot to think about in Into Darkness. I will not seek primarily to evaluate the merits of the film – with apologies to Leonard McCoy, I am a doctor, not a movie critic – but instead focus on political themes that deserve our attention.  Those yet to see the movie and who wish to do so without knowing plot points will want to postpone reading any further.

The movie opens with a sequence exploring the most politically relevant idea in the Star Trek universe: the Prime Directive. This sacred covenant of the Federation – it is Star Fleet General Order # 1 – prohibits interference in the internal affairs of less advanced civilizations. The Prime Directive engages classic political issues of imperialism, colonialism, and development. It is a deeply idealistic principle – self-determination of peoples regardless of their material capacity – that is often compromised in Star Trek and in our own world. Foreign policy realists have constantly cautioned idealists that universal principles, divorced from concrete situations, are likely to be untenable and may do more harm than good. In Into Darkness, the crew faces a choice between allowing a devastating natural catastrophe that will result in the death of the native inhabitants of a planet, or preventing it by making the pre-industrial population aware of technology that can only appear God-like, thus upending their culture and changing the trajectory of their development. These dilemmas remain profound as we think about, for example, the competing imperatives of a responsibility to protect versus intervention aversion in the Syrian civil war.

A key dynamic in Star Trek is the tense interdependence between the hot-headed Captain, James Kirk, and his coldly rational second-in-command, Mr. Spock. Separately, Kirk is impetuous and Spock rigidly utilitarian. Good decisions come when they weave their analyses together. Political scientists, following advances in psychology, are newly interested in the interdependence of emotion and reason, edging away from Mr. Spock’s hyper-rational vision of politics toward an understanding of the inextricable linkages between the two modes of choice. Publics vote, political parties select issue positions, and executives make decisions on war and peace under the influence of both emotion and logic. The new Trek continues these debates. Spock, in peril, explains that he does not want to die as a foreshortened life is one that fails to realize its maximum utility, while Kirk channels George W. Bush in being unable to articulate a rationale for a momentous decision other than “gut feeling.”

The central plot thread of Into Darkness is suffused with post-9/11 significance. “John Harrison” launches a terrorist campaign upon the Federation, culminating in his flying an aircraft into skyscrapers in the capital city. In the hunt for the terrorist, we learn that he is hiding in a sparsely populated province of a planet where it is politically sensitive for the Federation to conduct military operations. Kirk is ordered to launch a pre-emptive strike on the terrorist camp using unmanned drones. Later, in a speech, Kirk reflects upon the danger, or from another viewpoint the necessity, of becoming evil in order to defeat evil, a debate that has been part of post-9/11 American life.

The terrorism plot is conjoined with a classic cold war era rogue military storyline. A high-ranking commander of the Curtis LeMay school of thought decides that war with a hostile civilization is inevitable and resolves to hasten the onset by getting in the first blow. Kirk here plays a role similar to that of President John F. Kennedy, advised by his military commanders to turn the Cuban Missile Crisis into an opportunity by striking the Soviet Union first.

Star Trek Into Darkness resonates with interesting ideas, although Trek purists may feel that its best moments come from a slightly parasitic relationship with an earlier, more emotionally engaging entry in the series. For a summer action movie, it is unusually rich political fare and continues the proud recent run of issue-driven science fiction.

It may, however, be appropriate to point out that the persisting bipolar conflict in the  field between humanists and behavioralists conceals a lively polemic within both camps  and perhaps particularly among the so-called  behavioralists. Among the modernists neologisms burst like roman candles in the sky, and wars of epistemological legitimacy are fought. The devotees of rigor and theories of the middle range reject more speculative general theory as  non-knowledge; and the devotees of general theory attack those with more limited scope as technicians, as answerers in search of questions.

From Gabriel Almond, “Political Theory and Political Science,” American Political Science Review 60,4 (1966), p. 878.

Just wanted to note a quick and surely incomplete census of scholars providing some heft to “scandal” coverage that badly needs it over the weekend.

• While we have been told with increasing breathlessness that the Obama administration’s scandals are “worse than Watergate,” a story in this weekend’s Washington Post, by Matthew Dallek,  points out the problems with the Nixon analogy (which, as I pointed out a long while back, would have to ramp up rather dramatically to be close to true. Though I do hope there are White House tapes.)


• Another Washington Post piece noted the oddly dichotomous simultaneous critiques of the president—at once he is tyrannical and disengaged. Will Howell makes a cameo here and gets a nice book plug too.


• And, this a.m. NPR’s “Morning Edition” hits the trifecta: quotes fr0m Brendan Nyhan and Donna Hoffman on the purported “second term curse,” while another featured Frances Lee on “why Congress has reasons not to be bipartisan despite various rose-colored pipe dreams about the post-World War II ‘consensus.’”

Please add other similar links in the comments section.

Many of you are probably aware of this already, but it was news to me. It’s about education reformer Michelle Rhee. I’ll hand the mike over to Mark Palko:

Rhee’s record mainly shows a pattern of intense self promotion, often the expense of students:

She appears to have started her career by greatly overstating test score improvements during her Teach for America days;

As an administrator, she was charged with abusing her authority to political ends:

and covering up a major cheating scandal;

She lent her political capital to anti-labor measures only tangentially related to education (but vital to her allies);

She oversaw the creation of a convoluted metric that assigned the top ranks to schools she and her allies were responsible for (despite those schools’ terrible performance on the very metrics Rhee had previously championed);

And she endorsed a Bobby Jindal  initiative which pretty much guaranteed wide-spread fraud.

Following the links, I found some further discussion here and here from a couple years ago that makes Rhee look pretty bad.

Palko describes Rhee’s success as an “affinity con”:

Affinity cons work in large part because when people see someone with similar background and cultural signifiers, they assume other similarities: common goals, values, approaches.

Movement reformers, particularly those who came in through Teach for America (and that’s something you see a lot) often get sucked in by something similar. They look at someone like Michelle Rhee and the rhetoric and the resume feel familiar. . . . Lots of leaders in education today have that exact same bio and since the vast majority of them genuinely care about kids, they assume Rhee does as well.

I don’t know about that. I’m just speculating here, but my take on it is, if you give someone good public relations, a lot of money, and a message that people want to hear, he or she can go pretty far before getting tripped up by reality. Palko refers to Rhee’s middle-class background, but I think if she had a lower-class background, that would’ve worked fine too. Look at Barack Obama: his background was different from almost all Americans, black or white, but people just ate up his story.

As for Rhee: I suspect she’s not planning on going anywhere, but all this error, corruption, and cover-up is taking a toll on her reputation. To the extent that her movement is about education reform rather than about Michelle Rhee, at some point they’ll have to find a more credible leader, no?

My impression is that there has been a shift. A few years ago, value-added assessment etc was considered the technocratic way to go, with opponents being a bunch of Luddite dead-enders. Now, though, the whole system is falling apart. We can learn a lot from tests, no doubt about that, but there’s a lot less sense that they should be used to directly evaluate teachers. We’ve moved to a more modern, quality-control perspective in which the goal is to learn and improve the system, not to reward or punish individual workers.

This shift may have not happened yet at the political level, but it’s my sense that this is the direction that things are going. The Rhee story is symbolic of the fallacies of measurement.

On Friday I spoke to a staff person for the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology about the prospects for National Science Foundation funding of political and social science research.  The next legislative step is the re-authorization of the American COMPETES Act, which will likely occur in late June or early July.

This staff person said that there was a very real threat that political science funding or social science funding could be eliminated in the legislation produced by the committee.  In his opinion, the committee’s chair, Lamar Smith, would not necessarily push for either of these himself.  But if another committee member proposed an amendment eliminating this funding, it might be tough to defeat.  This staff person said that some House Republicans are looking to cut discretionary spending wherever they can.  He also said that political science in particular was a relatively easy and powerless target.  And it does not help that few of the Republican members of this committee have universities in their districts.  Moreover, even if political and social science funding survives the reauthorization, there is always the possibility for limitations to come via the appropriations process in the fall.  (See this post at Mischiefs of Faction.)

In short, there is still real cause for concern.  I asked him what we could to do help.  He said that what he needs is this: “bite-sized” stories about political science research, and especially research that would be appealing to more conservative members of the committee.  I asked him for examples of the kinds of topics that might qualify.  He suggested research about national security, transparency, and how to make government smaller and/or smarter.  He noted that he already uses the story of Elinor Ostrom’s research, since her work on managing common-pool resources often emphasizes mechanisms other than a centralized governmental authority.

Some commenters on this blog have wondered whether stories about specific projects were good enough—suggesting that political science needed to make a broader case for its value writ large, or emphasize how NSF funding supports big datasets or graduate education.  I asked this staff person about those things.  He said that stories about specific projects were better and more persuasive (though of course there is no guarantee that they will persuade).

I would like to ask our readers to leave examples of any potentially relevant research projects in comments or send them via email to me or the blog.    I can then forward them on to this staff person.  Some examples, mainly from other social sciences, are in this brochure (pdf) compiled by the NSF itself.

Obviously, there are many other lines of communication currently open between academics, universities, and scholarly associations on the one hand, and legislators on the other.  But individual scholars are best-positioned to identify compelling research.  Please take the time to help if you can.

We are pleased to continue our series of Election Reports with the following post-election report of last week’s Bulgarian parliamentary elections from political scientists Petia Kostadinova and Maria Popova.

*****

On May 12, 2013, Bulgarian citizens took part in the country’s 8^th legislative elections since the end of communism to select 240 representatives to the National Assembly, Bulgaria’s unicameral legislature. Despite a series of wiretapping scandals and a pre-election discovery of (possibly illegally) overprinted ballots, international observers have concluded that the elections were generally fair and competitive. The elections produced no clear winners, but marked several firsts in Bulgaria’s post-Communist democratic experience:

• The outgoing incumbent captured the biggest share of the votes for the first time since competitive multiparty elections were re-introduced in 1990;


• For the first time since 1990, nearly half the electorate stayed home and did not cast a vote;


• For the first time since 1990, the two most likely coalitions will be deadlocked in a 120-120 tie in parliament;


• For the first time since 2001, no new parties burst onto the political scene.

More broadly, the election: 1) demonstrated the increasing polarization of the Bulgarian party system; 2) revealed further legitimization of the radical nationalists and their possible ascent to the position of kingmaker in Bulgarian politics; 3) highlighted the continued intense confrontation between the judicial and political branches (the judiciary is highly politicized, but also highly autonomous); and 4) suggests that the combination of rampant political corruption and unregulated wiretapping, is turning (has turned?) Bulgaria into what Darden (2001) has called a “blackmail state”, where politicians eavesdrop on each other’s conversations in order to maintain loyalty among allies and inflict political damage on adversaries.[i]

Election Results

At 51.33%, the turnout for these elections was dismally low by any standards. It was not only the lowest ever in any Bulgarian elections but also the lowest in any democratic legislative elections in the world in recent years. The voter turnout in Slovakia’s 2012 legislative elections (59.11%) was also one of the lowest in Central and Eastern Europe, and only referenda have historically lower turnouts, including one in Bulgaria on January 27, 2013 (20.22%).[ii] Only four parties gathered enough votes to pass the 4% electoral threshold and no party received the majority of the vote. Close to one quarter of the voters (24.3%) cast ballots for parties that did not get any seats in the National Assembly, a significant waste of votes under a proportional representation system.

In 2009, Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB)’s 39.7% result allowed it to form a single party government, which governed, with Ataka’s frequent informal support, until the Prime Minister’s resignation in late February, 2013.  This time around, GERB received 30.5% of the vote and will have 97 seats in the National Assembly. The Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) was the main opposition to GERB in the last four years, and while it was not able to emerge as the elections’ frontrunner, it had a strong showing, with 26.6% of the votes and it will be the second largest party in the next parliament with 84 seats.

The third largest party in the National Assembly, with 36 seats, is the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), which derives its support primarily from Bulgaria’s ethnic Turkish minority. In fact, 49.1% of the overseas ballots, much of them from Bulgarian nationals residing in Turkey, went for DPS. The fourth party elected to parliament after the 2013 elections with 7.3% of the vote, is Ataka, an extreme-right wing nationalist formation that first entered parliament in 2005 and whose leader Volen Siderov was a runner up in the 2006 presidential elections.

As the next table shows, three of the four parties elected to the National Assembly lost voters since the 2009 elections. Only BSP can claim it increased its electoral support, by about 195,000 votes.  The Socialists also more than doubled their seats in parliament, gaining 44 seats. While Ataka also gained seats, 2, it actually lost electoral support, by about 137,000 voters.  However, the National Front for Bulgaria’s Salvation, which splintered from Ataka in 2011 received 3.7% and barely missed the 4% threshold.  Thus, we could argue that the radical nationalist vote actually increased from 9.4% in 2009 to 11% in 2013.  GERB lost close to 600,000 voters and 20 seats, while DPS lost one seat and also experienced a decline in the number of share of voters who supported it.

Possible election outcomes

There are a series of possible outcomes of these elections.

1. Elections are declared invalid by the Constitutional Court due to ballot irregularities


2. Single-party minority GERB government (97/240 seats)


3. Coalition government (GERB-Ataka: 120/240 seats; BSP-DPS coalition: 120/240 seats; ‘Expert’ government supported by BSP, DPS, and Ataka: 143/240 seats).

As of May 15^th, Boyko Borisov has announced that GERB will pursue the first option.  If the Constitutional Court does not quickly invalidate the May 12 election result, Borisov intends to attempt to form a government.  However, with GERB not even close to having a majority of seats in the National Assembly, a single party minority government is an unlikely outcome, as both BSP and DPS, and seemingly Ataka are strongly opposed to GERB continuing to govern (alone).  In the meantime, the Socialists, DPS and Ataka are exploring the expert cabinet option, but the likelihood of success is slim.  Neither DPS nor Ataka can afford to be seen entering into a coalition that includes the other, and hoodwinking their electorates appears next to impossible.  There are two likelier coalitions. BSP and DPS have frequently collaborated in the past and were part of the same tri-partite ruling coalition (along with NDSV) between 2005 and 2009. Both parties are often categorized as left of center and are seen as ‘natural’ partners for a coalition, partnership that is driven by their mutual despise for GERB and Ataka.  Yet, these two parties control only 120 seats (50%) in the National Assembly. The other 120 seats are controlled by GERB and Ataka. Ataka, which entered the National Assembly in 2005 has not been part of any formal coalition, but it is well known that it was their support for GERB’s policies that kept that government in power for much of 2009-2013.  The most unsettling outcome would be if the two biggest parliamentary factions (GERB and BSP) attempt to add votes to their 120 coalitions by coaxing individual MPs into crossing the floor.  Both Ataka’s and BSP’s leaders have alleged that GERB representatives have approached Ataka and BSP MP-elects with “interesting offers”.[iii] Whatever government is formed in Bulgaria in the next couple of weeks, it will have a weak mandate and will represent a small fraction of the population.

Analysis

The election results and the prospects of unstable government are still to be fully analyzed. Yet, less than a week after ballots were cast, we can offer some preliminary discussion about the implications of these elections.

Party System Polarization

The election results confirm that BSP and DPS as the only two parties with a continuous presence in Bulgarian politics since 1990. BSP, the successor of the Communist Party, has been elected with varying success to every National Assembly since 1990 and has been a part of (or supported) five governments – out of 11 since the transition to democracy. DPS, the only political party that emerged during the democratic transition and that is still viable, did not win seats to the legislature at the 1997 elections, but has been part of every other National Assembly, and has participated in (or supported) four of the post-communist governments.

GERB and Ataka are relative newcomers, although there are indications that Ataka is here to stay, with its support among voters reemerging after the party’s weak performance in the 2011 local elections. GERB’s emergence on the political scene followed by weakening electoral support is yet another manifestation of the inability of ‘normal’ center-right parties to be successfully established in Bulgaria. In fact, the 2013 elections indicate the complete decimation of the leftover and splinter political groups of Union of Democratic Forces (SDS- later United Democratic Forces (ODS)), the main communist opposition party in the early years of Bulgarian democracy. In the absence of established coherent mass legislative parties on the right, populists and extremists dominate this part of the ideological spectrum.

The distribution of seats between the two most likely coalitions—on different sides of the ideological spectrum—indicates not only a legislative deadlock but also the high level of polarization of Bulgarian politics. Ideological divergence has been a feature of Bulgaria’s democracy since the early years and contributed to a slow and ineffective economic transition until an economic policy consensus emerged in 1997-2001.[iv] Yet, there has been a trend towards an even greater polarization in recent elections.

Using data from the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) which codes election platforms on a series of issues, including each party’s position on the Left-Right ideological spectrum, the figure below shows one indicator of the increased polarization among legislative parties in Bulgaria. The data plotted are the ideological distance between the most right and the most left party that entered the National Assembly after each legislative election between 1990 and 2009, all the years for which CMP data are available. For clarity of presentation, the absolute values of the ideological distance scores are shown.

As seen above, the initial consensus on the need for political transition was quickly followed by growing differences among parties, mostly on the nature of economic transformation. The brief (relative) consensus that emerged after the economic collapse in 1997 was followed by another trend towards sharp ideological differences in 2005 and 2009.

While CMP data are not yet available for the 2013 elections, a look at the most recent party manifestos indicates that the differences among parties remains very strong, especially with respect to the most pressing economic issues. As the incumbent, GERB’s platform stresses its achievements over the past four years and emphasizes continuity in its policies. GERB’s economic program focuses on de-regulation of business, attracting foreign investment, entering the Eurozone, and a balanced budget. The program also stresses providing incentives for employers and linking the indexing of pensions to economic growth. GERB’s spending priorities are restricted primarily to utilizing European Union structural funds for infrastructure development.

BSP’s platform has a distinctly different tone, stressing throughout that the role of government is one of regulator, investor and owner. The Socialists call for a definitive change in the neo-liberal economic model, emphasizing their support for the Europe 2020 program to improve social inclusion of all societal groups. BSP’s election manifesto also has a sizeable section on increasing investment in the country’s human resources through changes in the health, education, and social welfare systems.

A second distinct theme in the BSP program, one that finds resonance with DPS’ platform, is the need to improve democracy in Bulgaria, pointing out the erosion of democratic practices and values under the GERB government. Democracy, civil society and separation of powers are leading themes in DPS’ platform, which goes as far as to openly call for ‘restoring’ democracy in Bulgaria. With respect to economic priorities, similar to the socialists, DPS calls for increased government investment, including in the development of new economic sectors, and for providing economic stimuli for businesses.

Ataka’s election platform is the longest and the least specific, consisting of dozens of pages refuting the past 23 years of economic policies in Bulgaria, printing the names of all previous government officials whom Ataka holds responsible for the country’s economic situation. In this respect, similar to BSP and DPS, Ataka rejects the neo-liberal economic model but this party goes much further to call for the nationalization of industry and the expulsion of foreign owned businesses. Aside from free education and healthcare, the party offers no specifics in its economic program.

Overall, the platforms of the political parties elected to the National Assembly provide distinct choices between maintaining the status quo of economic policies (GERB) and changing it by either softening the balanced-budget-austerity paradigm (BSP, DPS) or by replacing the entire economic system (Ataka).  Of course, Ataka’s economic proposals are not realistic but increased government spending for social programs and education is an alternative that is appealing to many. This said, even though Bulgaria is not in the Eurozone—although the country’s currency has been pegged to the Euro (originally the Deutsche Mark) since 1997—it is not at all clear if any government will be able to drastically change the country’s economic policy.

Ataka’s Legitimization

These elections have heralded Ataka’s emancipation as a fully legitimate political actor.  When the radical nationalist formation led by Volen Siderov surprisingly gained 8.9% of the vote in 2005, all mainstream parties denounced it as a danger to Bulgarian democracy and the famed “Bulgarian model” of civil interethnic relations.  All parliamentary represented parties refused to work with Ataka and sought to marginalize it in the legislature.  During Ataka’s second stint in parliament (2009-2013), the governing GERB frequently relied on Ataka votes to pass its legislative initiatives, but refused to enter into a formal coalition.  After Ataka activists provoked a violent confrontation with worshippers at a Sofia mosque in May 2011, the mainstream parties in the legislature passed a declaration condemning the incident and denouncing Ataka’s extremism.  For the past few days, however, Ataka sources report that Siderov is enjoying being courted from all sides.[v]  Not only is Ataka now seen as a potential participant in two of the three possible formal coalitions, but it has assumed the role of kingmaker.  For the past 20 years this role belonged Ataka’s archenemy, DPS.  This shift marks Ataka’s full incorporation into Bulgaria’s party system. For more on Ataka, see Kavalski 2007, Ghodsee, 2008, Popova 2013.[vi]

Confrontation between the Judicial Branch and the Political Branches

Bulgarian politics have also been characterized by a high level of inter-branch confrontation since the mid-1990s.  Each government since Zhan Videnov’s 1995-1997 government has been involved in a tense relationship with at least one judicial actor: the courts, the prosecution, or the investigation.  The pattern has been the following: the government attempts to use the judiciary to achieve particular political or policy goals; the judiciary resists, accusing the government of encroaching on its autonomy and independence; the governing majority politicizes judicial appointments and pushes through partisans to leadership positions within the judiciary; time and again, however, as soon as they are appointed, the partisans shift loyalties and inter-branch confrontation continues unabated.  This process has been described at length by Schoenfelder (2005) and Popova (2010).[vii] In other words, the Bulgarian judiciary is highly politicized, but it is also considerably independent from the other branches.

The 2013 parliamentary election campaign provided additional confirmation of the existence of this pattern.  In December 2012, the Supreme Judicial Council elected a new prosecutor general—a judge from Plovdiv, named Sotir Tzatzarov.  Tzatzarov was widely perceived to be chosen for his closeness to the ruling GERB, which then lobbied heavily for his election to the top prosecution job.  However, during the spring election campaign it became increasingly evident that the prosecution, under Tzatzarov’s leadership, is actually undermining GERB.  It opened and publicized several investigations into illegal wiretapping of cabinet ministers and other politicians by the Ministry of the Interior, headed by Borisov’s closest political ally, Tzvetan Tzvetanov.  The wiretapping scandals became the central issue of the campaign.  Finally, only a couple of days before the election, the prosecution broke a story to the media that it was investigating the possibly illegal overprinting of 350,000 ballots at a printing press owned by a GERB municipal councilor.  When the press owner claimed that the ballots were irregular copies meant to be destroyed, the prosecution immediately responded by disclosing evidence from its investigation that the ballots were packaged for shipping and labeled with voting region destinations.  The prosecution’s loquaciousness provided immediate fodder for the opposition parties, who speculated that GERB would use the additional ballots to attempt to steal the elections.  It is precisely this incident that will now form the basis for GERB’s constitutional complaint seeking to vacate the election results.  In a press conference on May 15, Borisov claimed that the opposition parties who discussed the story at press conferences on the day before the election violated a constitutional ban on campaigning in the last 24 hours before an election.  Moreover, Borisov directly accused the prosecution of having cost GERB “5-6%” with the ballot printing investigation alone.  The prosecutor general has answered with an announcement that the prosecution has investigated the allegations of illegal campaigning in the last 24 hours of the electoral campaign and has concluded that no laws have been breached.  The fight is on.

Bulgaria as a “blackmail state”

In a widely-cited article on President Kuchma’s regime in Ukraine, Keith Darden argued that rampant political and bureaucratic corruption were not eroding state-capacity as conventional wisdom had it, but actually allowed the Kuchma regime to build state capacity.  Politicians and bureaucrats were allowed to engage in corruption with impunity as long as they remained politically loyal and implemented the government’s policy agenda.  Evidence of their corrupt activities, however, was duly collected, often through illegal wiretaps, and would be used to blackmail them into staying in line with the political leadership.

Over the last couple of years, but especially during the 2013 parliamentary campaign, unsettling evidence emerged that Bulgaria may fit Darden’s blackmail state model.  Several wiretap recordings leaked to the media reveal conversations among the Prime Minister, cabinet ministers, prosecutors, and heads of bureaucratic agencies, which allude to influence peddling, obstruction of justice in corruption prosecutions, fixed public tenders, and partisan allocation of jobs.  While the authenticity of the recordings has not been proven, most alleged participants in these conversations do not bother to issue denials.  Rather, public discussion has focused on who has made/ordered the recordings, who has leaked them to the press, and who is the biggest beneficiary of a particular recording.  This suggests that legal and illegal wiretapping may be used potentially on a regular scale to settle political scores with adversaries and guarantee intra-party loyalty and discipline. This is a particularly disturbing trend, which may be partially responsible for the record low turnout.

Concluding thoughts

The 2013 legislative elections in Bulgaria brought the country to the attention of the international news media as the latest example of a European country gripped by scandal, gridlock and potential for instability. No long lasting coalitions are possible and the country’s elite is now also faced with two unprecedented options of invalidating the elections or bringing in Ataka to support an expert government, and both outcomes are sure to keep Bulgaria in the news. From a scholarly perspective, the trends of voter disengagement, low turnout, political polarization, inter-institutional confrontation, and the use of wiretapping for political blackmail are most troubling.

Good mornin’.  Here’s your linkage…

• Paolo Sorbello critiques the elegantly fixed steps and rhythms of the last Waltz.
• Roger Mac Ginty at Plato’s Cave discusses the construction of “greatness” in IR and the cult of followership.
• Thomas Meaney tries to explain why a passionate history of global alternatives to liberal capitalism becomes an exercise in nostalgia.
• Jason Ralph wonders if Headley Bull’s Revolt Against the West thesis is appropriate for understanding contemporary international society.
• Oliver Steunkel asks: “Could the BRICS provide loans without conditionalities?“

• Siddharatha Mitter reviews Max Fisher’s work and the cartography of bullshit.

It seems the Senate could have a really hot summer.  Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has reportedly threatened to “go nuclear” this July—meaning that Senate Democrats would move by majority vote to ban filibusters of executive and judicial branch nominees.  According to these reports, if Senate Republicans block three key nominations (Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Thomas Perez at Labor, and Gina McCarthy at EPA), Reid will call on the Democrats to invoke the nuclear option as a means of eliminating filibusters over nominees.

Jon Bernstein offered a thoughtful reaction to Reid’s gambit, noting that Reid’s challenge is to “find a way to ratchet up the threat of reform in order to push Republicans as far away from that line as possible.”  Jon’s emphasis on Reid’s threat is important (and is worth reading in full).  Still, I think it’s helpful to dig a little deeper on the role of both majority and minority party threats that arise over the nuclear option.

Before getting to Reid’s threat, two brief detours.  First, a parliamentary detour to make plain two reasons why Reid’s procedural gambit is  deemed “nuclear.”  First, Democrats envision using a set of parliamentary moves that would allow the Senate to cut off debate on nominations by majority vote (rather than by sixty votes).  Republicans (at least when they are in the minority) call this “changing the rules by breaking the rules,” because Senate rules formally require a 2/3rds vote to break a filibuster of a measure to change Senate rules.  The nuclear option would avoid the formal process of securing a 2/3rds vote to cut off debate; instead, the Senate would set a new precedent by simple majority vote to exempt nominations from the reach of Rule 22.  If Democrats circumvent formal rules, Republicans would deem the move nuclear.  Second, Reid’s potential gambit would be considered nuclear because of the anticipated GOP reaction: As Sen. Schumer argued in 2005 when the GOP tried to go nuclear over judges, minority party senators would “blow up every bridge in sight.”  The nuclear option is so-called on account of the minority’s anticipated parliamentary reaction (which would ramp up obstruction on everything else).

A second detour notes simply that the exact procedural steps that would have to be taken to set a new precedent to exempt nominations from Rule 22 have not yet been precisely spelled out.  Over the years, several scenarios have been floated that give us a general outline of how the Senate could reform its cloture rule by majority vote. But a CRS report written in the heat of the failed GOP effort to go nuclear in 2005 points to the complications and uncertainties entailed in using a reform-by-ruling strategy to empower simple majorities to cut off debate on nominations.  My sense is that using a nuclear option to restrict the reach of Rule 22 might not be as straight forward as many assume.

That gets us to the place of threats in reform-by-ruling strategies.  The coverage of Reid’s intentions last week emphasized the importance of Reid’s threat to Republicans: Dare to cross the line by filibustering three particular executive branch nominees, and Democrats will go nuclear.  But for Reid’s threat to be effective in convincing GOP senators to back down on these nominees, Republicans have to deem Reid’s threat credible.  Republicans know that Reid refused by go nuclear last winter (and previously in January 2009), not least because a set of longer-serving Democrats opposed the strategy earlier this year.  It would be reasonable for the GOP today to question whether Reid has 51 Democrats willing to ban judicial and executive branch nomination filibusters.  If Republicans doubt Reid’s ability to detonate a nuclear device, then the threat won’t be much help in getting the GOP to back down.  Of course, if Republicans don’t block all three nominees, observers will likely interpret the GOP’s behavior as a rational response to Reid’s threat.  Eric Schickler and Greg Wawro in Filibuster suggest that the absence of reform on such occasions demonstrates that the nuclear option can “tame the minority.”  Reid’s threat would have done the trick.

As a potentially nuclear Senate summer approaches, I would keep handy an alternative interpretation.  Reid isn’t the only actor with a threat: given Republicans’ aggressive use of Rule 22, Republicans can credibly threaten to retaliate procedurally if the Democrats go nuclear.  And that might be a far more credible threat than Reid’s.  We know from the report on Reid’s nuclear thinking that “senior Democratic Senators have privately expressed worry to the Majority Leader that revisiting the rules could imperil the immigration push, and have asked him to delay it until after immigration reform is done (or is killed).”  That tidbit suggests that Democrats consider the GOP threat to retaliate as a near certainty.   In other words, if Republicans decide not to block all three nominees and Democrats don’t go nuclear, we might reasonably conclude that the minority’s threat to retaliate was pivotal to the outcome.  As Steve Smith, Tony Madonna and I argued some time ago, the nuclear option might be technically feasible but not necessarily politically feasible.

To be sure, it’s hard to arbitrate between these two competing mechanisms that might underlie Senate politics this summer.  In either scenario—the majority tames the minority or the minority scares the bejeezus out of the majority—the same outcome ensues: Nothing.  Still, I think it’s important to keep these alternative interpretations at hand as Democrats call up these and other nominations this spring.  The Senate is a tough nut to crack, not least when challenges to supermajority rule are in play.

We welcome this guest post by political scientist Michael Miller, author of the forthcoming Subsidizing Democracy: How Public Funding Changes Elections, and How it Can Work in the Future.  For more on this topic, see this previous post.

*****

Quite a lot has been written in the last week about inappropriate IRS scrutiny of conservative groups seeking 501©(4) status as tax-exempt organizations during the 2012 election. The commentary has followed a relatively predictable pattern, as journalists have focused on who-knew-what-and-when-they-knew-it, and what the political fallout will be. Yet, there is also increasing recognition that the story is likely more complex than exuberant employees or lax management.

Simply, the IRS has made the worst of a bad situation that is not entirely of its own making.  While it is certainly on the hook for subjecting applications from conservative groups to enhanced scrutiny, the IRS has also been inundated with applications, with 501©(4) requests doubling from 2010 to 2012. The explosion of these requests can be traced to recent federal court decisions—namely, Citizens United v. FEC and Speechnow.org v. FEC—that have dramatically altered the rules regarding who can spend money in American elections.

The 501©(4) category has traditionally been reserved for groups that promote the “social welfare.” But the courts in 2010 determined that groups may accept contributions of unlimited size and spend freely on advertising that expressly advocates the election or defeat of a candidate. A 501(c)(4) designation is attractive to such groups for two reasons: Not only does it allow them a tax-exempt status, but it also does not require them to disclose their donors. Given the regulatory environment in place since 2010, seeking 501©(4) status seems utterly rational.

That creates a regulatory problem. With electioneering now in the equation, it is much more difficult to determine where “social welfare” ends and campaign politics begin. It is unclear whether the Federal Election Commission or the Internal Revenue Service should be primarily responsible for making that call, which underscores a failure of the federal government so far to develop good regulations for the post-Citizens United world.

It also leads to concerns about transparency in government. Absent good regulation, there is a real risk that the 501©(4) code will become a haven for “Super PACs” that spend millions in elections without having to disclose their donors. Indeed, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has cited the IRS scandal in calling for a number of reforms, including both the DISCLOSE Act and a constitutional amendment to curb the effects of Citizens United, and she is not alone.

It won’t happen. Action on anything is hard enough in Congress these days, so particularly in the case of a constitutional amendment—which would require a two-thirds vote in both houses—one would expect widespread public concern to be a prerequisite for reform. But the simple fact is that on the whole, Americans don’t know very much about the campaign finance environment post-Citizens United, and their lack of knowledge will be an obstacle to reformers.

In survey questions that Conor Dowling and I fielded in 2012 via the CCES and the CCAP as part of work on a forthcoming book, we asked respondents a series of questions designed to assess their knowledge of the legality of various activities during presidential elections. Between the two surveys, roughly 1,000 respondents answered questions about the legality of corporate behavior, and another 1,000 answered questions about the behavior of private citizens. For all questions, participants could respond that the activity was “illegal,” “legal,” or that they “don’t know.”

The mean percentages of correct responses are contained in the tables, and they demonstrate a general lack of public knowledge about campaign finance law. Specifically, for all six questions regarding corporations, a majority of respondents either did not know the correct answer or answered incorrectly. A similar pattern of knowledge—or lack thereof—is on display when respondents were asked about allowable behavior for individual citizens. A majority of respondents correctly answered that individuals may legally purchase electioneering advertising themselves, or that they may donate to presidential candidates or parties, but only a minority could correctly answer the other four questions about individuals.

When we separate respondents into “high-interest” and “low-interest” categories (shown in a working paper but not here), we find that a majority of high-interest respondents answered eleven of twelve questions correctly—but still erroneously claimed that corporations could contribute to presidential candidates—while responses of low-interest respondents essentially mimicked those of the sample at large. We take this as evidence that elite discourse surrounding Citizens United reached those who pay attention, but did not permeate mass public opinion.

Our findings are hardly suggestive of a public with high knowledge of campaign finance regulations, even after Citizens United. If knowledge is a precondition for perceived salience, it should not be surprising that public attention to the IRS scandal is lagging compared to similar previous news stories. On the whole, it seems unlikely that partisan-motivated IRS scrutiny of organizations seeking an obscure tax exemption will give much momentum to reformers seeking to address electioneering among 501©(4)s.

Poli-Sci Perspective is a weekly Wonkblog feature in which Georgetown University’s Dan Hopkins and George Washington University’s Danny Hayes and John Sides offer an empirical perspective on the issues dominating Washington. In this edition, Hayes looks at the way foreign leaders can influence America’s foreign policy. For past posts in the series, head here.

When the United States is considering entering into war, sometimes the most important voices can come from other countries.

Recent research raises the intriguing possibility that Americans’ views about U.S. foreign policy can be influenced not just by the president and members of Congress – the elites from whom the public typically takes its cues – but also by the leaders of other nations and the United Nations.

That might sound bizarre. Would Americans, often portrayed as parochial and insular (freedom fries, people), really take direction about U.S. foreign policy from the accented pronouncements of foreigners? Mon dieu!

But my new book with Matt Guardino, Influence from Abroad: Foreign Voices, the Media, and U.S. Public Opinion, says yes. Under some circumstances, international actors can influence whether Americans support U.S. military interventions.

Guardino and I studied the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War. In the days before the United States lit up the Baghdad night with its “shock and awe” campaign, public opinion was starkly polarized. Just a week before the invasion, upwards of 90 percent of Republicans favored military action, but just 44 percent of Democrats did, according to one Pew survey.

That kind of wide partisan gap typically opens only when the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties take diverging positions on an issue, which makes the polarization before the Iraq War a curious puzzle.

While Republican elites, rallying behind the Bush administration’s push for action, were full-throated in their support for an invasion, Democratic elite opposition was muted. Even a majority of Democratic senators – including the 2004 presidential ticket of John Kerry and John Edwards and the near-nominee in 2008, Hillary Clinton – voted for the congressional resolution that authorized Bush to use force against Saddam Hussein.

Of course, some liberal Democrats, such as the late-Sen. Robert Byrd (W.Va.), were vociferous in their opposition. “This is no small conflagration that we contemplate,” Byrd said on the Senate floor in February 2003. “It is not going to be a video game.

But the public hardly heard any of it.

In our analysis of every nightly network television story about Iraq in the eight months before the war – 1,434 stories in all – Guardino and I found that Democrats accounted for just 4 percent of all statements in the news. Other domestic sources who opposed the war, such as protesters and anti-war groups, made up an even tinier fraction. By contrast, Bush administration officials arguing for military action constituted 28 percent of all statements in the news. When we looked at national newspaper coverage, we found the same thing.

Yet many Democrats in the public, and about one-third of independents, remained opposed to the war, even without clear opposition signals from domestic elites. Why did that happen?

Although the U.S. media paid little attention to dissent from domestic voices, Guardino and I found that they devoted significant air time to opposition to the war from overseas. (In the book, we discuss at length why journalists largely ignored opposition from congressional Democrats and anti-war groups.)

In our analysis of network news coverage, foreigners were the sources of 34 percent of all statements that appeared on the air, and 65 percent of all of the anti-war statements. The most common sources were U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, numerous anti-war members of the British parliament, and various officials from France, Germany and other European governments. When Americans heard opposition to the war, those objections came from abroad.

In turn, the coverage of overseas opposition suppressed public support for the Iraq invasion. According to our analysis of a series of pre-war opinion polls, support for the invasion was about nine percentage points lower than it would have been without foreign opposition in the news.

Certain people were especially responsive. College-educated Democrats were 37 percentage points less likely to support the war because of opposition from overseas. Independents with college degrees were 59 percentage points less likely to advocate invasion than they would have been in the absence of foreign dissent. Republicans, not surprisingly, were unmoved.

The effects were strongest among these groups for two reasons. First, highly educated people pay more attention to the news and so were more likely to be exposed to the reported opposition. Second, Democrats and independents are far more likely than Republicans to be skeptical of pre-emptive military action and to have favorable attitudes toward European governments and the United Nations. As a result, they were much more responsive to these foreign voices.

Of course, foreign-induced opposition didn’t stop the invasion. Public opinion is but one consideration for political leaders. But it did mean that President Bush took the country to war with a polity far more divided than it would have been otherwise. This left him with a weaker base of support to draw on as the conflict ground on, hastening the slide in his approval ratings and accelerating dissatisfaction with the war.

Guardino and I aren’t the only researchers to find that citizens may look overseas for guidance about U.S. foreign policy. One paper suggests that Americans, and especially those who don’t trust the sitting president, look to the United Nations for a “second opinion” about whether to support military action. The boost in presidential approval at the outset of a military conflict – the “rally round the flag” effect – is significantly larger when the United Nations endorses the action than when it does not. Views about whether the United States should attack Iranian nuclear facilities might also depend on U.N. support.

The debate over the Syrian conflict is, of course, very different from the Iraq War (or the debate over Iran’s nuclear program, for that matter). But recent news coverage has already highlighted the relevance of various international actors, from the United Nations to Israel to Turkey and more.

It remains to be seen whether these voices will shape Americans’ attitudes as they contemplate another conflict in a far-off land. But it certainly seems prudent for the Obama administration to try to cultivate support for its Syria policy not only on Capitol Hill, but around the globe.

The next installment in this week’s presentation of NSF-funded research is this piece from Brown University political scientist Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro.  The importance of the piece is straightforward: vote-buying is alive and well in many countries—including in Latin America, which Weitz-Shapiro focuses on—and the practice subverts democracy in various ways.  So what might lead Latin American politicians to reject this practice?  Weitz-Shapiro provided this summary of her research:

While the practice of buying votes with public goods and services (sometimes known as “patronage” or “clientelism”) has declined in the United States, it is alive and well in many parts of Latin America. But not all public officials rely on patronage.  This study details the circumstances in which city mayors in Latin America will opt out of vote buying.  Two conditions are necessary to get public officials to reject patronage.  First the community must have a large share of higher income voters and second the offices must be politically competitive.  Higher local income means that more voters dislike patronage.  Intense political competition leads politicians to be responsive to these higher income voters. Absent these conditions, clientelism will be common.

Where patronage or clientelism persists, policies are perverted, ballot secrecy is put in doubt, and voters may become disillusioned with democracy.  Latin America has seen some reversals of democracy in recent years, which makes it especially important to understand conditions that may increase the risk of such reversals.

I’d also note that better-functioning governments in places like Latin America serve the economic and national security interests of the United States.

[For more NSF-funded research recently published in the American Journal of Political Science, see here, here, here, and here.]

…from TEDx Sydney, got picked up by the TEDx global site.

Links: blog.tedx.com and at tedxsydney.com.

Thanks to everyone at TEDx Sydney for letting me be part of an amazing event. The organization of the event was terrific, the production value and support absolutely sumptuous (the Sydney Opera House!).

Edwina Throsby (my producer) and I had been bouncing ideas and drafts around for a couple of months; Gretel Killeen joined Edwina in knocking the talk into shape during rehearsals.

My thanks to David Broockman and Chris Skovron for letting me use their same-sex marriage example.

I also need to thank Margaret Stewart (herself a “big” TED veteran) (and check this out) and family, from whom I appropriated the “It’s Your Duty To Hack” sign appearing at the end of the talk.

And this is too beautiful not to link to (bump it up to HD, full-screen etc):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WonyaRyPSEw

A colleague in California sent a letter to both Senators Feinstein and Boxer and received this from Feinstein:

Thank you for writing to express your opposition to Senate Amendment 65 to the fiscal year 2013 continuing appropriations bill.  I appreciate hearing from you and welcome the opportunity to respond.

I believe that advanced research in the social and natural sciences is the bedrock of American innovation, and I am proud that California and its excellent universities have been a leader in this field.  I also agree that the National Science Foundation (NSF) plays an integral part in promoting scientific research and supporting science education.

On March 13, 2013, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) introduced an amendment (S. Amdt. 65) to the Senate Continuing Resolution that bans the use of National Science Foundation funding for political science projects.  However, it is important to note that this amendment was subsequently modified to allow for political science funding that supports the nation’s economy or is in the interest of national security.  Senator Coburn’s modified amendment was agreed to by a voice vote and included in the final version of the Continuing Resolution, which passed the Senate on March 20, 2013 by a vote of 73-26.  The President signed the bill into law on March 26, 2013 (Public Law 113-6).

I understand you support federal funding of the Political Science Program through the National Science Foundation (NSF).  As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, please know that I have made careful note of your support for this program, and will keep your comments in mind as I work with my colleagues in the Senate to pass appropriations legislation for fiscal year 2014.

Once again, thank you for writing.  If you have any additional questions or concerns, please contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841, or visit my website at http://feinstein.senate.gov.  Best regards.

Feinstein doesn’t seem too concerned about the language of the Coburn amendment.  My colleague reports that Boxer’s response was a generic form letter acknowledging the contact but saying nothing specific about the issue of the NSF.  The previous response of Tim Kaine is here, and see also the comments.

This weekend marks the debut of the next Star Trek movie: So Dark, Oh So Dark 2.

To mark the occasion:

Two years to go!