Political SciencePaula D. McClain has been nominated as President-Elect of the American Political Science Association (APSA) for 2018-2019. According to the news release, "The call for nominations was circulated among the membership, and outreach specifically to APSA committees and organized sections was conducted. The committee made its decisions after careful deliberation and consideration for the diversity of the field and the varied interests of political scientists. The candidates, along with any additional nominations by… read more about Paula McClain nominated as 2018-19 APSA President-Elect »
General Lori J. Robinson, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), spoke on Feb. 12 in a conversation moderated by Professor Peter Feaver titled “Wearing Two Hats: Managing Threats and Relationships Across Two Commands.” With a military career of 26 years of decorated service, Gen. Robinson is the first-ever female combatant commander. This event was sponsored by the Duke University Program in American Grand Strategy and co-sponsored by the Department of… read more about Peter Feaver moderates discussion with General Lori J. Robinson »
Noa Cnaan-On, one of our PhD Candidates, wrote a new piece for The Washington Post, Monkey Cage, about the demonstrations in Israel. “My research on Israeli social and religious movements seeking to impact government policies suggests that movements that had a clear leadership and that were organized hierarchically were more successful in pushing forward their agenda and had a higher likelihood in affecting government decisions and resource allocation.” Continue reading here read more about Noa Cnaan-On writes for The Washington Post Monkey Cage »
"People often stay silent, even when they want to speak up. We may think something in private, and say nothing in public. This happens to individuals who've suffer abuse, this happens to entire nations. Duke University political scientist Timur Kuran says that people pay close attention to public opinion, and figure out that sometimes, it's wiser to shut up...and so people say one thing publicly, and believe another thing privately. Timur Kuran calls this 'preference falsification.'"Continue to NPR here read more about Timur Kuran guest interview on NPR's Hidden Brain »
The Duke Council on Race and Ethnicity (DCORE) and The Raben Group co-convened a Feb. 1, 2018, panel discussion to bring attention to a public hearing on voter access in Raleigh the following day. The panelists provided cultural and historical context of voting rights in the state and the in the country. Panelists included: Debo Adegbile, Commissioner, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Juliana Cabrales, National Association of Latinx Elected Officials Richard L. Engstrom, Faculty Affiliate, Social Science Research… read more about Kerry Haynie serves on NC redistricting and voter access panel »
Matthew King, a senior majoring in political science, noted Cook’s strong, longstanding ties to Duke. "Tim Cook is a fantastic pick,” said King. “He cares deeply about Duke, and he's a Blue Devil through and through. Many of us aspire to be like Tim Cook when we grow up, so what could be better than to hear from him directly?" In addition to his service at Duke, Cook serves on the boards of directors of Nike and the National Football Foundation. Among his honors are the Newseum’s Free Expression Award (2017),… read more about Matthew King helps reveal Apple CEO Tim Cook as 2018 commencement speaker »
Congratulations Katie Webster, who has won the Peace Science Society's 2017 Stuart A. Bremer Award for the best graduate-student paper presented at the annual meeting. Her paper was entitled "Rethinking Civil War Onset and Escalation." Why do some civil conflicts simmer at low-intensity, while others escalate to war? This paper challenges traditional approaches to the start of intrastate conflict by arguing the need to distinguish both theoretically and methodologically between the onset and escalation of civil conflict. I… read more about Katie Webster wins Peace Science Society's 2017 award for best graduate student paper »
"The President by himself cannot press a button and cause missiles to fly. He can only give an authenticated order which others would follow and then missiles would fly," Dr. Peter Feaver, a professor of public policy and political science at Duke University, told congressional lawmakers last year. "The system is not a button that the President can accidentally lean on against the desk and immediately cause missiles to fly as some people in the public, I think, fear it would be," Feaver testified. Continue… read more about Peter Feaver's congressional testimonial reported in CNN Politics »
In a new article, political scientists Sunshine Hillygus, Seth McKee, and McKenzie Young show that whites who have moved to the South are more likely to be Democratic than lifelong Southerners. They draw this conclusion by looking at data going back to the 1970s from the American National Election Studies survey. Since 1968, the survey has asked respondents where they grew up. This allowed Hillygus and her colleagues to categorize white residents of Southern states as “natives” (people who grew up in the region) and “… read more about Hillygus research in Monkey Cage analysis of the political implications of white domestic migration to the American South »
Two alumni, Brendan Nyhan and Rajiv Golla, have written on topics that highlight the many ways that studying political science can compliment professional writing. Brendan Nyhan, who graduated with a PhD in 2009, is a contributing writer for NYTimes Upshot blog and recently co-authored the first large data analysis of the estimates and effects of fake news exposure during the 2016 presidential election. In a NYTimes piece about… read more about Two political science alumni address emergent issues in society »
Alexander, Kathryn J. 2017. “Religiosity and Bellicosity: The Impact of Religious Commitment on Patterns of Interstate Conflict,” Journal of Global Security Studies 2(4): 271-287. Are states with religiously committed citizens more likely to initiate conflict than states with less committed populations? This article builds upon findings within the literature on American politics that link individuals’ levels of religious commitment to their attitudes about foreign policy, and it tests whether the… read more about Fall 2017 Duke Political Science Publications »
From Duke Today: Three Duke University students have been named Schwarzman Scholars, a program that funds one year of study in Beijing, China. Seniors Riyanka Ganguly of Seattle, Amy Kramer of Boca Raton, Florida, and Aron Rimanyi of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, were named to the third class of Schwarzman Scholars. They are among 140 recipients selected from more than 4,000 applicants worldwide. The scholars develop leadership skills through a funded one-year master’s degree in global affairs, with specialization… read more about Three Duke political science students named Schwarzman Scholars »
From Duke Today: John Podesta, who chaired Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and served as chief of staff to President Clinton and counselor to President Obama, will speak at Duke University Wednesday, Nov. 29. The event in Penn Pavilion on West Campus is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. They can be picked up in Rubenstein Hall 134 or reserved via will call here. Parking is available in the Bryan Center garage and surface lot. Podesta’s talk, “America’s Role One Year After the… read more about Duke political scientist hosts public discussion with John Podesta »
The time may be ripe for Congress to look at the command and control system currently used to determine whether or not to launch a nuclear weapon, Duke political science professor and former National Security Adviser Peter Feaver testified Tuesday. Feaver, who served as a security adviser under President George W. Bush, appeared before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee that was holding a hearing on the Presidential “Authority to Order the Use of Nuclear Weapons.” Other panelists included retired Air Force Gen. C. Robert… read more about Peter Feaver testifies before Senate Foreign Relations Committee »
One of the many insights senior Chinmay Pandit has learned this fall is this: “philosophers are not infallible or consistent.” “Revolutionary thinkers have contributed in meaningful ways to the creation of democracies but have simultaneously justified perverse, backwards ideals in their other arguments,” says Pandit, a double major in economics and political science. That’s just the sort of critical thinking new political science professor Genevieve Rousseliere hopes to instill in her students. In her native… read more about Highlighting Genevieve Rousseliere, our new faculty »
From Duke Today War, drug lords and gangsters were decades-old realities in Ana Montoya’s native Colombia. But the violence wasn’t as common in Bogota, the capital city where she lived. Then came May 15, 2012. A bomb ripped through an SUV one block from Montoya as she walked to the private university where she taught political science. Montoya was not injured, but the blast killed two people and injured dozens. “I run to class, and try to calm down my students,” she recalls. “It was a traumatic experience. Even if we were… read more about Through DevLab@Duke, Students Improve Human Condition Worldwide »
Aydin, Umut and Tim Büthe. "Competition Law and Policy in Developing Countries: Explaining Variations in Outcomes; Exploring Possibilities and Limits." Law and Contemporary Problems. We have reasoned that competition regulators often need to challenge not only the anti-competitive practices of private-sector elites, but also the anticompetitive practices of state-owned enterprises and unnecessarily competitionrestricting laws and regulations. This reasoning arguably applies particularly strongly in developing… read more about October 2017 Duke Political Science Publications »
More than three dozen women have now alleged that Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted them. It’s been little more than a week since the New York Times and The New Yorker broke the story, and Weinstein’s world has collapsed, with new allegations continuing to pile up. He’s lost his company and his wife. He’s been stripped of his credits on TV shows and movies and expelled from the Oscar-granting Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences -- only the second person ever to suffer that… read more about Why Weinstein Held On For So Long and Fell So Fast - Bloomberg View interviews Timur Kuran »
Catalan separatists push for independence from Spain’s central government has been brewing for years and likely won’t be resolved any time soon, says a Duke professor. “What we see here is a saturation effect,” said Pablo Beramendi, associate professor of political science, during a discussion Wednesday on Catalonia's independence referendum and the implications for Spain and the European Union. Continue reading here read more about Examining Catalonia's Push for Independence from Spain - Pablo Beramendi presents at Forum for Scholars and Publics »
Trump’s fundamental fitness for office, regardless of his views on the political issues of the day, has been questioned since he first sought the presidency, and not just by Democrats. Locally, Duke political science professor Peter Feaver, in the mid-2000s a national security aide to former President George W. Bush, signed a statement last year that labeled Trump “a distinct threat to civil liberty in the United States.” Feaver at the time said that danger came from the possibility of putting “the power of the presidency… read more about Is President Trump mentally unfit? - Peter Feaver interviewed in The News & Observer »
Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and politics at Duke University, argued that the real danger we face isn’t that we no longer trust the government but that we no longer trust each other. Kuran calls it the problem of “intolerant communities,” and he says there are two such communities in America today: “identitarian” activists concerned with issues like racial/gender equality, and the “nativist” coalition, people suspicious of immigration and cultural change. Each of these communities defines itself in terms of its… read more about America's top political scientists gathered to discuss our democracy. - Timur Kuran on Vox »
Ashley Jardina's research on white identity politics continues to be a touchstone for contemporary thinking about race relations. In The New York Times, she is quoted as saying, "It’s clear that the Democrats have lost many whites because of whites’ attitudes about race. We can see that over time, whites’ racial attitudes have become increasingly linked to their party identity, with more racially conservative whites identifying more with the Republican Party." Continue reading The New York Times In The Washington Post… read more about Ashley Jardina quoted in The New York Times and The Washington Post »
A showdown looms between Spanish authorities and the prosperous northeastern region of Catalonia over a planned October 1 referendum on independence. While some residents of the linguistically and culturally distinctive region have long pushed for secession, the current impasse has its roots in 2010, when a constitutional court overturned an agreement granting the region a degree of autonomy while the central government imposed austerity measures amid economic crisis, says Pablo Beramendi, a political scientist at Duke… read more about Can Catalonia split with Spain? - Pablo Beramendi interviewed for the Council on Foreign Relations »
For those looking to Germany for stability in transatlantic relations and world politics, there is good news and bad news in this Sunday’s elections. In Germany’s parliamentary democracy, voters elect a new parliament, which in turn elects the chancellor. Angela Merkel, Germany’s stoic head of government since 2005, is practically certain to remain chancellor. Against this appearance of stability, however, the election will likely lead to greater domestic political conflict and uncertainty, which in turn will complicate… read more about Beneath the stability of Merkel, the right and left roil Germany - Tim Büthe writes for The News & Observer »
"Infuriated by President Donald Trump’s election victory and energized by the possibility of an anti-Republican wave in 2018, Democratic candidates are lining up for challenges all over the country, including in North Carolina’s Research Triangle." “It’s not a district where you would think the Democrats have a good chance in. It could be the kind of disastrous year where those kinds of districts become vulnerable,” said David Rohde, a political science professor at Duke University. "Rohde said challengers need not outraise… read more about Democrats lining up to run against Republican congressman in Raleigh suburbs - David Rohde interviewed for McClatchy newspapers »
“The AKP is doing massive long-term damage to the Turkish economy. Corruption is up, the quality of education has fallen, the courts are massively politicized and people are afraid to speak honestly. This package is a recipe for slow growth at best. If the economy is continuing to grow — albeit slowly — one reason is that sky-high interest rates are drawing in short-term investments. This is not a sustainable strategy. It makes Turkey highly vulnerable to a shock that might cause an outflow of resources. Another factor that… read more about What's behind Turkish economic miracle? - Timur Kuran interviewed in Al-Monitor »
David Rohde, a political scientist now in his 50th year of teaching the subject, taught “Congress and President” from the time he arrived at Duke in 2005 until 2015. “I teach about American Politics from a theoretical point of view, so that approach is resilient enough to deal with the myriad variations we have encountered over my career,” Rohde says. “In particular, I recognize that political actors have a wide range of motives and perceptions that shape their choices. Trump is, however, certainly the most unusual actor I… read more about Teaching Trump-Era Politics in the Classroom - interviews with David Rohde and Michelle Whyman »
"The War on the Rocks podcast is back with a big episode and an all-star cast. Hal Brands and Alex Bick of SAIS, Will Inboden of the Clements Center at the University of Texas, Kori Schake of the Hoover Institution, Colin Kahl of Georgetown, and Peter Feaver of Duke dish about the U..S. National Security Strategy, a report required by Congress meant to basically lay out how the president views America’s role in the world and how he plans to exercise power." read more about So, Does The National Security Strategy Matter? Podcast with Peter Feaver »
The central rhetorical strategy of Professor MacLean’s book is the insinuation that Buchanan (and others working in the public choice tradition) were motivated by racial animus, and a desire to maintain the dominant position of a privileged, white, male elite. According to MacLean, this led them to develop a particular approach to thinking about politics, and to advocate for institutional and constitutional rules that, according to Professor MacLean, institutionalize (among other ills) racist practices. Buchanan’s letters… read more about Democracy in Chains and Buchanan on school integration - Georg Vanberg writes for The Volokh Conspiracy »
“Making Young Voters: Policy Reforms to Increase Youth Turnout” $326,233 from Political Science Program, National Science Foundation, Sunshine Hillygus PI, John Holbein Co-PI, Matthew Lenard Co-PI Voter turnout among young people is dismally low in the United States—often 20-30 percentage points lower than that of older Americans. This project evaluates potential education and electoral policies to increase youth turnout. Bridging research in political science, education, and human development, we contend that… read more about Sunshine Hillygus awarded two large National Science Foundation grants »