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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Evaluating Militant Decision-Making With Information Science: The Irish Republican Movement During The "Troubles", Joshua C. Eastin, Emily Kalah Gade, Michael Gabbay Dec 2023

Evaluating Militant Decision-Making With Information Science: The Irish Republican Movement During The "Troubles", Joshua C. Eastin, Emily Kalah Gade, Michael Gabbay

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Why do militant groups decide to escalate or deescalate their use of violence in conflict? Examining the case of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, we analyze groups that adopt violence as a political strategy and evaluate factors that influence its application. To do so, we adopt a novel empirical approach to the study of militant groups. Drawn from information science, this approach enables estimation of variable influence and uncertainty within structured case studies, and is thus ideal for topics such as militant decision-making where systematic data collection is difficult.


Policy Implementation In Crisis: Lessons From The Philippines, Steven T. Zech, Joshua Eastin, Matteo Bonotti Jul 2023

Policy Implementation In Crisis: Lessons From The Philippines, Steven T. Zech, Joshua Eastin, Matteo Bonotti

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Like many countries, the Philippines faced severe economic, social, and political challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020 President Duterte issued an executive order announcing a national state of emergency that introduced a highly restrictive system for community quarantine and lockdown. While these measures led international observers to rank the Philippinesʼ pandemic response among the worldʼs most stringent, it is unclear whether subsequent health outcomes were sufficient to justify the severity. In this article, we evaluate discrepancies between COVID-19 policy goals and outcomes in the Philippines via a compelling but under-utilized method of democratic deliberation, the ‘mini-public’. The mini-public …


Madame Justice Will Save Our Democracy: Gender Bias And Perceptions Of The High Court In Transitional Regimes, Christopher Shortell, Melody E. Valdini May 2023

Madame Justice Will Save Our Democracy: Gender Bias And Perceptions Of The High Court In Transitional Regimes, Christopher Shortell, Melody E. Valdini

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

While existing literature has established that women leaders are stereotyped as more likely to uphold the norms of democracy, the power of this effect in the non-democratic context is not established. We address this gap and argue that the context of regime transition cultivates a unique dynamic in which the stereotypes associated with women justices become especially valuable to both citizens and the state. However, we argue that this perception of women contributing to the health of democracy is not constant across all citizens equally; instead, those people with high levels of hostile bias against women are more likely to …


The China Balloon Incident: The Drama Within The Drama, Mel Gurtov Feb 2023

The China Balloon Incident: The Drama Within The Drama, Mel Gurtov

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The recent China Balloon Incident has all the appearance of high drama, though the heat is mainly provided by domestic politics rather than a strategic face-off of the U-2 or Cuba Missile Crisis variety. This is a drama in three acts. In Act 1, “Discovery”, the Biden administration went into action mode on finding that a Chinese “spy” balloon had crossed the US. An air force jet shot the balloon down, displaying Cold War-style toughness with China. In Act 2, “Evaluation”, new facts emerged that shed further light on the episode. Act 3, “Blaming”, involves mutual recriminations that obscure the …