New Data: Internet Shutdowns in India

India holds the record for the highest number of government-induced internet shutdowns globally, surpassing all other countries (AccessNow, 2023a; Ruijgrok, 2022). From 2016 to the end of 2022, there were a staggering 1,978 district-level shutdowns in the country. To gain deeper insights into these shutdowns and their impact on…

Treatment Effects and Randomization

Establishing valid causal inferences is difficult. It requires having realistic expectations about whether it is possible to establish a causal relationship from your research design. This is especially true for social science.…

Do Nuclear Weapons Cause Peace?

Nuclear weapons are terrifying. The destructive capacity of these inventions could wipe out humanity and cause devastation to the Earth's biosphere. Yet, paradoxically, nuclear weapons could also be one of the most important causes of peace since World War 2.…

Democracy and Environmental Degradation

Producing political solutions to large-scale environmental problems is perhaps one of the most important tasks of governance. For political scientists, a central puzzle is the effects of democratic governance on environmental quality. Is democracy best-suited to solve environmental problems?…