Headlines

Mobilizing the masses, one on one

April 29, 2021 Leda Zimmerman MIT Political Science

PhD candidate Gabriel Nahmias seeks to lower the barriers to political engagement.

Rt Hon. David Miliband SM ’90 receives the 2021 Robert A. Muh Alumni Award

April 26, 2021 School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

The MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) has announced that the Right Honorable David W. Miliband SM ’90, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), has been recognized with the 2021 Robert A. Muh Alumni Award.

A guide to when and how to build technology for social good

April 20, 2021 Will Sullivan MIT News/MIT Governance Lab

People frequently try to participate in political processes, from organizing to hold government to account for providing quality health care and education to participating in elections. But sometimes these systems are set up in a way that makes it difficult for people and government to engage effectively with each other. How can technology help?

Giving the people what they want?

February 21, 2021 Peter Dizikes MIT News

Research by MIT political scientist Devin Caughey shows that over time, elected politicians in the U.S. are generally responsive to the opinions of voters.

Political scientist In Song Kim receives the 2021 Levitan Prize

February 10, 2021 MIT SHASS Communications

In his new book, Kim aims to "provides a big data analysis of contemporary trade policy-making, facilitating not only academic research of trade with a new unit of analysis but also public awareness of product-specific trade negotiations such as the current China-U.S. trade dispute.”

To arms or to flight?

February 5, 2021 Leda Zimmerman MIT Political Science

Political science graduate student Aidan Milliff finds significant differences in how people in similar situations respond to threats of violence.

What must the US do to sustain its democracy?

January 20, 2021 Peter Dizikes MIT News

Recent months have been tumultuous for U.S. democracy, in ways that are both novel and yet also connected to conflicts seen throughout the country’s past. MIT News spoke to several of the Institute’s political scientists and historians, and asked them: What must the U.S. do to sustain the health of its democracy?

A new approach to studying religion and politics

December 20, 2020 Peter Dizikes MIT News

Associate Professor Richard Nielsen is an MIT political scientist with an innovative research program: He studies clerics in the Islamic world, combining textual analysis, ethnographic insights, on-the-ground research in the Middle East, and a big-data approach to charting online tracts.

For cultural and political conflicts, a humanizing imperative

December 14, 2020 School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, Nasir Almasri heard so many discussions about the political struggles of Palestinians that by the time he was 7, he thought he’d heard enough to last a lifetime. He was wrong.

Taking the pulse of local politics

November 6, 2020 Leda Zimmerman MIT Political Science

With research that captures and analyzes information from large databases, Magazinnik is revealing that local governance and execution of federal policies varies widely, and does not uniformly advance democratic norms.