Steve Saideman’s recent Duck piece on international relations scholars’ relative silence on issues of pandemics, and public health more generally, has ruffled feathers[1]and generated a lot of discussion: about marginalization of certain research outlets and...
The Covid-19 pandemic has led to many useful discussions about public health, social responsibility, and tips for online learning. See the many great posts that have gone up here. One thing that...
This is a guest post from Peter Verovšek, a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Politics/International Relations at the University of Sheffield The Coronavirus has turned us all into amateur...
* I have changed the title as I got plenty of pushback on twitter--that there is plenty of IR on Pandemics, not just in the major journals. And I will add an update at the bottom later to address...
This is a guest post from Karen A. Grépin, Associate Professor, School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong As cases of COVID-19 soar globally, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan have garnered accolades from the international community for having kept their epidemics relatively under control through mid-March - despite the incredible threat they all faced earlier in the year of imported cases from China. With all of the praise flowing to Hong Kong, one might expect citizens to also have good things to say about their government’s handling of the outbreak - but you would be wrong. In fact,...
This is a guest post from Jeffrey C. Isaac and William Kindred Winecoff who both teach political science at Indiana University, Bloomington Last Wednesday the two of us circulated an open letter from U.S. political scientists, expressing concern about how the crisis surrounding the COVID pandemic could endanger the November election, and declaring that “We Must Urgently Work to Guarantee Free and Fair Democratic Elections in November” (posted at bottom). The letter endorsed the excellent report produced by legal scholars at the Brennan Center for Justice, entitled “Responding to the...
This is a guest post by Richard W. Maass, an Associate Professor at the University of Evansville. His research focuses on international security, US foreign policy, terrorism, and diplomatic history. He has a forthcoming book on how democracy and xenophobia limited US territorial expansion (Cornell UP, May 2020). The international experience of COVID-19 will have many implications for international relations. Scholars have already begun discussing its implications for IR theories, hegemonic stability theory, and measures of state capacity. When all is said and done, I think the central...
As the world rushes to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, international relations scholars have a lot to say. We are not public health experts, or pathologists. But we can speak to the way states respond to common threats and the political process needed to formulate an effective response. One common reference is the realist idea of self-interest driving state behavior and undermining collective action. Yet, while realism as an inclination can explain what's going on, Realism as a scholarly theory cannot. Many scholars and general observers of international relations have reacted with...
We conclude our look at a classic work of feminist international theory.
This crisis has us all having a lot of feelings. I am feeling a bit nostalgic for Hegemonic Stability Theory. While Comparative Politics will have much to say about why countries varied in their responses (also see Max Brooks's World War Z [the book, NOT the movie] to get a taste of the comparative politics of pandemics), it is the job of IR (and epidemiologists) to discuss why the disease spread as it did and why the international community largely failed. While there are many theories that may apply, I think that HST applies quite well. Others have had great stuff on this--Paul Poast...
Catherine Sanger talks about the challenges and opportunities of moving teaching online.