Watch Game of Thrones or you might be foolish enough to dare a mighty Khal to engage in a slap game.
Friday Nerd Blogging Extra: Just Some Good Advice
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Watch Game of Thrones or you might be foolish enough to dare a mighty Khal to engage in a slap game.
I have been thinking of listing a bunch of my favorite 2000s+ Political Science books, and a variety of circumstances has inspired me to finally write the list . These books make my list because...
Some of you have asked why I pulled the post, “Intellectual Jailbait: Networking at APSA,” which I put up last night. First, a lot of people were obviously hurt by the post. Those of us who blog of...
The question of networking tends to arise as conferences approach. With APSA less than two weeks away (which means discussants are going to be getting papers any day now--ok, in about a week if...
Chris Blattman links to a paper (PDF) that finds no relationship between oil production and violence. He comments: Regardless what you believe, however, there’s a striking shortage of null results papers published in top journals, even when later papers overturn the results. I’m more and more sickened by the lack of interest in null results. All part of my growing disillusionment with economics and political science publishing (and most of our so-called findings). Sigh… To which I say, "Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes!" If we really care about truth-seeking in the social sciences, let alone...
In the spirit of last night's post, two blogs worth reading: Empirical Legal Studies and The Cultural Cognition Project at Yale. Here's Carolyn Shapiro at the former talking about two posts by Dan Kahan at the latter. Every once in a while I attempt to goad PTJ by sending him links to pieces that are sure to raise his hackles. I tried that with Gary King's "all your case studies are belong to us" paper (PDF). Now I'm trying it with Phil Schrodt's response to Walt and Mearsheimer at his new blog, A Second Mouse. Joshua Goodman on the rise of the Israeli right. Also at The Smoked-Filled...
PM's latest post, "Nobody cares about foreign policy" (note to self: we need a style manual to resolve whether, for example, post titles should be capitalized), was prompted by a proseminar we both attended on Monday. At this proseminar, the always-interesting and invariably thoughtful Elizabeth Saunders presented part of her book project: a paper entitled "The Electoral Disconnection in US Foreign Policy." Among other things, Saunders argues that theories of "democratic international relations" -- particularly those surrounding audience costs -- need to incorporate a central insight from...
It bears repeating that nobody votes on foreign policy, and most folks don't know anything about it anyway (remember that a nontrivial number of Americans think South Korea is our greatest enemy). I'll quote myself: [N]obody gives a damn about foreign policy. Theories of democratic responsiveness and empirical models of foreign policy choice need to begin with this fact. Nobody cares! That thing we do? The international relations bit? It's somewhat less important than professional bowling or HGTV. [Americans] only care about security--and their understanding of that is about as sophisticated...
Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ducks at sea! China The New York Times reports Western studios are giving Chinese censors early access to their films. Wikipedia's background on Chinese film censorship. Alyssa Rosenberg discussed this in June. Some Chinese directors don't like censorship Some in Taiwan are suspicious of cross-strait media deals More traditional censorship of Chinese media persists (more, more) But the media can now report on (appalling) air quality and the government might be seeking to reduce air pollution And Dan Drezner updates on China's non-leverage via...
Quite a weekend, the opening of Zero Dark Thirty in the U.S. reminding everyone of the interventionist elements of the Obama Doctrine (see my next post) and a full-fledged French intervention in Mali, not to mention U.S. assistance with a French hostage liberation operation tucked away on the inside pages. Washington, D.C. is a funny place these days...all but two of the think tanks here are obsessed with the rise of China and just about the entire U.S. foreign policy establishment is choking on economic austerity and therefore fully inclined to doubt that our government or any other can...
Good mornin', here's your morning linkage... Mali Pascal Fletcher provides a good analysis of the challenges ahead for the French-led intervention in Mali. Angelique Chrisafis also examines the domestic stakes and neo-colonial implications of Mr. Hollande's War. Saudi Arabia The Saudi government beheaded a maid, who was a minor employed for two weeks when a child in her care died. She was tried without legal representation. Executing a minor is a violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child to which Saudi Arabia is a signatory. Forty-five other maids are on death row, some for...
Me: And, in fact, bargaining theory suggests that [abandoning the "platinum coin" option] strengthens Obama’s hand. Krugman: Meanwhile, I get calls. The White House insists that it is absolutely, positively not going to cave or indeed even negotiate over the debt ceiling — that it rejected the coin option as a gesture of strength, as a way to put the onus for avoiding default entirely on the GOP.