The nominations are trickling in, but there's more work to be done. We had some major IR blogging events this year -- Snowden, Egypt, Syria, Russia, etc.... and we're looking for nominations for the best work out there in 2013. We're still taking nominations...
As has been widely reported in the Western media, on Friday, China’s state media finally officially announced two changes in human rights policies: (a) an end of the “Laojiao” policy of...
Duck of Minerva is pleased to announce the second annual Online Achievement in International Studies (OAIS) Blogging Awards -- better known as the Duckie Awards -- and the second annual...
The reports about the bilateral agreement between the US and Afghanistan that would allow American troops (and other western countries essentially) have suggested that President Hamid Karzai would...
Yep, it is that time of year as each network rolls out its new programs with the first cancellations already being announced. This year, there is one that is under the radar--a sitcom based on Aliens. Check it out: Ok. Just a youtube bit of genius. Enjoy your weekend.
Human Rights Watch has a new report on the killing of 190 civilians in early August by members of five Islamist rebel groups: Ahrar al-Sham, Islamic State of Iraq and Sham, Jabhat al-Nusra, Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, Suquor al-Izz Congratulations to Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons on the Nobel Peace Prize. They won't have much time to celebrate given a mid-2014 timeline to destroy all of Syria's chemical weapons capabilities. Here's a link to this week's OPCW press conference on the latest from Syria with Director-General Ahmet Üzümcü and members of the Syria...
[Note: This is a guest post by Ardeshir Pezeshk, PhD candidate at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, in collaboration with Charli Carpenter.] For a brief moment a few weeks back, law and policy elites in the US gave serious consideration to whether there was a legal basis for a military strike in Syria, either under the auspices of civilian protection or norm protection. White House rhetoric quickly shifted away from humanitarian intervention and toward “norm enforcement” and with it the policy debate shifted from whether or not military strikes were the best tool toward that end (for now,...
The U.S. had two dramatic efforts to capture high priority terrorist targets, one in Libya and another in Somalia. The snatch and grab operation in Libya was a seeming success (though I'm wondering if last night's kidnapping of the Libyan Prime Minister was retaliation). The Somalia mission, coming one day after the 20th anniversary of the Black Hawk Down episode, was aborted when the team recognized that there was no way they could take their target alive, given heavy resistance and potential civilian casualties. The question that emerges from all this is: what the hell is the United...
Members of international institutions typically honor their commitments. But that does not, by itself, tell us much. States are unlikely to join institutions that require them to do things they have no intention of doing. Indeed, some argue that institutions merely act to screen out those least likely to comply. Others, however, have argued that institutions do in fact constrain states - that they are not mere epiphenomena. One prominent mechanism through which institutions are thought to alter state behavior is by mobilizing pro-compliance groups domestically. Institutions may lack...
There is much gnashing about citations of late. This tweet inspired the ensuing spew below: Formula predicts research papers' future citations https://t.co/4Hy8j3Glqj. I am afraid the citation game is getting out of hand. — John Panaretos (@J_Panaretos) October 5, 2013 But also this series of posts at the Monkey Cage last week on gender bias in citations (the link points to the final piece in the series, so it has links to the rest of the posts) raises questions about using citations as a metric of success. If the numbers are problematic, what should we do? Let's move back a step. ...
[Note: This is a guest post by Richard Price, Professor of Political Science at University of British Columbia and author of The Chemical Weapons Taboo.] Counter-intuitively, the first large-scale attack of chemical weapons (CW) in twenty five years is having the effect of actually reinforcing the CW taboo. Notably, both sides in Syria continue to deny that they used CW, reinforcing view that CW use unacceptable for anyone wanting to be accepted as a legitimate state actor in the international community. While there are of course counter-narratives, the fairly widespread government, public...
Some spoilers below re Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad, but good fun for a Friday chock full of deadlines Still just as much death, perhaps even more....