Why do Historians Ignore Digital Analysis? Bring on the Luddites

This article argues that historians have failed to grasp the profound opportunities afforded by computational analysis. Despite the abundance of machine-readable data liberated by digitisation—alongside tools and exemplar studies—there has been no widespread embrace of text mining or revival of cliometrics. This ambivalence has arisen mainly through apathy and side-lining of computational analysis to a specialist methodological niche. The absence of justification is damaging to the intellectual vitality of the discipline and its capacity to face the dawning age of data science. The article calls for an urgent debate about the historian and the computer. More than anything else, this requires sceptics to come forward to meet the advocates to discuss how we face the future. British political history has a proud tradition of methodological innovation and there is no better subfield in which to begin a debate that has fundamental implications for the whole discipline.     

Do Alternative Base Periods Increase Unemployment Insurance Receipt Among Low‐Educated Unemployed Workers?

Unemployment Insurance (UI) is the major social insurance program that protects against lost earnings resulting from involuntary unemployment. Existing literature finds that low‐earning unemployed workers experience difficulty accessing UI benefits. The most prominent policy reform designed to increase rates of monetary eligibility, and thus UI receipt, among these unemployed workers is the Alternative Base Period (ABP). In 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act sought to increase use of the ABP, making ABP adoption a necessary precondition for states to receive their share of the $7 billion targeted at UI programs. By January 2013, 40 states and the District of Columbia had adopted the ABP despite the absence of an evaluation of ABP efficacy using nationally representative data. This study analyzes Current Population Survey data from 1987 to 2011 to assess the efficacy of the ABP in increasing UI receipt among low‐educated unemployed workers. We used a natural‐experiment design to capture the combined behavioral and mechanical effects of the policy change. We found no association between state‐level ABP adoption and individual UI receipt for all unemployed workers. However, among part‐time unemployed workers with less than a high school degree, adoption of the ABP was associated with a 2.8 percentage point increase in the probability of UI receipt.     

The Science behind United States Smart Power in Honduras: Archaeological Heritage Diplomacy

The cultural heritage of Honduras offers a critical platform for United States heritage diplomacy under the United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Cultural Heritage Center. Of specific note is the formal 2004 Honduran–American Memorandum of Understanding for the preservation of cultural property and, beginning in 2001, periodic projects under the Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation. The diplomatic efficacy of American cultural heritage policy and the Ambassadors Fund comes from long-term, sustained funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fulbright Program. Established networks by archaeologists have enabled the successful re-entry of United States cultural diplomacy in Honduras in the last decade.     

The Human Rights Act – A New Equity or a New Opiate: Reinventing Justice or Repackaging State Control?

The proposed incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into the main stream of the United Kingdom's common law system has a number of historical parallels. This article considers what can usefully be drawn from these parallels and then analyses why the modern state feels impelled to take (what appears to be) such a fundamental constitutional step. It considers whether the incorporation agenda is in fact a more subtle discourse initiated by the 'Establishment' and designed to divert attention from matters of greater sensitivity to the state.     

The perils of investigating and certifying deaths in police custody.

Procedures leading to the proper investigation and certification of deaths occurring in police custody are discussed. The importance of training and experience, of interchange of information between investigator and forensic pathologist, and of common sense in the pursuit of fairness toward this end is emphasized.     

Stultifying Politics Today: The “Natural Science” Model in American Political Science—How is it Natural,Science, and a Model?

This article “follows the actors” to examine the high regard for “the natural science model” in contemporary American political science. How this model is accepted as a science remains an ongoing struggle for epistemic control. This conflict shapes ideological and institutional struggles over who dictates to whom how the “study of politics” is conducted in evolving mainstream professional networks as well as civil society at large given the organizational dynamics of the contemporary American research university. These approaches to “studying politics today” also appear to be “stultifying politics today” inasmuch as this putative methodological objectivity exerts a dulling effect on civic discourse, political vision, and active citizenship.