Professor Julie Kaarbo (U. of Edinburgh) discusses role theory, the relationship between FPA and IR theory, and a new project she is calling Breaking Bad. As always thanks go to Steve Dancz (https://stevedancz.com) for our theme music.
I woke up this morning to read (a few hours behind most of you...one of the few downsides to living in the Pacific Northwest is living behind the news cycle!) about the finalizing of a nuclear deal...
Last night, I posted this about sexism in political science. It has gotten a pretty strong response getting 10x as many hits (so far) as my usual post, lots of retweets by female political...
In late May, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) released a white paper on China’s Military Strategy. This public release is the first of its kind, and it has received relatively little attention...
I don't care much for APSA. Indeed, this year I am continuing my recent tradition of skipping it entirely. But it always occasions discussion in the political-science blogsphere. This year the focus of that discussion, at least as it pertains to conferencing as an activity, appears to be on "networking." Steve recently echoed the substantive part of Brian's post in recommending a focus on meeting younger scholars rather than pursuing brief meetings with "big names" in the field. He also suggests a variety of social and professional events as good venues to meet people. Dan Drezner advises...
Dan's post on his self-experiment in raising citations to female scholars has drawn a critical comment from someone who wonders about whether similar patterns exist with reference to minority scholars and scholars from outside North America. The issues of gender, race, and national (regional) origin are distinct, but if we're going to have a wide-ranging discussion about inclusion and exclusion in the field then we ought to address these issues squarely. Just to be clear about the parameters of this discussion: it seems clear to me that we need to discuss the recruitment, retention, and...
Both because of the unexpected direction yesterday took, and because I haven't worked through my thoughts about any number of pressing current events, I thought I'd write about an experiment that I've been engaging in with my recent academic papers. You might recall the Maliniak, Powers, and Walter paper (soon to be out with International Organization) on citations and the gender gap. As Walter reported at Political Violence @ a Glance: .... articles written by women in international relations are cited significantly less than articles written by men. This is true even if you control for...
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 they made me see the world differently. Most persuaded me of their core arguments, but all made me think and even ask questions I had never asked before. My reading is fairly random as my interests are fairly wide (I read and research in IR and comparative, in ethnic conflict and civil-military relations--but note I do not read IPE or Environmental stuff, for example). I read some of these books...
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 course want to be read, and I try to use humor to get my points across. I think that most humor, or at least mine, tries to go up to the edge of inappropriateness without crossing it. You don’t know until you cross it until you do, however. I would have never posted this if I thought that it would hurt a lot of feelings. Second, I felt that people were missing the main message, which was to focus...
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 they are lucky), I thought I would post some thoughts about networking. There was a post earlier today that did address such stuff, but, well, stuff happened. A key point was lost in the course of events--that networking sideways and down is far easier and perhaps far more fruitful than trying to connect with the big names in the discipline. For many networking is pretty uncomfortable stuff, as...
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 scholars in video games. Our case rests on a comparison of the number of people who have played franchises such as Halo and Mass Effect to those who have watched the re-imagined BSG. But the downside to neglect isn't simply about the size of audience and consequent real-world significance. Non-gamers may not know it, but recent years have seen a wave of experimentation in video games driven by the rise...
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 defenders of the democratic process who would have wanted Morsi to leave via the ballot box. I also am sympathetic to the claims that the Muslim Brotherhood was running the country in to a ditch. Unfortunately, the military response seems to have made things much worse. All of this suggests that democratic transitions can be bloody and unstable moments in a country's history. Here are some links...