Money in Politics

As far as I can tell there are no odds markets like http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/, http://www.intrade.com for Slovakia’s politics, but there are more traditional bookies that sometimes deal in politics.  In 2006 Tipos (http://ekurz.etip.sk) dabbled in parliamentary odds, but did a rather poor job such that straight betting on the poll averages allowed would-be-bettors to make money (http://www.pozorblog.com/?p=18).  Now Nike (http://www2.nike.sk/index.php?cmd=sk/info/clanky/full-section/4480) has entered the fray with a presidential option.  This is probably a no-brainer since the election outcome is unlikely to change from current polls putting Gasparovic ahead, and betting on him at 1.2:1 would probably yield less than the transaction costs.  Still, I’ll try to follow these numbers and see if they change on a daily basis.  Here are the current odds:

Gasparovic, 1.2:1
Radicova, 3.5:1
Martinakova, 100:1
Miklosko, 120:1
Melnik, 800:1
Bollova, 900:1
Sidor: 1000:1

What makes the difference between Melnik’s 800 and Sidor’s 1000 is a curiosity, but I suppose if everybody other than Radicova was 500:1 it wouldn’t seem very interesting for the bettors.

Political Science 2.0: How Technological Change Affects Politics and Those Who Study It

Below please find notes for the talk I will give on March 31, 2008 at the Annual Doctoral Conference of the Poltical Science Department of Central European University. As befits the topic and this blog, I will be updating this page periodically to add resources and fill in the blanks. If you are reading this, I would appreciate your input in two ways:

  1. While availability permits, please take 5-10 minutes to answer a survey that will permit me to speak directly to the experience of current graduate students: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=zsU2Gt2zicoRK2LpcdaYsA_3d_3d
  2. Please leave comments in the designated section below. The more comments I can get beforehand, the better the presentation (and its successors) will be.

Introduction:
What’s a geek like me doing in a place like this…

I. Technology and Politics

II. The Web and Politics

III. Technology and Political Science

  • Working with words
  • Working with numbers
  • Working with others
    • Web 1.0
    • Web 2.0
    • O’Reilly on Web2.0
    • http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
    • Wikipedia on Web2.0 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2

IV. Web 2.0 and political science?

  • “Good News About What You Are Already Doing”
    • Folksonomies
    • Collective Intelligence
    • Distributed Processing
    • Reputation Economies
    • Object-centered social networks
      • http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/09/internet.web20/print
  • Andrew Chadwick’s Furl list:
    http://www.furl.net/member/Andrew_Chadwick
  • Andrew Chadwick explains his Furl list: http://www.andrewchadwick.com/archives/2008/02/entry_188.html
  • Jo Guldi explains how she uses del.icio.us in research:
    (see: http://landscape.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-delicious-is-changing-academic.html)
  • Educause, Seven Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking, http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7001.pdf
  • Opportunities
  • Dangers
  • Obligations