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Election Reports and Political Science

- September 14, 2009

One of the goals of the Monkey Cage is to inject the opinions of political scientists into popular discourse about contemporary political events (see “our mission statement”:https://themonkeycage.org/2007/11/why_this_blog.html). With this in mind, we are going to try to add a new element to The Monkey Cage starting this fall: quick reports on global elections from the perspective of political scientists.

Here’s the motivation. Most of what most of us know originally know about elections tends to come from journalists. Political scientists are occasionally (or even often) quoted in articles, but usually we don’t enter the discussion on our own terms until months (or even years!) later when articles that include analysis of the election in question begin to appear, with the occasional Op Ed as the exception.

However, for most elections out there, there is some political scientist paying close attention to what is going on and/or some graduate student out in the field doing research. Our thought is to use the Monkey Cage to give this person a chance to share their thoughts more widely in the immediate aftermath of a given election. Individually, we may only really have a sense of what is going on in a few countries each, but collectively we probably have most of the globe pretty well covered. If successful, we can broaden what all of us know about particular elections immediately after they have occurred; in an ideal world, the Monkey Cage would simultaneously become a place where others can turn to find out what political scientists think about current elections, thus giving you a chance to disseminate your opinions more widely.

This would of course have to be done largely through guest blogs. I’ve already solicited a couple of these on an ad hoc basis in the past (e.g., following the “Moldovan”:https://themonkeycage.org/2009/07/moldovan_election_report_1.html and “Japanese”:https://themonkeycage.org/2009/09/implications_of_the_2009_japan_1.html election), but would like to try to make this a more systematized process in the future.

With that in mind, after the jump I’ve posted a list of elections coming up this fall. If you are interested in writing a guest blog (2-3 paragraphs, although could be longer if you prefer) for any of these elections, please email me directly at joshua_dot_tucker_at_nyu_dot_edu. The key would be to try to get the guest blog up with 24-48 hours after the election is over. I’d also be willing to post guest blogs before and after a given election, and there’s no reason we couldn’t have multiple guest blogs on a single election if there is interest.

For those of you who follow elections in your scholarly work, I’d love for you to try to include The Monkey Cage in post-election discussion, either by contributing a guest blog or by joining in the discussion here after elections. We would especially encourage comments relating your own research to contemporary electoral developments. And we are also happy to take suggestions on how this particular aspect of the blog could evolve in the future.

In the immediate future, does anyone want to write on either the Norwegian or Swiss elections this week? The “NY Times”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/world/europe/14iht-norway.html suggests that Norwegian elections tend not to exhibit typical economic voting patterns – does anyone have any research that could shed light on this question?

List of upcoming elections follows below…

14 September: Norway, Parliament
16 September: Switzerland, Federal Council
27 September: Germany, Parliament (we already have people committed to writing on this election)
27 September: Portugal, Parliament
27 September: Switzerland, Referendum
September: Madagascar, Constitutional referendum
September: Moldova, President (indirect)
2 October: Ireland, Treaty of Lisbon referendum
4 October: Greece, Parliament
9 October: Botswana, Parliament
11 October: Guinea, Parliament
20 October: Niger, Parliament
25 October: Tunisia, President and Parliament
25 October: Uruguay, President and Parliament
28 October: Mozambique, President and Parliament
6–7 November: Czech Republic, Parliament
14 November: Niger, President (1st Round)
22 November: Romania, President (1st Round)
29 November: Côte d’Ivoire, President
29 November: Honduras, President and Parliament
29 November: Switzerland, Referendum
November: Namibia, President and Parliament