Political Reality

FULL EP https://www.patreon.com/politicalreality/posts/preview-lets-our-174412333

We recorded this before the election btw.

Thank you to Dr. Alex Tan for joining us this week! Check out his podcast "Views from Down Underer”

https://www.patreon.com/politicalreality/posts/can-polls-be-173029825

https://www.patreon.com/politicalreality/posts/what-americans-171733279

https://www.patreon.com/c/politicalreality

FULL EPISODE

https://www.patreon.com/politicalreality/posts/war-why-dont-we-170386581

1. ⚔️ Sun Tzu (circa 500 BCE), The Art of War
https://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html

2. 🏛️ Thucydides (circa 400 BCE), History of the Peloponnesian War (brief overview here)
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7142/7142-h/7142-h.htm
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/thucydides

3. 🌐 Morgenthau (1949), Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (overview here)
http://slantchev.ucsd.edu/courses/ps240/04%20Conflict%20with%20States%20as%20Unitary%20Actors/Morgenthau%20-%20Politics%20among%20nations%20(selected%20chapters).pdf
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/social-sciences-and-humanities/morgenthau-advances-realist-school-power-politics

4. 🎓 By the way, many of these classic texts are currently available as PDFs on Branislav Sanchez’s course page for an international relations course he teaches at UCSD. Happy reading, and thanks, Prof. Sanchez for making these available! The syllabus on this page also offers a fantastic rundown of many of the themes we covered in this episode (plus many more, and deeper divers – enjoy!).
https://polisci.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/faculty-directory/currently-active-faculty/slantchev-profile.html
http://slantchev.ucsd.edu/courses/ps240/

5. 📘 Waltz (1959), Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis
https://pages.ucsd.edu/~bslantchev/courses/ps240/02%20Levels%20of%20Analysis%20and%20Strategic%20Choice/Waltz%20-%20Man,%20The%20State,%20and%20War.pdf

6. ♟️ Schelling (1960), The Strategy of Conflict
https://www.sackett.net/Strategy-of-Conflict.pdf

7. 💥 Blainey (1973), The Causes of War
https://archive.org/details/causesofwar0000blai/page/n5/mode/2up

8. 🔗 Keohane & Nye (1977), Power and Interdependence
http://slantchev.ucsd.edu/courses/ps240/05%20Cooperation%20with%20States%20as%20Unitary%20Actors/Keohane%20&%20Nye%20-%20Power%20and%20interdependence%20%5BCh%201-3%5D.pdf

9. 🌎 Waltz (1979), Theory of International Politics
http://slantchev.ucsd.edu/courses/ps240/03%20Anarchy,%20Hierarchy,%20and%20Sovereignty/Waltz%20-%20Theory%20of%20International%20Politics%20(Ch%205-8).pdf

10. 🤝 Keohane (1984), After Hegemony
http://slantchev.ucsd.edu/courses/ps240/05%20Cooperation%20with%20States%20as%20Unitary%20Actors/Keohane%20-%20After%20Hegemony%20%5BCh%204-6%5D.pdf

11. 🔄 Axelrod (1984), The Evolution of Cooperation
https://bert.stuy.edu/pbrooks/spring2015/materials/HumanReasoning-2/Axelrod_Robert_The_Evolution_of_Cooperation.pdf

12. 🗳️ Fearon (1994), “Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes”
https://web.stanford.edu/group/fearon-research/cgi-bin/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Domestic-Political-Audiences-and-the-Escalation-of-International-Disputes.pdf

13. ⚖️ Fearon (1995), “Rationalist Explanations for War”
https://web.stanford.edu/group/fearon-research/cgi-bin/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Rationalist-Explanations-for-War.pdf

14. 🕊️ B. Bueno de Mesquita et al. (1999), “An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace”
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2586113

15. 🌍 Mearsheimer (2001), The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393349276

16. 📜 Fortna (2003), “Scraps of Paper? Agreements and the Durability of Peace”
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/scraps-of-paper-agreements-and-the-durability-of-peace/70A924CC6B4785C30BADF415244FFA1F

17. 🏢 Koremenos et al. (2003), “The Rational Design of International Institutions”
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/rational-design-of-international-institutions/29B784E99033C7B3FC0564B96A64FE21

18. 🧩 Ruggie (2005), “What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge.”
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/what-makes-the-world-hang-together-neoutilitarianism-and-the-social-constructivist-challenge/0160858E3E6D4D6468C926BCD6654FE9

19. 🔎 E. Bueno de Mesquita (2005), “The Quality of Terror”
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3647729

20. 🧠 Wendt (2009), “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics”
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/anarchy-is-what-states-make-of-it-the-social-construction-of-power-politics/B03BC7C9AAC5211B6DC319C077C1A854

21. 🤝 Walter (2009), “Bargaining Failures and Civil War”
https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.polisci.10.101405.135301

22. ❓ Ramsay (2017), “Information, Uncertainty, and War”
https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051215-022729

23. 📚 Chenoweth et al. (eds.) (2019), The Oxford Handbook of Terrorism
https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/28267

24. 🤖 Murphy, et al. (2024), “The Promise of Machine Learning in Violent Conflict Forecasting”
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/data-and-policy/article/promise-of-machine-learning-in-violent-conflict-forecasting/40D559ADA18FF7308915B08956B4E8F3

25. 📊 Some datasets we mentioned: Correlates of War, Uppsala conflict data program, Fragile states index

Correlates of War:
https://correlatesofwar.org/

Uppsala conflict data program:
https://ucdp.uu.se/

Fragile states index:
https://fragilestatesindex.org/

FULL EPISODE

1. 🧠 Dias et al. (2025), “American partisans vastly under-estimate the diversity of other partisans’ policy attitudes.”
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-science-research-and-methods/article/american-partisans-vastly-underestimate-the-diversity-of-other-partisans-policy-attitudes/CD71B9D75D10CFA0A9A07501E1CCD81A#article

2. 👥 A few corporate-focused diversity of thought resources (Scott E. Page was my Ph.D. advisor so bias alert):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_E._Page

    📘 1. Page (2007; 2025 second edition), The difference: How the power of diversity creates better groups, firms, schools, and societies

    📗 2. Page (2019), The diversity bonus: How great teams pay off in the knowledge economy

    📄 3. Page & Hong (2004), “Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers”
    https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0403723101

3. 📊 Democrats tend to be more diverse along many (not all) standard demographic/identity dimensions: Pew research
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/the-changing-demographic-composition-of-voters-and-party-coalitions/

4. 🎓 Republicans tend to be more diverse along education (depending on how you measure it!): More Pew
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/partisanship-by-race-ethnicity-and-education/

5. 📰 Older work on diversity of Democrat vs. Republican news consumption: Pew again!
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2014/10/21/section-1-media-sources-distinct-favorites-emerge-on-the-left-and-right/

6. 📱 More recent shifts in news consumption: rise of online, proliferation on the right

    🌐 Rise of online:
    https://www.odwyerpr.com/story/public/23818/2025-10-28/shifts-political-news-consumption.html

    ➡️ Proliferation on the right:
    https://www.mediamatters.org/google/right-dominates-online-media-ecosystem-seeping-sports-comedy-and-other-supposedly

7. 📲 Chang et al. (2025), “Liberals and conservatives share information differently on social media”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40697192/

8. 🕸️ Lüders et al. (2023), “Attitude networks as intergroup realities: Using network-modeling to research attitude-identity relationships in polarized political contexts.”
https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjso.12665

9. 📊 American National Election Studies (ANES) data on:

    ⚕️ 1. Abortion
    https://electionstudies.org/data-tools/anes-guide/anes-guide.html?chart=abortion_by_law

    🌎 2. Immigration
    https://electionstudies.org/data-tools/anes-guide/anes-guide.html?chart=immigrants_should_be_decreased_increased

    🔎 3. Guns
    https://electionstudies.org/data-tools/anes-guide/anes-guide.html?chart=gun_purchase_control

10. 🤔 Other background on ways we misunderstand each other:

    📄 1. Ahler (2014), “Self-fulfilling misperceptions of polarization”
    https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1017/S0022381614000085

    📄 2. Enders & Armaly (2018), “The differential effects of actual and perceived polarization.”
    https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-018-9476-2

    📄 3. Ahler & Sood (2018), “The parties in our heads: Misperceptions about party composition and their consequences.”
    https://repository.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu:605549/datastream/PDF/view

    📝 4. Garton et al. (working paper; not peer-reviewed yet, but just to explore some of the latest/current/ongoing research), “Partisans overestimate their side’s intolerance.”
    https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-7579935/v1

**1. ⛪ Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI):**