{"id":46043,"date":"2012-04-12T11:25:34","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T16:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=46043"},"modified":"2012-04-09T18:49:25","modified_gmt":"2012-04-09T23:49:25","slug":"presidents-who-kill-people-are-popular","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/04\/12\/presidents-who-kill-people-are-popular\/","title":{"rendered":"Presidents Who Kill People are Popular"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at OrgTheory<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

David Henderson and Zachary Gouchenour have\u00a0a paper on the topic of presidential rating<\/a>s. The finding is simple. American war casualties, as a fraction of the population, positively correlate with how historians rate U.S. presidents. More death = better presidents. The regression model includes some controls, like economic growth. Here\u2019s the chart:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is consistent with sociological research on state building, which has traditionally linked wars, bureaucratic growth, and tax collection. See, for example, Charles Tilly\u2019s classic work\u00a0\u201cWarmaking and Statemaking as Organized Crime.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 My one criticism of the paper is that there is no measure in the regression that controls for \u201cbig legislation\u201d (i.e., New Deal). Historians like law passing and it might account for some variation. I have a hunch that is how variation on the right hand side of the figure would be explained.<\/p>\n

Henderson and Gouchenour then spin out the policy implication. Greatness rankings by historians may prompt presidents to start more wars. The historians may have more blood on their hands than we care to admit.<\/p>\n

Adverts:\u00a0From Black Power<\/a>\/Grad Skool Rulz<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

—————————<\/p>\n

Fabio Rojas<\/a>\u00a0is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Indiana University. He is the author of two books:\u00a0From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Grad Skool Rulz: Everything You Need to Know about Academia from Admissions to Tenure<\/a>. \u00a0Rojas’\u00a0academic research addresses political sociology, organizational analysis, and computer simulations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at OrgTheory. David Henderson and Zachary Gouchenour have\u00a0a paper on the topic of presidential ratings. The finding is simple. American war casualties, as a fraction of the population, positively correlate with how historians rate U.S. presidents. More death = better presidents. The regression model includes some controls, like economic growth. Here\u2019s the chart: This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[41,233,253,3920,85,133,309],"class_list":["post-46043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-celebrity","tag-death","tag-history","tag-nation-united-states","tag-politics","tag-violence","tag-warmilitary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46043"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46047,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46043\/revisions\/46047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}