ess than a year after the appearance of "The False Promise of International Institutions," the journal International Security published replies from Robert Keohane and Lisa Martin, John Ruggie, Clifford and Charles Kupchan, and Alexander Wendt....
Seems to be the time of year when folks post their advice for aspiring professors on how to succeed at the job talk. While there are other parts of the process--being interviewed one on one by...
I broke up with Michel Foucault. Well, that's not entirely accurate. I sort of ghosted him. Let me explain. When I was in grad school I fell in love with Foucault. He was just exactly what I was...
As has become a tradition, political scientists who are active on twitter are meeting up at the APSA: Thursday, 7pm at Pennsylvania 6, a nearby bar. The idea is to get a chance to chat with people...
I realize I am putting my Twitter standings at great risk by potentially appearing to make light of an important social issue.* But when I found this treatise on the importance of tighter regulations for dragons I couldn't resist sharing. Happy Friday! Game of Thrones - Dragon Control by TheShortsShow *Though I hate to disagree with anyone whose work I admire so greatly, and though no one can really argue with Katee Sakhoff's call for gun safety, as a political scientist I must say that Sakhoff is wrong on gun control. First, there is important evidence from experimental studies that on...
Following on my round of links on Thursday, this is a guest post from Jennifer Hadden from the University of Maryland who is in Warsaw at the global climate negotiations (follow her on Twitter here). Yeb Saño, Climate Change Commissioner of the Philippines, opened the annual negotiations of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change last week by making an emotional appeal to delegates to "stop the madness" and act decisively on climate change. As of Thursday evening, there have been two three walkouts by the G77/China on the issue of 'loss and damage' and a substantial and broad-based...
The annual climate negotiations are going on at the moment in Warsaw, Poland. For long-time observers of the process, they have a Groundhog Day-esque quality to them. Every year the same issues seem to come up again and again, and it's unclear if there has been any meaningful progress or if each negotiation is more or less a replay of what transpired the previous year, with divisions between developed and developing countries almost always ever-present. Rich countries aren't doing enough while poor countries and environmental activists are demanding greater action because there is a climate...
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 “re-education through labor” and (b) a change in the one-child policy in China, allowing two children per family if at least one of the parents was a single child (before both parents had to be only children). Other, somewhat underreported, changes coming from the same official media report about the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China included a reduction 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 International Studies Blogging Reception at ISA in Toronto. We are asking Duck readers to submit nominations for the awards and later to vote for the three finalists in each category. Last year's winners have generously agreed to judge the finalists and select the 2014 winners. Once again, we are thrilled that with the support of SAGE and the efforts of SAGE editor David Mainwaring and the Sage staff, we will...
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 support the agreement if President Obama apologized or admitted mistakes in the conduct of the war. This, of course, has produced a reaction or two, given that President Karzai might have a lot of gall to be asking of this given that more than three thousand outsiders (Americans, Danes, Canadians, etc) gave their lives to help the Afghan government. On the other hand, Obama just apologized for...
My new job as semi-weekly Tuesday linker is off to an uneven start. I am behind on link collection as I was roaming this past weekend in the cell phone sense--in the US where my cell phone is super-expensive and wifi was not so available. Anyhow, here are some links that may be of interest to the Duck community (or not). IR/Conflict Stuff Christian Davenport has been blogging various tales from his fieldwork in Rwanda. Just some amazing tales that provide heaps of perspective sauce. Cullen Hendrix provides a very timely post on whether natural disasters cause or exacerbate political...
The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots secured an important victory last week when delegates of States Parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) voted unanimously to take up the issue as part of their work to oversee the implementation and further development of the 1980 treaty, which regulates weapons causing inhuman injuries to combatants or civilians. The CCW process, which includes yearly meetings of state parties as well as review conferences every five years, have become a periodic forum for discussions not only of how to enforce existing rules, but of norm-building...