Constitutions are supposed to provide an enduring structure for politics. Yet only half live more than nineteen years. Why is it that some constitutions endure while others do not? In The Endurance of National Constitutions, Zachary Elkins, Tom Ginsburg, and James Melton examine the causes of…
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Definitions of Destabilizing Events in SPEED
This document is designed to provide operators of the EXTRACT suite of programs with an accessible guide to the definition and meaning of events intended to be captured in the Societal Stability Protocol (SSP) with the Social, Political and Economic Event Database (SPEED) project. It is a…
Do "We" Have a Stake in This War? A Worldwide Test of the In-Group Out-Group Hypothesis Using Open-Source Intelligence
This paper was presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association on March 16-19. It discusses how international relations scholars have long suspected that popular support for war is structured in part by in-group reactions to out-group threats. Huntington’…
The Coup D'Etat Project (CDP)
Coup d'états are important events in the life of a country. They constitute an important subset of irregular transfers of political power that can have important and enduring consequences for a country’s well-being. This notwithstanding, a comprehensive and well-documented inventory of coups has…
Fault Lines: Why the Republicans Lost Congress (Controversies in Electoral Democracy and Representation)
In some years elections bring about enduring changes to the American political scene. In 2006, a pivotal election year, the Republicans suffered a resounding defeat, losing the House and Senate for the first time since the 1994 "Republican Revolution." But what caused this pivotal shift? …
Gauging Civil Unrest with SPEED Data: The Societal Stability Protocol and the Intensity of Civil Unrest
Destabilizing events - whether they are political expression events, politically motivated attacks, disruptive state acts, or some other manifestation of discontent - can vary enormously in their intensity. It is important to capture differences in intensity because they can affect the impact of…
Measuring Cross-National and Inter-Temporal Differences in Law-Based Orders: 1946-2010
While scholars have grappled with the conceptual ambiguities surrounding the concept of “the rule of law” for well over a century, there has been a renewed interest in this concept in the last two decades. This revival is due in large part to widespread agreement that law based order plays a…