The Quantitative Peace

Tom Coburn's Grudge, Part II

Via Jennifer Diascro's Twitter feed: The Economist has an article up addressing the specific targeting of Political Science Research by Senator Coburn. The article addresses a point that I've brought up a couple of times in the past (see here for example). Specifically, why only political science?

The Economist:

The real debate seems to be over what is of value. For many Republicans the answer is nothing having to do with political science. Yet it is hard to see how that discipline is any more frivolous than—or even all that different from—economics, sociology or anthropology.Mr Coburn's measure wouldn’t touch NSF funding for other social sciences. But this is the fourth time since 2006 a Republican has singled out political science for cuts.

If we look closer at those efforts, the picture becomes a bit clearer. Mr Coburn, for example, has particularly objected to studies on American attitudes to the filibuster, at a time when Republicans are using the filibuster routinely. Mr Flake had likewise complained about research on climate-change negotiations. When Mr Coburn first proposed cutting off funding in 2009, he complained that NSF money had gone to fund The Human Rights Data Project, which, he noted, had “concluded that the United States has been ‘increasingly willing to torture enemy combatants and imprison suspected terrorists,’ leading to a worldwide increase in ‘human rights violations’ as others followed-suit.” Mr Coburn even groused that Paul Krugman had received NSF grants more than 15 years earlier. Presumably that was because Mr Krugman went on to become a liberal columnist and not because the research won him a Nobel prize.

In all of these cases, the research risked calling into question the wisdom of policies supported by the Republican Party. In none of the cases did Republicans argue that the studies were flawed. They appeared to simply object to financing research that might contradict their point of view.

I would add that my impression is that political science research is probably the one field that is most likely to draw upon and combine insights from all of these other fields. Perhaps I'm mischaracterizing the work of scholars from these other disciplines, but if this view is accurate then it further hurts the credibility of Coburn's claims to be going after wasteful spending. If the idea is to get as much bang for our buck as taxpayers, political science seems like exactly the right field to invest in. But does this matter? Probably not. Most people just don't know or care enough about this to really see the problem, and for these people Coburn's credibility is really a non-issue, so he can still claim to be simply fighting the good fight against bloated government budgets. 

Finally, I'd urge all of my Americanist and comparativist colleagues to start building up the national security implications of their work. After all, we must remain ever vigilant to safeguard our democratic institutions from infiltration by the communist scourge. Maybe ANES can just add a question asking "Are you a communist spy?" or "Are you a terrorist?" and Coburn will be satisfied. 

Tom Coburn's Grudge

So I'm a little late getting to this, but Tom Coburn is at it again—more successfully this time, it appears. The short version is that Coburn was able to get an amendment through that prohibits the National Science Foundation from funding political science research, with the exception of research that "promotes the national security or economic interests of the United States." I just have a couple of thoughts:

1. Whose economic interests are we talking about, Tom? I mean thank god government contributes such a negligible portion of Oklahoma's economy (See page 13). Sure this is a petty point, but it does speak to an important issue that political scientists have spent some time working on. What is "good" in terms of the economy—and security for that matter—is often defined in very different ways by different groups across society. So perhaps the Senator would be so kind as to clarify who will be the ultimate arbiter on that issue in the case of political science funding.  
2. Why political science again? This is not the first time we've seen this show, yet I remain unclear as to why political science specifically is being targeted. Unless I've missed something, there is no comparable amendment to eliminate funding for economics or sociological research. If this were genuinely about cutting "unnecessary" spending, I'd have to imagine that with just a little more effort on Coburn's part, he could be extend his watchful anti-waste gaze to other fields too.  Maybe I just missed this though...

Again, I've benefited personally from NSF funding (though not any longer) Though I do think the particular project I worked on was important, I realize that's not a satisfactory defense for a lot of people. But I'm not entirely sure that such a defense is required. The NSF's purpose is to advance our collective knowledge and understanding of a whole range of subjects—even if we as individuals may not understand the specific research that is being conducted at any given time in any given field, or see its immediate practical applications for that matter. And they're not just giving this money out, either. I applied for a dissertation improvement grant a couple of years ago. I spent a lot of time working on what I believe was a fairly thorough and well thought out proposal, and I was ultimately rejected. This is a highly competitive process, and the NSF isn't just handing out cash to people that put their hands out and ask for it. 

Chuck Hagel and Bipartisanship in Foreign Policy

The news surrounding Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel and John Brennan as Secretary of Defense and Director of the CIA (respectively) has primarily been focused on the "controversial" Hagel's previous statements and positions. Republican commentators have been complaining about Hagel's nomination, claiming that his nomination sends a powerful signal that the Obama administration is putting more "daylight" between the US and Israel, among other things. Steve Clemmons at The Atlantic has also reviewed several arguments for and against Hagel's nomination. The turf on that subject has already been covered pretty thoroughly, so I'll leave the issue be for now. What has received less attention, however, is that Hagel's nomination represents a continuation of a fairly long history of Democrats appointing Republicans to positions within the foreign policy bureaucracy. 

In 1940 FDR appointed Henry Stimson and Frank Knox—both Republicans—to be his Secretary of War and Secretary of the Navy (again, respectively). Stimson's appointment in particular is generally regarded as marking the onset of the bipartisan consensus that characterized the early Cold War period. Having previously served as Secretary of State under President Hoover and Secretary of War under Taft, Stimson was already a widely recognized figure in the foreign policymaking community (such as it was back then). Along with Stimson came John McCloy and Robert Lovett, both of whom were also Republicans and both of whom served as Stimson's assistants in the War Department.

By bringing these Republicans into his administration, Roosevelt was attempting to build support among opposition Republicans for increasing US activism in World War II. Primarily this encompassed moderate internationalist Republicans from the Northeast. Even prior to his nomination, Stimson and his mentor, Elihu Root, himself previously a Secretary of War and Secretary of State, had petitioned Congressional leadership to introduce some form of draft bill to prepare the US for involvement in the growing conflicts in Europe and East Asia. Stimson and Root had both been devout internationalists in the years leading up to the Second World War, and their appointment marked what many historians have labeled as the beginning of the "Eastern Establishment" in foreign policymaking. The Establishment narrative, broadly speaking, tends to emphasize bipartisanship in the foreign policy bureaucracy specifically, but it also encompasses themes of elite influence, economic interests, and political polarization in foreign policymaking.

This general narrative has been present for several decades in the US foreign policy literature, but it's largely been isolated to the qualitative political science and historical literatures. Quantitative political science research has delved into the more narrow issue of bipartisanship, but these studies have tended to focus on Congress. Accordingly, the central focus of this large body of work has gone unexamined in a systematic sense, and part of my dissertation research has attempted to address this gap. This is really all a long-winded way of saying that the Hagel nomination provides me with a timely opportunity to briefly share some of my work on the subject. Though I don't want to give away the farm here, this seems like a fine time to chime in. 

Despite the recognition that the foreign policy bureaucracy—indeed, the bureaucracy more broadly—plays a fairly prominent role in the policymaking process, we don't really have much in the way of systematic quantitative research on the subject. I've tried to get at some of these issues in my dissertation by collecting some new data on appointees to foreign policymaking positions within the foreign policy bureaucracy. I primarily focus on the State Department and the Defense Department, but I also focus on some other agencies like the CIA. In total, I've collected data on some 1,000+ individuals serving in these posts from 1948 through the present. One of the primary characteristics that I coded for each individual was what, if any, party affiliation that individual had. As a way to get at trends in bipartisanship within the foreign policy bureaucracy, the graph below shows the percentage of appointments included in the data set that are bipartisan in nature.* 

Some interesting points: Perhaps not surprisingly, the Truman administration represents an all-time high in the data. This is partially a function of the fact that Truman inherited many of FDR's appointments, but it's also partially due to the fact that the foreign policy bureaucracy was undergoing some pretty radical changes during this time period. In particular, the size of these agencies grew dramatically during the World War II period. Coding rules are also partially responsible, as I focused on individuals occupying positions at the assistant secretary level and up (where appropriate). By the early to mid-1950s, however, the rate of growth slows a bit and, while still increasing in size, it does so more slowly than in the first few years of the Cold War. The crash at the beginning of the Eisenhower administration might reflect some of the antics of Joseph McCarthy and Secretary Dulles, both of whom were more than a little keen to go after anyone remotely suspected of being communists. It could also be a function of the Republicans having been out of power for about two decades. Also of note, the late 1970s do see a slight slump in the level of bipartisanship, which is potentially in line with arguments concerning the impact of Vietnam on bipartisanship more generally. The Clinton administration sees a fairly sharp spike near the end, and the Bush administration also sees a dip in its later years, while the incoming Obama administration sees a slight increase.

More broadly, the work that I've done so far suggests a few general trends. First, I find some evidence that, all else equal, Democrats tend to be more likely than Republicans to make bipartisan appointments to the foreign policy bureaucracy—Even controlling for the Truman administration. Other models suggest this difference is more acute in the early Cold War period (again, also while controlling for Truman). Additionally, I also find some evidence to support the conventional wisdom concerning the use of bipartisan appointments as a means of building moderate coalitions and as a response to domestic political conditions. In particular Congressional support matters, but is perhaps a little more nuanced than the historical accounts often suggest, as the availability of moderates in Congress also seems to condition this relationship. It also appears as though Presidents make these appointments with an eye towards governing more broadly, as the composition of the Senate alone appears to have little impact.

So what? Well, with respect to current news my work would suggest that Obama's retention of Bob Gates and his appointment of Chuck Hagel are actually very much in line with broader trends in Democratic foreign policy appointments since World War II. Robert Lovett—formerly Stimson's assistant at the War Department—went on to serve as Truman's Secretary of Defense. Kennedy subsequently offered Lovett his choice of State, Defense, and Treasury. Though Lovett turned him down, Kennedy did end up appointing Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy—both Republicans—to important posts. While there are certainly other lesser-known bipartisan appointees, these folks are some of the more prominent. Furthermore, these trends emerged well before the Republicans had fully taken on the identity of the party of national security. Still, even in the early Cold War period the Republicans did attack Democrats for being soft on Communism, so this vulnerability was present in some incarnation. Accordingly, Democratic administrations perhaps had more to gain from trying to draw in Republicans than vice versa, as such appointments could confer some measure of credibility. 

Moving forward it will be interesting to see how these trends continue to develop. Despite the much publicized opposition to Hagel's appointment it is entirely possible that this is just media hype and Republican chest-thumping. David Karol at the Monkey Cage recently wrote about the House Republicans' position-taking when voting on the recent Fiscal Cliff deal. So it's easy to imagine that the Republican outcry over Hagel's nomination is really going to wither when it comes time for the Senate to vote. Though these situations are not completely comparable, giving Obama a hard time seems to be a means of gaining currency in the Republican Party these days. Beyond the current confirmation battle, much of this will depend on how the current debate over the GOP's foreign policy positions pans out (see Drezner's latest Foreign Affairs piece, for example). If the Democrats manage to become the party of national security moving forward, perhaps we might see a reversal of these trends. Given the current Republican field, however, I wouldn't hold my breath.**

 * Given that none of this work/data is published (yet?) please don't cite this post or data. I'm still very much hoping to update and improve this material as I go. I guess this is kind of the norm, right?

** In the off chance that anyone comments, please be aware that I have had trouble leaving comments in the recent past. On the rare occasion that we do get feedback, I feel rude not replying, so apologies in advance if this should happen.

Quick Plug on New Pubs (Shameless partial self-promotion edition)

A bit of shameless self-promotion before the holidays. The kind folks at International Studies Quarterly have put a new article by Colin Barry, Chad Clay, and myself up on early view. The link to the article, entitled "Avoiding the Spotlight: Human Rights Shaming and Foreign Direct Investment", is here, and here's the abstract:

Nonstate actors, such as international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and multinational corporations (MNCs), have attained an increasingly prominent role in modern world affairs. While previous research has focused on these actors’ respective interactions with states, little attention has been paid to their interactions with each other. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the decisions of private actors seeking to invest abroad are affected by the reputational costs of doing business in countries publicly targeted by human rights activists. We find that ‘‘naming and shaming’’ by human rights INGOs tends to reduce the amount of foreign direct investment received by developing states, providing evidence that INGO activities affect the behavior of MNCs. An additional implication of our findings is that shaming by INGOs can impose real costs on targeted states in the form of lost investment.

We have a few projects along these lines that link our respective core research agendas in various ways, so (editorial and reviewer gods willing) be on the lookout for more in the future. 

Happy holidays to all!

 

Change & Stability in Physical Integrity Rights Abuse

Over at Political Violence @ a Glance, Reed Wood makes a strong argument that global respect for human rights, measured via the global mean of the Political Terror Scale, has not increased over time.  Amanda Murdie goes on to demonstrate that the same stability over time is present in the Physical Integrity Rights Index from the CIRI Human Rights Data Project, which I co-direct with David Cingranelli and David Richards.  I agree whole-heartedly with Amanda's and Reed's assessments.  Like them, I see little reason to believe that large improvements in global human rights practices have taken place over the last 30 years, particularly with regard to government respect for physical integrity rights, as shown in this recreation of Amanda's graph of the mean CIRI Physical Integrity Rights Index score from 1981-2010:

However, while global respect for physical integrity rights has remained fairly stable over time, looking at the aggregate data in this way causes one to miss potentially interesting changes that have occurred in the particular strategies of repression chosen by governments.  The following graph disaggregates the CIRI Physical Integrity Rights Index's four components, i.e. government respect for the individual rights to be free from disappearance, extrajudicial killing, political imprisonment, and torture:

As you can see, while there has been little change in the mean level of respect for physical integrity rights as a whole, interesting changes have occurred in the mean level of respect for the individual physical integrity rights measured by the CIRI Project.  In particular, it appears that, over time, torture has become more common while political imprisonment has occurred less. As I have mentioned before, I suspect that these changes may be partially attributed to the efforts of international non-governmental human rights organizations (HROs), such as Amnesty International, which started out as an organization primarily focused on securing the release of prisoners of conscience.  Overall, as information on human rights abuses has become more available, states may have begun to substitute a form of repression that is easy to conceal (torture) for one that is much harder to deny (political imprisonment).  Recent research from Jacqueline DeMeritt and Courtenay Conrad demonstrates that shaming by the UNHRC can lead individual states to substitute one repressive tactic for another. The overall growth in HROs and the publicity garnered by their activities over the course of the last thirty years may very well account for similar substitution at the global level, leading to aggregate changes in the average choice of repressive tactic.  Of course, a great deal more research must be done to determine if this is indeed the case.

Nevertheless, it appears that, while things haven't necessarily improved with regard to government respect for physical integrity rights over the past 30 years, some things have indeed changed.  Information about the causes and consequences of such changes may prove vital as we attempt to determine which particular strategies may truly serve to improve global respect for human rights, rather than simply altering the means by which they are violated.

Mapping Leadership Tenure

Confession time.  One of my favorite subreddits on reddit is r/mapporn; a subreddit dedicated to the most visually appealing maps from all historical periods and dealing with a variety of topics.  We, at QP, cannot get our fill of maps as we (especially Michael Flynn) have blogged about it a few times (see here, here, and here). Yesterday, this map of leadership tenure was posted from The Economist:

 

 

The cutoff date of 1945 seems like a controversial choice and the single image of the map did not come with clear coding rules as how to decisions were made.  Being familiar with the Archigos data project put together by Kristian Skrede Gleditsch and Giacomo Chiozza (paper here), I figured this was an easy task to replicate to see what a common political science data set says about leadership tenure (one that I have used in my own research).  To replicate this, I created 1/1/1945 as the cutoff point and any existing regime is assumed to start freshly on that date (an untenable assumption of course).  This left me with the number of days of leadership that I divided by 365.24 (Leap years could be off, so I averaged the year length).  Then, by averaging out the leadership tenure for this time period until 2004, created a range of values for each country.  In Stata, creating a choropleth map is not overly difficult using spmap package and two different guides found here and here. 

 

Post-1945 Replication:

 

 

The pastel color provides a bit more contrast and makes the missing data cases easily identifiable. Some of this may be due to a quick use of the kountry package an dmissing a few obvious lacking cases.  Additionally, the data in Archigos goes back to 1875, so replicating the map again using the full data set is possible and done here:

 

 

Expanding the data backwards introduces a bit more variation than just starting from 1945.  Naturally, with two wold wars included, leadership turnover may be expected to be shorter in some countries.  Of note, the US average jumps up a category. 

 

Update: By request, a few maps that are more colorblind friendly. Blue: 

 

Greyscale: 

 

Election Predictions 2012

Discussing the election is all but inevitable.  Given my proclivity for numbers, I gathered opinions from 11 willing "experts," including 5 political scientists, 3 bloggers from the QP, 8 PhDs, and members from other related field (Public Policy, Communication, and Planning). Nine of the members are from Boise State.  Of course, to reward those who did better, there were points assigned to each category and I will be able to declare a winner likely by tomorrow.

The Battleground States:

Pennyslvania: 11-0 in favor of the Democrats winning.
North Carolina:9-2 in favor of the Democrats winning.
New Hampshire: 10-1 in favor of the Democrats winning. 
Iowa: 8-3 in favor of the Democrats winning.
Colorado: 7-4 in favor of the Democrats winning.
Wisconsin: 10-1 in favor of the Democrats winning.
Nevada: 11-0 in favor of the Democrats winning.
Virginia: 9-2 in favor of the Democrats winning.
Florida: 8-3 in favor of the Republicans winning.
Ohio: 11-0 in favor of the Democrats winning.

The Popular Vote for the Winner:

Mean: 50.78
Range: 48.3 - 52.3

The Electoral College for the Winner:

Mean: 306.82
Range: 287-330

Senate Seats:

Massachusetts: 10-1 for the Democrat candidate.
Connecticut: 7-4 for the Democrat candidate.
Missouri: 11-0 for the Democratic candidate.
North Dakota: 10-1 for the Republican candidate.
Indiana:6-5 for the Republican candidate.
Wisconsin: 9-2 for the Democrat candidate.
Arizona: 11-0 for the Republican candidate.
Montana: 7-4 for the Republican candidate.
Nevada: 7-4 for the Republican candidate.
Virginia: 8-3 for the Democrat candidate.

Idaho Proposals (Keeping it local):
Proposition 1: 8-3 predict the measure will fail.
Proposition 2: 7-4 predict the measure will fail.
Proposition 3: 9-2 predict the measure will fail.
HJR 2: 9-2 predict the amendment will pass.
SJR 102: 9-2 predict the amendment will pass.

Seats held by the Democrats in the House

 Mean: 200.46
Range: 194-207 

 

 

Many of those who participated in the poll (from Boise State) are live blogging over at the Blue Review.

 

Quick Plug on New Pubs

Just some quick and dirty near-self-promotion. Michael Allen (Boise State) and Matthew DiGiuseppie (University of Mississippi)—both of whom are proud, card-carrying Binghamton PhDs—have a new piece on credit and alliance formation that is now available on International Studies Quarterly's early view. The link to the paper can be found here. Take a look.

Updates

Just a couple of links, comments, etc.

1. Six seismologists in Italy have recently been convicted and sentenced to six years in prison (each) for issuing a "falsely reassuring statement" prior to the 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy (BBC Article). The seismologists have been charged with manslaughter over the deaths of over 300 people in the quake, and have also been barred from holding public office ever again in the future. Yesterday's BBC Global News Podcast (Monday, October 22 AM) has some additional details on the situation behind this particular event—apparently there were a series of smaller quakes in the preceding month, but it sounds like such clusters of quakes are pretty common. Some commentators interviewed by the BBC have suggested that this could pave the way for politicians in Italy and other countries to impose new laws criminalizing what I can only label as "bad advice" from scientists, thereby making scientists less likely to offer advice to policymakers. I can't really speak to how likely I think this is, though my initial thought it "not very." Still, I would not have thought it very likely for six seismologists to be sentenced to prison terms under such circumstances in an advanced industrial democracy either. If such laws did become more prevalent, however, I guess I'd be more worried that one potential implication is that failure to come forward to begin with would suggest culpability as well. Damned if you do, damned if you don't?
2. Dan Nexon has recently announced a new blogging reception at ISA's 2013 meeting in San Francisco.  It looks as though nominations for the various award categories are open in the comments thread. Some great blogs already appear to be listed, like Phil Arena's and IPE@UNC. If you somehow read this blog, but not any of these others, you should probably go check them out.
3. The presidential foreign policy debate was last night, and though I don't have a lot to say at this point I do have a couple of brief thoughts. First, Romney definitely seemed more tentative last night than in either of the previous debates. As many others have noted, it seems like this is partially because there's just not a lot of daylight between Romney and Obama on many of these issues. This could also be the result of Obama simply having a greater edge on this subject area because of the job he's held for the past four years, combined with the fact that he's proved far less a lefty on foreign policy than many on the left would have liked, and many on the right had feared. Romney clearly tried to steer the conversation away from what I'll say was a more traditional discussion of security issues to the economy. That's fine, so long as he could have framed it in a clear and convincing way. It's hard to argue that economic policy is not intimately tied in with national security. However, I don't really think Romney did that effectively. His reference to Mike Mullen's earlier comments were helpful, but I think it's getting harder for the Republicans to argue that Obama has reduced our military to some impotent shadow of its former self. Obama's comment on bayonets and horses, while cute, does carry some truth.* Further, that Obama highlighted the fact that we spend more than the next ten top spenders combined on our military helped to further discredit the idea that our military is languishing. He could have increased that number quite a bit and only strengthened that position. In short, I think Romney was weaker here not just because Obama had an experiential advantage, but because even on national security the facts just don't play out as the Republicans would like. 

 

*I'm curious as to how much of this total is simply smaller support vessels that we just don't need anymore. The way to support and maintain ships is quite a bit different now than it was in the early 1900s. The elimination of battleships probably cuts down on this as well. The period Romney referenced is often identified with a significant buildup of increasingly large big-gun ships. 

 

 

"Kountry" Package for STATA

I may be late to the ball on this one, but in discussing a project that we're working on, fellow QP blogger Michael Allen recently pointed me to the "kountry" package for STATA. The package was created by Rafal Raciborski for the purposes of facilitating the creation of country codes and switching between codes provided by different sources (e.g. COW, IMF, etc.). The cite for the STATA Journal piece corresponding to the package is below:

 Raciborski, R. 2008. kountry: A Stata utility for merging cross-country data from
        multiple sources.  Stata Journal 8: 390-400

Anyone that has worked with country codes knows that this can be a pretty big pain. I've used it once so far, but it seems to work pretty well. Others may have been aware of this before now and might be aware of any bugs, problems, etc. If so, please add to the comments section any notes that you might want to make on the matter.

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On another note, I just wanted to reiterate the earlier message that posting will continue to be sparse for a while longer. While we would all very much like to be blogging more regularly—especially in light of the recent debates, and the final upcoming foreign policy debate—everyone is currently engaged with other professional responsibilities. I believe this will prove to be time is well-spent, though, as everyone seems to be keeping busy and is pretty productive.