The strikes on Iran are blatantly illegal. I explained in June why the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities were unlawful under US and international law. Everything I wrote then is true today, but this is a far larger assault with far graver consequences.
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/o...
And, they also risk the problematic assumption that the strategic or instrumental considerations like "mil capacity" or "threat perception" are independent of identity. I show they are NOT. They are biased by race (see also Búzás 2013).
Leaving aside important questions about the current lack of Congressional declaration of war, it's worth noting that public opinion continues to be biased by identity. Studies of conflict and war that omit such considerations risk serious #omittedvariablebias.
Link: rikioinouye.org/research
Using multiple survey experiments, respondents impose significant penalties when Asian or Arab countries are invaded, relative to White (and even Black majority countries). These differences persist even when holding constant regime type and strategic context.
As the US and #Israel engage in #OperationEpicFury at strike #Iran, I'm mindful of how race and religion may shape public support.
My JMP shows (all else equal), sharp penalties in support for Asian and Arab countries being invaded, compared to White and Black.
(link below)
Having military officers in these programs dramatically changes, and improves the understanding between the ivory tower and enlisted service members. tragic to see this
Neat working paper by Bischof et al. that's apparently now conditionally accepted at JOP.
TLDR: Social Desireability bias is less of a concern for online survey research than previously thought.
osf.io/preprints/os...
6/ Future Questions :
If rivalry can produce “inadvertent cooperation” (à la Danny Quah), when does competition generate public goods?
How do middle powers navigate and extract gains?
How sensitive are protect/peel/pressure/preserve strats to leader change and regime type?
5/ Key takeaways:
Global crises are important arenas for great power competition.
Foreign aid can be humanitarian, strategic, or both. My typology helps better characterize how, and can be applied beyond the realm of vax or health diplomacy.
4/ The US distribution strategy leans heavily toward:
• Protecting high-need countries
• Peeling countries away from rivals
China’s distribution shows a mix of:
• Preserving existing relationships
• Pressuring (no vax to Taiwan allies)
3/ I analyze US and Chinese vaccine distribution (2021–2022) using:
📊 Cross-national regression
🧠 Bayesian reasoning
🎙️ Original elite interviews
📚 Two in-depth case studies (Paraguay & Nicaragua)
2/ I develop a new typology of aid distribution amidst provider competition:
• Preserve – reward existing partners
• Pressure – punish or coerce those pursuing disfavored policies
• Protect – allocate based on health need
• Peel – pull states away from rivals
1/ The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the importance of health diplomacy during great power rivalry.
Given constraints and competing interest, how did the US (under Biden) and China allocate life-saving vaccines?
Finally out in @isq-jrnl.bsky.social!
“Preserve, Pressure, Protect, and Peel: The US–China Rivalry and the Politics of Vaccine Provision”
How do great powers decide who gets life-saving aid? Preserve friends? Pressure others? Protect health? Peel fence-sitters?
academic.oup.com/isq/article/...
Stephen Colbert SLAMS CBS for not letting James Talarico on Late Night
I'm teaching a few survey research courses live and online.
First, a free one hour seminar. Feb 20
instats.org/seminar/surv...
Then a set of two (half) day courses. Not free (sorry!).
-Intro Surveys (Feb 26-27):
instats.org/seminar/intr...
-Advanced Surveys (March 5-6):
instats.org/seminar/adva...
NEW: The Trump administration has dropped its appeal of a federal court order blocking its $1.2-billion settlement demand to UCLA over alleged campus civil rights violations: www.latimes.com/california/s...
Two things can be true: we’re a competitive authoritarian state with all sorts of efforts to put a thumb on the scale of who has power AND we have sufficiently free and sufficiently fair elections that every month we see the party in power lose.
2nd Round R&R ➡️ Conditional Acceptance 🥳
Got a fellowship rejection and an interview invite for a different fellowship within minutes of each other.
The job market really said: stay humble, stay hopeful, stay glued to your inbox.
Job market season is such a rollar coaster. Got a game-changing R&R!
One more piece of evidence that the defining problem of an AI world is not “how do we harness the genius machine?”, it is “how do we contain the lying machine?”
Thank you @yusakuhoriuchi.bsky.social and @kmatush.bsky.social for an amazing Global Public Opinion workshop! Great scholars and conversations ! Wonderful to see @jkertzer.bsky.social @jonathan-renshon.bsky.social @eunajo.bsky.social too!
Congratulations to @yusakuhoriuchi.bsky.social and @kmatush.bsky.social for the launch of the Global Public Opinion Lab (GPOL) at Florida State! Lots of exciting plans in the works!
(I couldn't take any pictures of public opinion, so here's one of Spanish moss)
Presenting this afternoon Peace Science - last panel of the day 😊 With @yusakuhoriuchi.bsky.social , @kmatush.bsky.social , and Eun A Jo!
New version just uploaded 😊
🧠 Big takeaway: Democratic decline doesn’t just undermine norms at home — it erodes the public foundations of alliance cooperation abroad.
Trust and shared values aren’t abstractions; they’re the glue of intelligence networks and security ties.
📄 Full working paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
🇺🇸🇬🇧🇨🇦🇦🇺🇳🇿 The effect is consistent and sizable: when a partner democracy is portrayed as backsliding, public willingness to share intelligence drops markedly — even when that partner is the US itself.
Democratic erosion travels. So do its security costs.
🧩 Test: Pre-reg experiments (N ≈ 6,000) across the UK, Canada, Australia & New Zealand — the US’s core intelligence partners.
Respondents evaluated intelligence-sharing with another democracy, randomly described as either stable or backsliding.
Result? Backsliding ↓ support across every country.
Democracy isn’t just a value—it’s national security.
New WP with @yusakuhoriuchi.bsky.social @kmatush.bsky.social & @eunajo.bsky.social finds that across 4 close US partners (UK, Canada, Australia, NZ), backsliding sharply reduces public support for intelligence sharing—even with the US.
