Our faculty push their areas of expertise forward with innovative, data-driven research.
The Institute for Politics and Strategy has strong ties to the Center for Informed Democracy and Social-cybersecurity (IDeaS). Dr. Mark Kamlet, University Professor of Economics and Public Policy, and Provost Emeritus, is a co-Director. So is Dr. Kathleen Carley, a member of the IPS Executive Committee and a Professor of Computer Science in the Institute for Software Research, an IEEE Fellow, and the Director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems. IPS faculty members Ignacio Arana, Baruch Fischhoff, and Daniel Silverman also serve as IDeaS faculty. Learn more
An IDeaS and IPS event with The Wall Street Journal's Jessica Donati and Lisa Curtis from CNAS.


Coups are a leading cause of the death of democracy and breakdown of constitutional rule. Though they often have massive political and economic consequences, their origins are notoriously difficult to study, in part because they are plotted under the veil of secrecy. When coup makers strike, it isn’t always clear who is behind the coup or what they want, and debate can arise about whether what is happening is a coup at all. Sorting through the who, what, when, where, and why of coup attempts since World War II is hard, but that’s what IPS Assistant Teaching Professor John Chin has worked on for the past seven years. Read more
The World Leaders Database Project is an extension of Assistant Teaching Professor Ignacio Arana's research on elites. This database is currently being integrated and contains detailed biographical information about the more than 1,800 national leaders that have governed countries around the world from 1970-2020. The goal is to address pressing questions about how the uniqueness of national leaders may relate to issues of foreign policy and domestic governance, including tendencies towards authoritarianism and policies related to democratic development.

