Today on Scope Conditions: when the bombs don’t go off, the war isn't over. We tend to think of peace as beginning when the bombs stop falling. But as our guest today shows us, this is only half the story. Over the course of the Vietnam War, the United States engaged in massive bombing in Cambodia. Between 1965 and 1973, the U.S. dropped 500,000 tons of explosives there — more than the combined weight of every man, woman, and child in the country. Dr. Erin Lin, an Associate Professor of...

Today on the podcast, why are more unequal neighborhoods sometimes better at promoting the collective good? A world of high inequality is, in many ways, a world in which the fortunes of the rich are detached from the welfare of the poor. It’s a world in which the affluent are less reliant on public goods for securing their own safety and wellbeing. Those with money can purchase essential services – even things like security, sewage systems, or street lights – on private markets – rather than ...

Political analysts are thinking a lot these days about the rule of law: where it comes from, what sustains it, how it can break down. Those are hard enough questions in themselves. And, yet — they simplify away an important complexity. They assume that there is only one law that rules. As our guest today, Dr. Egor Lazarev – assistant professor of political science at Yale – points out to us, in many parts of the world, the question is not just whether the law will rule – it’s also which...

When we think of weak democracies around the world, we often think of their inability to maintain a monopoly on violence because of challenges outside the state – like militias, rebel groups, criminal gangs, and other external, violent organizations. But sometimes it’s actors deeply intertwined with the state – like political parties – who are engaging in the violence. Sometimes, the call is coming from inside the house. Our guest today, Niloufer Siddiqui, an Associate Professor of Political ...

In democracies all around the world, criminal organizations are involved in electoral politics. Notable examples include the Sicilian mafia and Pablo Escobar's drug cartel in Colombia. We sometimes think of these criminal groups as having politicians in their pockets or as directing politicians to do their bidding at the barrel of a gun. But our guest today, Jessie Trudeau, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, h...

Today on Scope Conditions: college dorms shed light on where group culture comes from and how it molds us. At Harry Potter’s alma mater, each new student is assigned to a House that aligns with their true character. The mystical Sorting Hat takes the courageous ones and sorts them into House Gryffindor, while the studious know-it-alls go to Ravenclaw. The Sorting Hat may be fiction, but it’s actually a lot like life. Much of the social world works this way: whether by assignment or by self-se...

Most governments around the world – whether democracies or autocracies – face at least some pressure to respond to citizen concerns on some social problems. But the issues that capture public attention — the ones on which states have incentives to be responsive – aren’t always the issues on which bureaucracies, agents of the state, have the ability to solve problems. What do these public agencies do when citizens’ demands don’t line up with either the supply of state capacity or the incentive...

Today on Scope Conditions, what’s the secret to successful peacekeeping? We often think of civil conflict as being driven by organized, armed groups – like rebel militias and state armies. But as our guest today reminds us, a leading cause of conflict around the world is communal violence – fights that break out between civilians over land, cattle, water, and other scarce resources. When the United Nations sends peacekeepers in to manage a conflict, one of their most important jobs is d...

Today on Scope Conditions: when is racial status a unifying force in politics? Shared experiences of prejudice and discrimination can sometimes help create shared political identities within and across racial minority groups and strong incentives for collective mobilization. But as our guest today points out, neither race nor racial-minority status maps neatly onto patterns of political coalition-building. Consider, for instance, the lack of an enduring political alliance between African-Amer...

Today on Scope Conditions, can we teach voters how to tell truth from lies? Around the world, governments and political parties wield misinformation as a powerful political weapon – a weapon that is massively amplified by social media. A large and growing literature has investigated how misinformation spreads and ways of combating it – from corrections and warning-labels to educational programs designed to inoculate citizens against untruths. Yet most of what we know about misinformation and...