Predicting War




With Good Reason show

Summary: New research shows that when elections are forced on a country within five years of the end of a war, a new war will break out. The findings by Thomas Flores (George Mason University) might lead to a review of common regime-change practices. Also: April Faye Manalong (Norfolk State University) says that the concept of 'indebtedness' to their new home in the United States is a prime motivating factor among the Filipino community. It is also a factor in the communities' strong ties to military service. Plus: One-for-one models of giving purport to offer consumers a simple way to fight poverty. But as Shawn Humphrey (University of Mary Washington) learned from his own charitable efforts in Honduras, the work of doing good is a complex process and one that requires constant humility. Later in the show: In the 1970s, a series of laws ushered in a new "sunshine era" of unprecedented government transparency. In his new book Secrecy in the Sunshine Era, Jason Ross Arnold (Virginia Commonwealth University) investigates how government officials have developed new workarounds, including over-classification, concealment, shredding, and burning. And: Has the Magna Carta's 800-year legacy been a snowball of misinterpretations? Thomas McSweeney (College of William and Mary) says he doesn't think its authors intended it to be the foundational text for common law that it became. Plus: A commission of experts has determined that new history textbooks approved by the Board of Education in Texas were pushing a specific ideology. One of the experts, Emile Lester (University of Mary Washington), says parts of the textbooks weren't just misleading; they were false.