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Welcome to the New Duck
In advance of this year's ISA convention and the OAIS awards, we're happy to launch a new and improved Duck of Minerva with a revamped look and feel. You will notice automatically a direct link to...
Global shift – the US, China, and the Hong Kong Protests
This is a guest post by Grant Dawson, assistant professor of social science and international politics at The University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China and Cyrus Janssen is an American expat based in...
Should the United States Arm Ukraine?
With Russia's incursions into Ukraine becoming more aggressive, there has been a lot of chatter about whether or not the U.S. government should arm Ukraine with lethal weapons. Defense Secretary...
More Featured Posts
Friday Nerd Blogging: Poly-Superman
Of course, Brandon Routh really peaked in Scott Pilgrim as a Vegan-powered supervillain, but he is pretty good here as well: Where is Tom Welling when you need him?
Bayes, Stereotyping, and Rare Events
Sadly, many people do not realize that even if the majority of those who engage in behavior X belong to category Y, that does not mean that the majority of people in category Y engage in X. This point is often made, rightly, with respect to race and violent crime and religion and terror. But most treatments I've seen either imply that anyone who doesn't understand is a moron, or manage to scare away the target audience by throwing in a pile of math without explaining it. In this post, I'll try to actually explain why we can't conclude that most members of Y are prone to acts of X even if...
Thursday Morning Linkage
Here is your mid-morning linkage for this Thursday. Three strands this week: one on higher education and social science, another on conservation, and a third on global health. Oh, and CFR's International Affairs Fellowship is taking applications. Higher Education and Social Science You all saw the story by the Harvard prof (now tenured I might add!) who mused on treating her tenure-track position as a 7-year postdoc (and Steve's commentary). You probably also saw the broadside about shaking up the social sciences (and Dan's post). Here are some other social science-y and higher ed. stories...
Cyber Events Data and Foreign Policy Reactions
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Ryan C. Maness of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Brandon Valeriano of the University of Glasgow. In the rush to note the changing face of the battlefield, few scholars have actually examined the impact of cyber conflict on foreign policy dynamics. Instead most studies are of a hyperbolic nature that suggests the wide ranging impact of cyber conflict on daily social and military life. Here we attempt to cut through the bluff and bluster to examine exactly what happens between countries when cyber conflict is utilized as a foreign policy choice...
New Subnational African Education and Infrastructure Dataset
Todd Smith, Anustubh Agnihotri, and I have put together a new resource of subnational education and infrastructure access indicators for Africa, released as part of the Climate Change and Africa Political Stability (CCAPS) program at the University of Texas. This dataset provides data on literacy rates, primary and secondary school attendance rates, access to improved water and sanitation, household access to electricity, and household ownership of radio and television. The new CCAPS dataset includes data for 38 countries, covering 471 of Africa’s 699 first-level administrative districts. ...
What are the “Big Issues” of International Politics, and How Should Journals Address Them?
A common complaint among international-relations scholars is that our journals don't sufficiently engage with big, new, and pressing issues of world politics. Those that do, on the other hand, often get criticized for a lack of rigor. I've made this complaint before, in the context of the financial crisis, and Kate Weaver offered some thoughts about "what's wrong" with IPE. But the problem extends far beyond the financial crisis and IPE. Standard explanations for this state of affairs include: the length of the publication cycle: it can take years to get from paper, to submission, to making...
Tiwesdæg: the Left-hand of Linkage
Just a handful of things today.... Michael Krepon: "inferred vs. demonstrable deterrence." Election fraud, the 1862 election, and the outcome of the Civil War. Matt Fay likes the new Lieber and Press article on nuclear terrorism. "Prisoner's Dilemma" is a metaphor, but I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone tried it on actual prisoners. Via lots of academics. Robin Hanson riffs on metrics for scholars.... and elaborates a notion of "impressive power." And also: I used to drive the spouse to work via Logan Circle, back when it was largely known to outsiders as a hangout for...
About Those Israel Academic Study Trips…
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Kavita Khory, Professor of Political Science at Mount Holyoke College. Last spring the Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) of Boston invited me to participate in a weeklong study tour to Israel. Designed for scholars of international relations, political science, and public policy, the purpose of the educational tour was to provide an “in-depth firsthand exposure” to Israel and promote a “deeper understanding” of its politics and society. The faculty study tour, now in its fourth or fifth iteration, is billed as the cornerstone of the organization’s...