MODEL COMPLEXITY FOR SUPERVISED LEARNING: WHY SIMPLE MODELS ALMOST ALWAYS WORK BEST, AND WHY IT MATTERS FOR APPLIED RESEARCH (With Marco Morucci. Github here. Explainer here).
Working paper, comments welcome!
REPLICATION FOR LANGUAGE MODELS: PROBLEMS, PRINCIPLES, AND BEST PRACTICE FOR POLITICAL SCIENCE (With Christopher Barrie and Alexis Palmer. Github here. Explainer here).
Working paper, comments welcome!
PEERS, EQUALS, AND JURORS: NEW DATA AND METHODS ON THE ROLE OF LEGAL EQUALITY IN LEVELLER THOUGHT (With Melissa Schwartzberg. Github here)
American Journal of Political Science, conditionally accepted for publication
WHAT GOOD IS A REGRESSION? INFERENCE TO THE BEST EXPLANATION AND THE PRACTICE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH (With Brandon Stewart. Github here)
Journal of Politics, accepted for publication.
MEASURING DISTANCES IN HIGH DIMENSIONAL SPACES WHY AVERAGE GROUP VECTOR COMPARISONS EXHIBIT BIAS, AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT (With Breanna Green, William Hobbs, Sofia Avila, Pedro Rodriguez and Brandon Stewart.
Political Analysis, accepted for publication.
LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS CAN ARGUE IN CONVINCING WAYS ABOUT POLITICS, BUT HUMANS DISLIKE AI AUTHORS: IMPLICATIONS FOR GOVERNANCE (With Alexis Palmer. Github here)
Political Science, DOI
MULTILANGUAGE WORD EMBEDDINGS FOR SOCIAL SCIENTISTS: ESTIMATION, INFERENCE AND VALIDATION RESOURCES FOR 157 LANGUAGES (With Elisa Wirsching and Pedro Rodriguez and Brandon Stewart. Web resources here)
Political Analysis, accepted for publication.
EMBEDDING REGRESSION: MODELS FOR CONTEXT-SPECIFIC DESCRIPTION AND INFERENCE (With Pedro Rodriguez and Brandon Stewart). Github here, Non-technical explainer here. Supporting Information here. Software here )
American Political Science Review (open access link here)
TURNING HISTORY INTO DATA: DATA COLLECTION, MEASUREMENT, AND INFERENCE IN HPE (With Alexandra Cirone).
Journal of Historical Political Economy, Vol 1(1), 127-154
WORD EMBEDDINGS: WHAT WORKS, WHAT DOESN'T, AND HOW TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE FOR APPLIED RESEARCH (With Pedro Rodriguez. Github here, FAQ here.)
Journal of Politics, Vol 84(1), 101--115.
A GENERAL MODEL OF AUTHOR "STYLE" WITH APPLICATION TO THE UK HOUSE OF COMMONS, 1935--2018 (With Leslie Huang and Patrick O. Perry) Software here, vignette here, online appendix here.
Political Analysis, Vol 28(3): 412--434.
NEW EVIDENCE AND NEW METHODS FOR ANALYZING THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION AS AN INTELLIGENCE FAILURE (With Matthew Connolly, Raymond Hicks and Robert Jervis.
Intelligence and National Security, Vol 36(6): 781-806
DIPLOMATIC DOCUMENTS DATA FOR INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ARCHIVE (FOIArchive) DATABASE (With Matthew Connolly, Raymond Hicks, Robert Jervis and Clara Suong. Replication materials here
Conflict Management and Peace Science, Volume 38, issue 6, 762--781.
CONDITIONAL WORD EMBEDDING AND HYPOTHESIS TESTING VIA BAYES-BY-BACKPROP (With Rujun Han and Michael Gill and Kyunghyun Cho)
Proceedings of the 2018 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
MEASURING AND EXPLAINING POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION THROUGH TEXTUAL COMPLEXITY (With Kenneth Benoit and Kevin Munger) Software here.
American Journal of Political Science, Volume 63, Issue 2, 491--508 (April, 2019)
DIMENSIONS OF DIPLOMACY: UNDERSTANDING PRIVATE INFORMATION IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS USING THE WIKILEAKS CABLE DISCLOSURE (With Michael Gill)
Under review
TEXT PREPROCESSING FOR UNSUPERVISED LEARNING: WHY IT MATTERS, WHEN IT MISLEADS, AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT (With Matthew Denny) Replication materials, including software here.
Political Analysis, Vol 26 (2): 168--189
CLASSIFICATION ACCURACY AS A SUBSTANTIVE QUANTITY OF INTEREST: MEASURING POLARIZATION IN WESTMINSTER SYSTEMS (With Andrew Peterson) Online Appendix here. Replication materials here.
Political Analysis, vol 26(1): 120--128 (2018) .
ASKING TOO MUCH? THE RHETORICAL ROLE OF QUESTIONS IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE (With Justine Zhang and Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil )
Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, 1558--1572
THE SHADOW CABINET IN WESTMINSTER SYSTEMS: MODELING OPPOSITION AGENDA-SETTING IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, 1832--1915 (With Andrew Eggers)
British Journal of Political Science, vol 48(2): 343--368.
INCUMBENCY EFFECTS AND THE STRENGTH OF PARTY PREFERENCES: EVIDENCE FROM MULTIPARTY ELECTIONS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM (With Andrew Eggers)
Journal of Politics, 79(3): 903--920
Journal of Politics, 78(1): 120--136.
RESPONSE TO "STATISTICAL MODELLING OF CITATION EXCHANGE BETWEEN STATISTICS JOURNALS" BY VARIN ET AL
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 179(1): 56--57.
PARTY COHESION IN WESTMINSTER SYSTEMS: INDUCEMENTS, REPLACEMENT AND DISCIPLINE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, 1836--1910 (With Andrew Eggers)
British Journal of Political Science, 46 (3): 567--589 (2016).
ESTIMATING THE SEVERITY OF THE WIKILEAKS US DIPLOMATIC CABLES DISCLOSURE (With Michael Gill)
Political Analysis, 23 (2): 299-305 (2015)
I am the organizing contributor/editor of a special issue of Legislative Studies Quarterly on British Political Development. This special edition consists of six papers, on various aspects of UK legislative behavior in the nineteenth century. The table of contents is here. My introduction to the special issue can be found here:
BRITISH POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: A RESEARCH AGENDA
My coauthored paper in the special issue can be found here:
ELECTORAL SECURITY AS A DETERMINANT OF LEGISLATOR ACTIVITY, 1832--1918: NEW DATA AND METHODS FOR ANALYZING BRITISH POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT (With Andrew Eggers)
Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol 9, No 4.
GUARDING THE GUARDIANS: LEGISLATIVE SELF-POLICING AND ELECTORAL CORRUPTION IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN (With Andrew Eggers)
Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 9, no. 3 (2014): 337--370
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIVENESS IN WESTMINSTER SYSTEMS: INSTITUTIONAL CHOICES AND HOUSE OF COMMONS DEBATE, 1832--1915 (With Andrew Eggers)
American Journal of Political Science, 58, 873--887
MODELING 'EFFECTIVENESS' IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (With Jonathan Renshon)
Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol 52 (2), 207--238 (2015)
Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Fall 2012
RADICAL MODERATION: RECAPTURING POWER IN TWO PARTY PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEMS (with Tasos Kalandrakis)
American Journal of Political Science, Vol 56, No 2, 413--432
US TREATY-MAKING WITH AMERICAN INDIANS: INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE AND RELATIVE POWER, 1784--1911
American Journal of Political Science, Vol 56, No 1, 84--97. Replication materials are here
TESTING THE POWER OF ARGUMENTS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE: A BRADLEY-TERRY APPROACH (with Peter Loewen and Daniel Rubenson)
Electoral Studies, Vol 31, No 1, 212--221
STRATEGIC OPPOSITION AND GOVERNMENT COHESION IN WESTMINSTER DEMOCRACIES (With Torun Dewan)
American Political Science Review, Vol 105, No 2, 337--358.
SCALING THE CRITICS: UNCOVERING THE LATENT DIMENSIONS OF MOVIE CRITICISM WITH AN ITEM RESPONSE APPROACH (with Michael Peress)
Journal of the American Statistical Association Vol. 105, No. 489: 71–83.
IDENTIFYING INTRA-PARTY VOTING BLOCS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM HOUSE OF COMMONS (with Kevin Quinn)
Journal of the American Statistical AssociationVol. 105, No. 490: 447–45
TURNING POINTS IN THE IRAQ CONFLICT: REVERSIBLE JUMP MARKOV CHAIN MONTE CARLO IN POLITICAL SCIENCE
The American Statistician, 61:4, 2007
BAYESIAN APPROACHES FOR LIMITED DEPENDENT VARIABLE CHANGE POINT PROBLEMS
Political Analysis, 15(4), 2007
UNDER THE INFLUENCE? INTELLECTUAL EXCHANGE IN POLITICAL SCIENCE (with David Carter)
PS: Political Science and Politics, 41(2), 2007
THE RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF ROLL CALLS (with Iain McLean)
Government and Opposition, 41(4), 561--568.
UK OC OK? INTERPRETING OPTIMAL CLASSIFICATION SCORES FOR THE UNITED KINGDOM HOUSE OF COMMONS (with Iain McLean)
Political Analysis 15 (1) Winter, 2007.
TAPIR AND THE PUBLIC WHIP: RESOURCES FOR WESTMINSTER VOTING (with David Firth)
The Political Methodologist 14 (2)
NONE OF THE ABOVE: THE UK HOUSE OF COMMONS VOTES ON REFORMING THE HOUSE OF
LORDS, FEBRUARY 2003 (with Iain McLean and Meg
Russell)
The Political Quarterly, 74, 298--310.
THE NEXT BIG THING: SCALE INVARIANCE IN POLITICAL SCIENCE
`Power laws' suggest that events of a large magnitude will be rare, whilst small events will be much more common, and that a simple mathematical law relates `severity' with frequency. We find that a wide variety of phenomena in political science are power law distributed. These empirical regularities are both unexpected and unexplained. More work on a general explanatory theory for these patterns is desirable.
Note: this (version of the) paper was cited in Common ecology quantifies human insurgency appearing in Nature, 17 December 2009.
REBELS WITH A CAUSE? LEGISLATIVE ACTIVITY AND THE PERSONAL VOTE IN BRITAIN, 1997--2005 (available on request)
Does a Member of the British Parliament's voting record have any effect on their constituency electoral performance? Scholars have assumed not, else they have tested the proposition with an extremely limited number of roll calls. Congruent with public opinion findings we contend that, paradoxically, voters conditionally reward both 'party unity' and 'independent mindedness' in their elected representatives. Using novel non-parametric 'random forest' classification procedures, and a new data set recording behavior on over 2000 roll calls from 1997--2001 and 2001--2005, along with commensurate constituency controls, we thus show that MPs' popularity is indeed effected by their legislative activity in small but significant ways. In particular, government-party voters demand unity on votes that are key parts of the government's programmatic agenda, while welcoming more 'maverick' behavior on less important issues.
POWER TOOL- MEASURING POWER IN POLITICAL SCIENCE: A NEW METHOD WITH APPLICATION TO THE SENATE
The measurement of power, even in structured settings like legislatures, has proved elusive. We discuss the problems with traditional, a priori voting indices approaches and suggest a data-driven, actor-based, (logistic regression) method that is straightforward to implement. This treatment is consistent with systematic theoretical models and discussions of power, and formally allows the separation of 'power' from its causes. To illustrate the strengths of this new technique, we apply the model to the 108th United States Senate. We find that institutional, ideological, personal and geographic variables all influence senators' power.