Strategy and Selection in International Relations

It is widely recognized that many of the samples we use for statistical analysis in international politics are the result of some selection process. Not surprisingly, selection models are becoming increasingly popular. At the same time, the role of strategic interaction has begun to play a more important role in statistical analyses. However, it has not been clear how statistical strategic models and selection models relate to each other, or what the effects are of employing one when the other is the more appropriate model. In this article, I 1) clarify why international relations scholars cannot shield themselves from selection bias simply by assuming their results are limited to a given sample; 2) show how recent statistical strategic models relate to traditional selection models and generalize the two sets of models by deriving a correlated strategic model; and 3) examine the effects of misspecifying either correlated errors or strategic interaction. My results indicate that failure to model the strategic interaction produces worse specification error than failure to account for correlated disturbances. In fact, traditional bivariate probit models appear to be superior only when states are almost completely uncertain about each others' preferences.     

试析俄罗斯文学作品选读教学中的上下文语境

俄罗斯文学作品选读一直被学生认为是比较难学的课程,因为文学篇章的理解难点不仅涉及词语意义理解方面的困难,篇章中词语的具体所指内容也很难分析,学生还要了解俄罗斯历史、文化、国情等方面的知识。通过探讨上下文语境在文学篇章阅读理解过程中的认知作用,激发和鼓励学生对俄罗斯文学课程学习的信心,是行之有效的做法。     

Partisan Bias in Message Selection: Media Gatekeeping of Party Press Releases

Parties try to shape media coverage in ways that are favorable to them, but what determines whether media outlets pick up and report on party messages? Based on content analyses of 1,496 party press releases and 6,512 media reports from the 2013 Austrian parliamentary election campaign, we show that media coverage of individual party messages is influenced not just by news factors, but also by partisan bias. The media are therefore more likely to report on messages from parties their readers favor. Importantly, this effect is greater rather than weaker when these messages have high news value. These findings have important implications for understanding the media’s role in elections and representative democracies in general.