Erik Voeten

The kerfuffle over the removal and then reintroduction  in the Democratic platform of a reference to Jerusalem as the rightful capital of Israelis seems like a perfect example of how foreign policy sometimes does stop at the water’s edge. Both party platforms endorse Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s capital. Large bipartisan majorities in both the House and […]

One presumed cause for the near absence of foreign policy issues at last week’s Republican Convention is that the party is just too divided internally. As Brian Katulis put it in the New York Times: Today’s Republicans are as divided on foreign policy as they’ve ever been, and Mr. Romney is finding it hard to […]

(click for a clearer view) Political scientist Andrea Campbell in Foreign Affairs (ungated): In proposing all these options, from reducing spending to raising revenue, policymakers are confronting the reality of U.S. fiscal policy: compared with its counterparts among the advanced nations, the United States’ tax system collects little revenue, poorly redistributes that money across the […]

A new paper from Lawrence Broz uses formerly disclosed information to show that the Fed’s global lending patterns fit the interests of global U.S. banks just fine. He then analyzes a vote in Congress on a bill that would reduce the Fed’s confidentiality permanently. All but one Republican favored the bill (Robert Turner was the odd one […]

The debates about Chief Justice Roberts’ motivations for his health care opinion rage on with new leaks appearing almost every day. Randy Barnett responds to Jonathan Adler’s attempt at showing that Roberts’ opinion is quite consistent with his past judgments and legal views that consistency: does not making his bending himself into a pretzel to […]

There appears to be an emerging consensus that Chief Justice Roberts was motivated by concerns that fit comfortably within strategic models of judicial behavior (gated), which have long argued that judges sometimes need to restrain their own behavior in order to influence future judges, maintain public legitimacy, and more generally communicate with their multiple audiences. […]

If you google “Euro crisis” and “leadership” you get nearly a million hits, many to articles in prominent venues that decry the lack of and quest for leadership that should get Europe and the world safely out of the current crisis. Dan Drezner captures my sentiments very well on this issue: So what, exactly, is […]

In yesterday’s post, I gave some comparative context for U.S. public opinion towards gay marriage. Today I want to do the same with temporal changes in acceptance of homosexuality. Since 1981, the World Values Survey has asked respondents in each of its waves to rate on a scale from 1 to 10 whether homosexuality is […]

Gregory Lewis’ post on state public opinion towards gay marriage made me think it would be useful to provide some context from Europe. There is a perception that Europe is much more liberal on this score than the U.S. The truth is that even within European Union (EU) countries the variation is probably greater than […]