Headlines

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.

Democracy in distress?

October 30, 2020 Peter Dizikes MIT News

Experts analyze a global trend: democratic governments that collapse from within while maintaining a veneer of legitimacy.

3 questions with Fotini Christia, the new Chair of the Social & Engineering Systems PhD program

October 23, 2020 IDSS

Fotini Christia is a professor of political science and faculty member of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. Her research interests deal with the political economy of conflict and development in the Muslim world and she has done extensive experimental, survey, and big data research on Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iraq, and Yemen. In addition to chairing the Social & Engineering Systems PhD program, she directs the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC) within IDSS.

A new world of warcraft

October 14, 2020 Leda Zimmerman MIT Political Science

Political scientist Erik Lin-Greenberg explores how a burgeoning high-tech arsenal is shaping military conflict.