Dylan Matthews:
NYU political scientist Joshua Tucker and PM at Duck of Minerva have compiled a good set of political science research into papal elections. It’s a sensitive subject because, as GWU professors Forrest Maltzman, Melissa Schwartzberg and the late Lee Sigelman put it in their paper on Benedict’s election, “Officially, Ratzinger’s selection was attributed to the will of God, a force not amenable to any empirical test that is in our power to conduct.”
...
...a funny thing happened in 1996. John Paul II issued Universi Dominici Gregis, a document revising the two-thirds requirement. In filibuster parlance, he went nuclear.
[emphasis added]
Read the
post; there's plenty more where that came from...
