Teaching students how to write well is a task that I am confronted with on a regular basis and for which I am hopelessly ill equipped. I have no training in the subject. I am not a native English speaker. I did not even attend high school or college in an English speaking country (at least not before […]
Erik Voeten
Erik Voeten is the Peter F. Krogh associate professor of geopolitics and global justice at Georgetown University.
Posted inPolitics
Legalized Prostitution Increases Human Trafficking
One of the advertised advantages of legalizing prostitution is that it should reduce illegal human trafficking. The theory is that customers will favor legal over trafficked prostitutes, thus reducing demand for the latter. Yet, legalization may also raise overall demand for prostitution. This increase in the size of the market may lead to more trafficking […]
Posted inPolitics
IQ and the Nativist Movement
We welcome Diego von Vacano for a guest post on the purported low IQ of immigrants. ********************************************************** The academic and policy worlds have been roiled by last week’s announcement that a Heritage Foundation study on the cost of immigration reform was co-authored by Jason Richwine, who wrote a dissertation on the purported low IQ of […]
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Does Fossil Fuel Abundance Have Negative Political Consequences?
Charles Mann has an interesting article in the Atlantic about the potential deleterious consequences of finding large quantities of natural gas (methane hydrate) underneath the seafloor. We may believe that fossil fuel scarcity is a major source for political instability. Yet, it is not at all clear that finding large new quantities of fossil fuels […]
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How China Gives Development Aid
China is often accused of using aid strategically to advance its own interests with little regard for the welfare of the developing countries in which it is investing. Axel Dreher and Andreas Fuchs have pointed out that all countries use aid to advance their strategic interests and that the pattern of aid giving from China does not look all […]
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Victor Cha on the Colbert Report on North Korea
My colleague Victor Cha was on the Colbert Report talking about North Korea. Take a look: The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,Video Archive [Cross-posted at The Monkey Cage]
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Can Politicians Make a Comeback from Sex Scandals?
Mark Sanford is running for Congress. David Petraeus may consider a run for President. In both cases there are major question marks about whether the American public may forgive them for their somewhat scandalous affairs. A new working paper by David Doherty, Conor Dowling, andMichael Miller suggests that the passage of time may help. They […]
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Will International Examples Influence the Gay Marriage Decision?
The U.S. Supreme Court somewhat controversially cited foreign (non-British) case law in Texas v. Lawrence (2003, a gay rights case) and Roper v. Simmons (2005). This led to a backlash and the Court has studiously avoided citations to foreign and international courts in more recent decisions. This hasn’t stopped amici from filing briefs both pro and con gay marriage rights […]
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Does Congress Have a Conservative Bias on Gay Rights Issues?
Justice Scalia argued in his dissent in Romer that: This Court has no business imposing upon all Americans the resolution favored by the elite class from which the Members of this institution are selected This fits a more broadly held perception that laws are more progressive on LGBT rights than voters would like them to […]
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How Do You Know If Someone is Gay?
As the U.S. Supreme Court is getting ready to consider gay marriage, the European Court of Justice (ECJ, the European Union’s highest court) is asked a very different question pertaining to gay rights: how do you determine whether someone is homosexual? The case is referred to the ECJ(in Dutch) by the Dutch highest court. The issue […]
