social science

The real usefulness of social science in times of crisis.

Economic growth and democracy Marshall, Monty G, Keith Jaggers, and Ted Robert Gurr. 2011. Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2010. Center for Systemic Peace. Bolt, J. 2013. “The First Update of the Maddison Project; Re-Estimating Growth Before 1820.” Maddison Project Working Paper 4. http://www.ggdc.net/maddison.

Resisting the conventional wisdom that propaganda is mostly associated with authoritarian governments, these slides sketch how the liberal, capitalist government of the United States at the time of World War I exploited the concept of “Democracy” in what would become perhaps the most remarkable propaganda achievement in modern history. Includes photos, videos, historical data from Google Books, and a discussion of some recent research suprisingly consistent with this argument.

Critical theory is often perceived as anti-scientific but the Frankfurt School theorists advanced many hypotheses amenable to empirical testing.

Early theorists in modern political science had high hopes for using new survey techniques to analyze the individual-level psychological and behavorial processes which constitute modern liberal democracy. Berelson (1952), for instance, noted that democratic theory assumes that citizens meet certain requirements related to tolerance, patience, interest, knowledge, and the will to participate. See also the famous book Voting (Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee 1954). But early research in political behavior was bleak.

Code and instructions to analyze the Eurobarometer using R.

This document demonstrates how to perform several routine tasks in the analysis of state-level economic and political data for multiple countries over time, using the programming language R.