In the Monkey Cage’s recent symposium on gender and political science, David Lake writes how important it is that our scholarly networks become less gendered, how male scholars must make an effort to mentor women in the field. In my view, the importance of...
In our conclusion to Kiersey and Neumann's Battlestar Galatica and International Relations, Peter Henne and I lament the relative lack of interest among cultural-turn international-relations...
Sad turn of events in Egypt, a situation in which the U.S. is inextricably implicated. Not sure if there was a policy course we should have followed that would have been different. I understand the...
The last two years saw some major stories in my corner of the blogsphere concerning sexual harassment. Colin McGinn's resignation from the University of Miami saw widespread discussion across the...
I completely forgot to flog this at the Duck. I'm sure that disappointed, oh, about zero people. Nonetheless, I persevere. From the write up: I first learned about Felix Gilman‘s work from the influential academic blog Crooked Timber. I proceeded to read Thunderer, Gears of the City, and Half-Made World and found myself impressed by Gilman’s distinctive settings, themes, and voice. It should surprise no one, in my view, that Thunderer received a nomination for the 2009 Locus Award for Best First Novel and that it also garnered Gilman a nomination for the John W. Campbell Best New Writer...
Some prominent liberal commentators are upset that Treasury and the Fed have ruled out the "$1 trillion coin" option. The basic reasoning: the declaration weakens the President's bargaining position and forecloses a way that it could have ameliorated the consequences of a failure to extend the debt limit. I suspect that the reason for the declaration was sincere: key players believe that it is neither legal nor prudent. The second is Ezra Klein's position. He also notes that the decision coheres what the administration has been arguing all along: The administration’s position is that raising...
We're still getting ballot requests. They tend to come in waves. Indeed, the last one all came from individuals at the same university. Hmmm. Anyway, if you've asked for a ballot and still haven't gotten an email with instructions, let us know. All the information that you need about the nominees and procedures is now centralized at the 2013 OAIS Awards page. Note that we ask voters to choose three (3) finalists for the Best Blog category, six (6) for the Best Individual Blog category, four (4) for the Most Promising New Blog, and five (5) for Best Post. This means that, even if you have...
Tom responds to Peter Henne's questions. 1. Is there an objective standard for “so what?” No, there is not. Yet, this doesn't make it fully subjective. Any good paper will explain why what it reports matters, and few papers under-sell their findings. A reviewer's job is to evaluate the degree to which those assertions are warranted. A good rule of thumb here might be, if you are struggling to decide whether a paper you are reviewing is important, it isn't. 2. When is a methodological flaw a disqualifier? Always. Whether such flaws warrant a reject or an R&R depends upon the severity of...
French troops took on an active combat role in Mali yesterday. Mark Leon Goldberg provides a short overview. After long delays, western African troops are reported to be headed for the country as well. There are interesting resonances here with Barak Mendelsohn's Combating Jihadism. In Syria, a jihadist group overran a government airbase. David Collier on Iran's Kurdish population. Marc Lynch assesses the "battle over Egypt's constitution." Dmitry Gorenburg evaluates Russian naval modernization. Paul Pillar questions the wisdom of "sabre rattling" when dealing with Iran. Modeling war at The...
Reader Anjali Dayal sends along this image from Foreign Policy (since corrected): Presumably Mr. Putin has not yet overturned Roe v. Wade. (On the other hand, I am reminded of this Onion classic.)
Brad Delong calls this "hoisted from the archives," which is clearly a better term for what I'm doing. But, as that's taken and I'm not as smart as the great economics professor, I guess I'll just have to stick with this alternative. Guns and Genocide, version 96.12b From 11 June 2005 After the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy advocates in Tiananmen Square by the People’s Liberation Army, the NRA ran advertisements claiming that if the protesters had been armed, they could’ve defended themselves and thus prevented the anti-democracy crackdown. This kind of argument, rooted in the (correct)...
About a year ago I introduced an ocasional series called "Quarter-Baked Ideas." The idea was to blog about semi-formed thoughts related to international affairs. The whole notion turned about to be quarter-baked: I haven't done another one until now. Do rising powers have an intrinsic advantage in "flexibility" when compared to dominant ones? The answer to this question matters a great deal, I submit, to debates over the persistence and decline of hegemonic orders. As I've alluded to before, there's a curious blindspot in mainstream hegemonic-order theory. On the one hand, hegemonic-order...