If you've got a ballott -- i.e., an email with a survey link -- and you haven't voted for the OAIS blogging awards, time is running out. Don't let your vote be the difference between elimination and survival for your favorite blog.
If you've got a ballott -- i.e., an email with a survey link -- and you haven't voted for the OAIS blogging awards, time is running out. Don't let your vote be the difference between elimination and survival for your favorite blog.
Given the growing debate surrounding "Zero Dark Thirty", it is now mandatory to have a strong opinion on the movie. In addition to the excellent posts on this blog, including "Zero Dark Thirty"...
Political scientists often say that 'no one reads books anymore.' I'd add that 'almost no one reads book reviews.' This is a shame. Although most book reviews are paint-by-numbers affairs, some...
This is a guest post by Dorit Geva. Geva is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Central European University, and has written a book on conscription politics in France and the United States....
A little over four years ago the U.S. Department of Defense issued its first Minerva grants. These often substantial awards have produced a significant number of publications by some of the "best and brightest" (including long-term Duck of Minerva guest blogger Josh Busby) in the field and, whether directly or indirectly, shaped the nature of (at least) contemporary security studies. But it seems to me that we haven't had anything resembling a robust discussion about consequent costs and benefits to political science, international relations, and security studies. A brief search online...
Tomorrow is the last day to cast your vote for the finalists in each OAIS Blogging Award category. I am pleasantly surprised by the response rate. Far more people have casts ballots than we anticipated when we rashly decided to start this thing. Please do note that voter registration is closed. We are not accepting new requests for ballots. That's all, folks.
> Anyone have good recommendations for following developments in Iraq? Yeah, remember Iraq? I hear things aren't exactly ice-cream and puppies there. Dan Brumberg and Steve Heydemann have a new Wilson Center report: "Global Authoritarians and the Arab Spring: New Challenges for U.S. Diplomacy." The Russian MOD looks to return to defense-industry autarky. I wonder if there are any implications for the claim that the globalization of defense production accounts for the end of the Cold War? Video of the PRC's AMB system test. "China and Central Asia in 2013" at Jamestown's China Brief. Jonathan...
Let's get to the news and the comments: Tim Burke talks about the real intersection of science fiction, the great convergence, and international governance [Easily Distracted] Surowiecki talks Boeing and outsourcing [The New Yorker] Have Malian rebels destroyed ancient texts? [The New Yorker] Maybe intercepting a Taepo-dong is illegal [The Diplomat] I like reading about Mongolia and I don't think I have to justify it [The Diplomat] And also: This profile of former NFL coach Bill Walsh's quest for perfection mirrors many academics' lives [ESPN: The Magazine] IRB Horror Stories [Institutional...
In case folks have missed it, there is an upcoming deadline (FRIDAY!) for the 2013 ECPR General Conference in Bordeaux, September 4-7th.  Unlike many other conferences, EPCR paper proposals are submitted to already-organized panels. This often results in more cohesive panels and, one hopes, more helpful feedback.  Paper proposals are due this coming Friday and can be submitted through the various organized sections listed here.  ... And the conference is in Bordeaux, which is lovely and features nifty, futuristic trams built by Alain Juppé (pre-scandal). For those of you who work on...
This is a guest post by Brandon Valeriano and Ryan Maness. Cyberwar is a pressing international security problem. The news media breathlessly covers any potential attack before the facts are in. Policy briefs and reports are produced on all levels of government and private industry. It would then behoove us to take a step back and examine opinions about the cyber security threat according to perceptions among policymakers, academics, and cyber security experts in order to understand how the threat emanating from the cyber security realm is constructed in the public discourse. Each...
Last May, Jon Monten, Will Inboden and I published on Foreignaffairs.com the results of a survey of about 40 U.S. foreign policy professionals, split equally among Republicans and Democrats with nearly all of them having served in some capacity in the Executive Branch. As I discussed here on the Duck, we found some surprising sources of strength for bipartisan support for certain aspects of international cooperation, namely for Bretton Woods institutions, NATO, and on international trade. We wondered if Executive Branch folks were somehow different from their peers who served in a similar...
It’s a question faced by scientists daily: if you found that X wasn't associated with Y, would you report it?  What if you found that treatment X was harmful to Y, would you report your findings? For example, let’s say you are an oncologist and you just concluded, based on years of research, that smoking wasn’t associated with cancer  – would you report your findings? What if you were employed by the cancer drug’s maker or dealing with cancer personally, would you report your findings about treatment X then? Is it unethical to leave the results unpublished? Questions of personal biases and...