I have read with great interest over the last few days posts by Jeffrey Stacey and now Sean Kay on the gap between scholarship and policy. I agree with much of what they said - seriously - and I want to raise a more positive spin on some of these issues. I the gap...
Some random findings for the day.... Putin's idea of transparency. Look for more private security firms profiting in the post-Benghazi world... Also, the IDF's use of Twitter during its recent...
Three particular themes stand out when reading The Hydrogen Sonata as a utopian narrative. The first is that whatever happens, politics seem to be an inevitable feature of human life. Second, that however advanced technology may become, nothing beats human communication. Third, that purpose is essential.
General Warning: this is emphatically not a spoiler-free Forum! Hence all of the text all of the contributions will be safely below the fold, and only the identifying information for the author of...
There are many things I find unsurprising about Robert Orisko's claims in the Georgetown Public Policy Review about hiring patterns in academic political science. Among those are the disparate reactions produced by its summary in Inside Higher Education. In brief, Orisko argues that academic political-science hiring displays dynamics more associated with status-conserving cliques than an efficient market. This tracks with (more sophisticated) comparative studies of hiring patterns which suggest variation across different disciplines. As Kieran Healy discussed of the earlier study back in...
This graph comes to you from a newly published article on the politics of the drone campaign published this week in International Studies Perspectives. I haven't yet read the full piece so cannot yet comment on it substantively or theoretically. Nor have I looked closely at the authors' code-book. However based on the abstract, the analysis appears to rest on the empirical evidence of a newly coded dataset (the latest of many out there presuming to calculate the percentage of civilians - v. non-civilians - killed in drone strikes) to make claims about the justifiability of such...
Ghana votes.  Egyptian protesters move from Tahrir to the presidential palace. Rio's Olympics clean-up uncovers policemen collaborating with drug cartels. Chronicle of Higher Education visualization of gender and publication records across disciplines and over time. Political science not doing so well. For those interested in civilian casualties and war, Chinamanda Adichie has written a moving and very informative review of Chinua Achebe's controversial new book on Biafra. Jim Scott has a farm.  Chris Blattman reads Scott's new book and says that the biggest problem with international...
Hi everyone. I haven’t been around much lately as I’ve been furiously writing a book. But it is almost done and I’m feeling reflective. Have you missed me? I’ve missed you. What’s that you say? Why yes, this is a new shirt. Thank you for noticing. I thought that I would offer some thoughts about where I think international relations research is heading in the near to medium-term future, based on what I’ve noticed about the job market, what friends are writing, and the sometimes surprising reactions to what I am doing on the part of others. Obviously this is all anecdotal and unsystematic, as...
"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Â So spoke Winston Churchill, after the Allied victory in the Second Battle of El Alamein. Â We could say much the same of his defeat in the 1945 general election. Â A core assumption underlying most of the work analyzing the impact of domestic politics on international relations is that leaders want to remain in office. Â Insofar as ensuring national survival, territorial integrity, and policy autonomy might help leaders retain power, focusing on political ambition often does not tell...
We have two exciting developments to report concerning guest bloggers at the Duck. First, Adrienne LeBas'  From Protest to Parties: Party-Building and Democratization in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2011) has been awarded "Best Book in African Politics" at the 2012 African Studies Association Annual Meeting by the African Politics Conference Group. Many congratulations to Adrienne on this well-deserved prize. Second, we are excited to introduce a new guest blogger, Dr. Jeffrey Stacey. Jeff is currently Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Paul H. Nitze...
Dan's still ill so you're stuck with me for Day Two. Here's some links: Via The Monkey Cage (I'm not stealing, I'm curating) comes this link to an Inside Higher Ed article about the five-year humanities Ph.D.. Identity, legacy, institutions, and Indiana basketball One of the things that grabs me about IR scholarship is that (to my knowledge) churches are not among the IOs or NGOs that we study on their own terms. But consider the Anglican communion. (Please correct me, don't flame me, in the comments--and remember that Dan isn't writing this.) Or, of course: habemus twitter. Despite what...
In the recent conversations about Policy PhDs and such, one of the frequent assertions was that people going into PhD programs had no idea what they were getting into. Why do we assert such things? All I can say is that I had no clue not just about what was involved in a PhD program, but also what was involved in being a prof. Let me review some of my beliefs and the realities I have experienced over the past two decades.* * I will leave aside the job market stuff (like not controlling where I would live). Despite warnings from my adviser at Oberlin, I thought profs spent much of their...