1. 📄 Downs et al. (2009), “Is the good news about compliance good news about cooperation?”https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/is-the-good-news-about-compliance-good-news-about-cooperation/636DE333F8E1EC944825DDBFD81BE294 2. 📄 Von Stein (2005), “Do treaties constrain or screen? Selection bias and treaty compliance”https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/abs/do-treaties-constrain-or-screen-selection-bias-and-treaty-compliance/99619F321DE63766D626E19155D69C35 3. 📄 Morrow (2000), “Alliances: Why write them down?”https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.polisci.3.1.63 4. 🌍 Wendt (1992), “Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics”https://www.jstor.org/stable/2706858     🧠 a. Brief description of constructivism     https://www.e-ir.info/2020/05/19/a-brief-overview-of-alexander-wendts-constructivism/     🤓 b. What’s that? You wanted even more on constructivism?     https://institutes.abu.edu.ng/idr/public/assets/docs/Constructivism%20and%20International%20Relations%20%20Alexander%20Wendt%20and%20his%20Critics%20(The%20New%20International%20Relations)%20(%20PDFDrive%20).pdf 5. 📊 Major dataset on military alliances by Prof. Brett Ashley Leeds (whose work we also discussed)http://www.atopdata.orghttps://leeds.rice.edu/research/ 6. 📰 Paul’s weekly columns for the World Politics Reviewhttps://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/author/paul-poast-2920/ 7. 📚 One of Paul’s (several, excellent) books, Arguing about Allianceshttps://www.paulpoast.com/arguing-about-alliances 8. 🌐 Recent-ish article in the Atlantic by Paul, “Not a world war but a world at war” (we didn’t talk about this specifically in the episode, but it’s a great writeup)https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/11/conflicts-around-the-world-peak/676029/ 9. 🔗 Paul’s websitehttps://www.paulpoast.com/ 10. 💼 Follow Paul on LinkedIn – he posts regular commentary on international relations events as they unfoldhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-poast-83550b79/https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7446569050081710080/?originTrackingId=bnCSJxFBZsvkuC7Xqvk9nw%3D%3D

1. 🚪 Broockman and Kalla, “Durably reducing transphobia: A field experiment on door-to-door canvassing” (the excellent paper that’s a great model for field experiments on this topic)https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aad9713     🧠 a. In general, Joshua Kalla and David Broockman’s work (joint and separate) is worth checking out, both on political persuasion and other topics (mostly connected to political attitudes one way or another).     https://joshuakalla.com/research/     https://polisci.berkeley.edu/people/person/david-edward-broockman     🧪 b. I particularly recommend their work as great examples of using experiments in political science     👂 c. Some of the remaining open questions about the role of listening in political persuasion conversations are discussed thoughtfully here.     https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2421982122 2. ⚠️ The retracted paper we mentioned and a brief article about the retraction. Even more gory details about the retraction.     📄 Paper:     https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1256151     📰 Article:     https://www.science.org/content/article/science-retracts-gay-marriage-paper-without-agreement-lead-author-lacour     🔍 More details:     https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06/06/same-sex-marriage-retraction-political-science-study-lacour-green-broockman-kalla/     📚 a. The more senior coauthor on the retracted paper is quite prolific on persuasion specifically in the context of political campaigns and also recently in the context of AI; his other work has not been retracted as far as we know!     https://donaldgreen.com 3. 📊 A comprehensive recent overview of the state of the research on persuasion, including what we don’t know and why some of the pieces don’t quite fit together stillhttps://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051120-110428 4. 🌱 Broader, more background review paper on where political preferences come from in the first place and what affects them. (We didn’t talk about this specifically, I just think it’s interesting and helpful — and reflects earlier thinking that shaped much of the more recent research.)https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.polisci.3.1.1 5. 💻 Experiment on reducing antisemitism, measured in terms of online browsing behavior after an interventionhttps://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-experimental-political-science/article/combating-hateful-attitudes-and-online-browsing-behavior-the-case-of-antisemitism/05E860416F9D0B7EFEFA0AABDB88C33D 6. 📰 We may have cited him in other episodes, but Adam Berinsky’s work on combatting misinformation is always in the background whenever we talk about media, misinformation, social media, changing minds – anything along that theme – and is always worth a look.https://berinsky.mit.edu/published-papers/#overlay-context=research

https://politicalrealitypodcast.com Show Notes for Voter ID Ep. 📄 Riker and Ordeshook, “A Theory of the Calculus of Voting” (paper where the key equation came from):https://www.jstor.org/stable/1953324 ⚡ World’s briefest summary of the above:https://adambrown.info/p/notes/riker_and_ordeshook_a_theory_of_the_calculus_of_voting 📊 Meta-study of papers that built from this earlier work (alas, it’s behind a paywall, I’m sorry):https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0261379412001527 📚 “Classic” (2008 lol cry) review of research on convenience voting:https://www.annualreviews.org/docserver/fulltext/pl/11/1/annurev.polisci.11.053006.190912.pdf?expires=1774472398&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=4CCCEB2034EED20DCF150C7F87AD6286 ➕ plus some specific papers (there are lots more out there but this is a decent start):     🧠 People with greater political knowledge are more likely to use convenience voting:     https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17457289.2020.1814308     ⚖️ Convenience voting can exacerbate socioeconomic biases in composition of voters:     https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.mit.edu/dist/9/583/files/2026/01/perverseconsequences_2005.pdf     📬 Voting by mail increases turnout but does so differently across groups:     https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.mit.edu/dist/9/583/files/2026/01/whovotesbymail_2001.pdf 🏛️ Background on the SAVE act:     🔎 https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/five-things-to-know-about-the-save-act/     📰 https://www.ncsl.org/state-legislatures-news/details/9-things-to-know-about-the-proposed-save-america-act     ⚠️ https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-save-act-bills-would-still-block-millions-americans-voting 📜 The SAVE act itself:https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/22/text 🗺️ Voter ID laws by state:https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_state ⚖️ Discussion of the constitutionality and legality of the SAVE act:https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/03/the-supreme-court-and-voting-identification/ 💸 Discussion of the poll tax issue regarding the SAVE act:https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5757040-save-act-voter-id-debate/

Show Notes Coming Soon

📰 Reporting on extent to which 2025 US strikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckglxwp5x03o ⚛️ Details about Iran’s uranium enriched to 60%: https://www.armscontrol.org/issue-briefs/2026-03/us-war-iran-new-and-lingering-nuclear-risks 📄 March 2026 Congressional report about Iran’s nuclear capabilities: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN12665 ☢️ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reporting on Iran’s nuclear activities and uranium stockpiles: https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/iran/iaea-and-iran-iaea-board-reports 🛰️ Satellite imagery of the Feb. 28, 2026, school strike in Iran: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/world/middleeast/iran-school-us-strikes-naval-base.html 🚀 Evidence that the school was struck by a US Tomahawk cruise missile: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/08/world/middleeast/iran-minab-school-strike.html 📺 Reporter Jeremy Vine correcting himself about the dancing video: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tv/article-15616555/jeremy-vine-alan-partridge-iran-blunder-channel-5.html 🤖 Examples of AI-generated war videos and photos: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg8wvz427vo 🐦 Example of a “shallowfake” posted on X: https://x.com/TehranTimes79/status/2027766149862117731? 🎬 Examples of “hype” videos shared by the US government: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/07/trump-iran-hype-videos 🔍 BBC verify: https://www.bbc.com/news/bbcverify

Full info on https://www.patreon.com/posts/152180612

More about Seth & his work: https://www.sethmasket.com Seth’s book Learning from Loss: The Democrats 2016-2020 Preview of Seth’s new book (coming summer 2026): The Elephants in the Room: How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders Subscribe to his (excellent) Substack, Tusk Follow him on Instagram and Bluesky (he’s @smotus most places)

Full Episode https://www.patreon.com/posts/can-we-vote-our-151099132 https://patreon.com/politicalreality Further Reading & Resources on Voting Theory 📘 1. Kenneth Arrow's amazing 1951 book, Social Choice and Individual Values: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300179316/social-choice-and-individual-values/ a. A good writeup of the basics of the math if you don't want to buy a book: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arrows-theorem/ 🧠 2. Arrow's 1950 paper introducing the idea (this paper is magnificent and you simply must read it): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/256963 a. Non-paywalled version: https://www.stat.uchicago.edu/~lekheng/meetings/mathofranking/ref/arrow.pdf 🔄 3. A nice primer on Condorcet's Paradox: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/14-75-political-economy-and-economic-development-fall-2012/a9fd8e5ab75a325016094e6bbe625b2a_MIT14_75F12_Lec12.pdf a. Even more on the math of voting systems: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/voting-methods/ 🗳️ 4. Early work on approval voting by Steve Brams, a leading thinker on it: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/abs/approval-voting/7CE5DEEE235794B0B12F76ADAE621482 a. Video of Brams talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZiS3U7EG0M b. Uh oh! It's a video from forever ago of Andrea interviewing Brams about approval voting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAlxoW8WLX4 🏛️ 5. Some prominent advocacy groups on voting system reform: a. Approval voting: https://electionscience.org/ b. Ranked-choice voting: https://fairvote.org/ 🎓 6. Political science professor Lindsey Cormack speaking (admittedly briefly in these clips) about some tradeoffs around Ranked-Choice Voting (sneak preview, she'll be a guest on the show in the not-so-distant future; her instagram @howtoraiseacitizen is also a great resource on civics, politics, and current events (e.g., the SAVE act; more on that soon, too)): a. https://www.instagram.com/p/DLGXzYVMOyX/?hl=en b. https://www.instagram.com/p/DLPkrogss5K/?hl=en

https://politicalrealitypodcast.com Follow Tom: Tom Pepinsky’s website with links to his research & books: https://tompepinsky.com Tom’s blog: https://tompepinsky.com/blog His substack: https://tompepinsky.substack.com/ Selected books and peer-reviewed works by Tom relevant to this episode: Recent paper on authoritarianism: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13510347.2020.1775589 Recent paper on voting in authoritarian vs. democratic systems: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/voting-in-authoritarian-elections/1C066CD75F6F070930181135B288F632 Book on global challenges to democracy: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/global-challenges-to-democracy/C50D0AC769FF0AA2C62DA9337F2C03E6 Covid paper we briefly referenced: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0249596 Book based on his research on partisanship and Covid: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691218991/pandemic-politics Selected essays by Tom relevant to this episode: Preventing a slide into authoritarianism in the US: https://www.vox.com/politics/477317/donald-trumps-ego-democracy-authoritarianism Crucial characteristics of fascism: https://tompepinsky.com/2017/01/03/berman-on-fascism/ An absolutely fantastic “mini syllabus” on how to make sense of the Trump administration through a comparative political science lens: https://tompepinsky.com/2016/12/21/comparative-politics-and-the-trump-administration/ US’s lost leadership in East Asia: https://eastasiaforum.org/2025/11/02/a-united-states-that-is-disintegrating-and-no-longer-a-leader-in-asia/ Life in authoritarian states: https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/9/14207302/authoritarian-states-boring-tolerable-fascism-trump Working papers by Tom relevant to this episode: Democratic backsliding: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5363315 Biased learning from elections: https://osf.io/preprints/osf/q9zpm_v2 Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism

Full Audio episode available on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/is-polarization-149962215 Full Video episode available on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/149974348 Many of the empirical trends mentioned come from the (still a favorite!) American National Election Studies dataset: Party identity (including strength of party identity) Affective polarization (specifically shown here as the gap between attitudes towards in-group and out-group ideologies) Trust in government index  Public opinion on LGBTQ laws  Public opinion on abortion Public opinion on government spending The observation of “party sorting” was initially made by political scientists Morris Fiorina. It’s most extensively written about in his book Unstable Majorities, but you can read some other writings here and here. For further reading, see also Matthew Levendusky’s book The Partisan Sort A fantastic overview of the research on affective polarization is in this review article An interesting example of a recent application of using affective polarization to make sense of public opinion during Covid is here (we didn’t reference it; I just think it’s cool — and it’s a preview of our guest for the next episode!). I also wrote about all this in The Daily Beast, though I did not write the headline and would never actually sound that confident about anything.