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How to Lose a Conference in 4 Days: why we attend the ISA to miss the ISA
I can still remember my first ISA conference. I was a PhD student eager to present early work at the freezing Montreal conference (not the last Montreal, the one before that). I remember being...
OAIS Blogging Awards: And the Finalists Are….
Thanks to all of you who voted for this year’s OAIS Blogging Awards finalists. We had an amazing pool of nominees again this year in all four categories. We had a record voter turnout -- it's...
The merits of the concept of terrorism
About a week ago I published a piece with the International Relations and Security Network (ISN) on the analytical and political utility (or lack thereof) of the concept of terrorism. I cannot...
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Thursday Afternoon Linkage
Before posting some mid-Thursday afternoon linkage, here is a little musing on not overstating the influence of social media on entertainment and politics. For a moment this week, the horribleness that was the SyFy Channel's Sharknado set off a mini-Twitter storm that resulted in: a bunch of tweets but still dismal ratings for the made for TV movie. This reminded me of the fleeting victory in Texas for supporters of abortion rights: while State Senator Wendy Davis' filibuster scored 200,000 live-stream viewers on the Texas Tribune website and netted her $1 million for a future gubernatorial...
Talking Academic Journals: Online Fora
At the end of May I posted the Georgetown-anchored bid for International Studies Quarterly that provides a roadmap for what we intend to do with the journal. I also briefly discussed the online model we're developing for International Studies Quarterly Online, an effort under the capable supervision of PTJ. And yes, we might need a better name for it. Among the online-only content that expect to include on the website are symposia and fora. We envision this content as less formal and shorter than what you would normally expect in International Studies Review (ISR) or International Studies...
The Global Diffusion of Bikeshares (I)
Editor's Note: This started off as two bullet points, but it’s morphed into a surprisingly lengthy piece about Bikeshares. Blame the easy availability of both picturesque bike rides and cheap wine in Western Europe. This is the first installment; a second will follow. At the age of 19, I moved to the Netherlands for a summer. Like most tourists, I had read about the famous Dutch “white bikes,” a non-locked bike-sharing system that guidebooks were fond of presenting as proof of Dutch civic-mindedness. The system was simple: see a white bike, take, use, leave wherever. Of course, there...
Tiwesdæg: the Left-hand of Linkage
Henry Farrell and Abe Newman have a new piece at Foreign Affairs Online on the NSA's surveillance of European Union officials. They argue, among other things, that: "For the last several years, those interested in promoting intelligence sharing with the United States have been winning. If European governments now decide to curtail that cooperation -- a decision that seems increasingly likely -- Washington will have only itself to blame." International water law and the slide toward conflict over the Nile. Brent Sasley offers "some thoughts on the EU decision to separate Israel from the West...
Francesco Guicciardini Prize (ISA HIST Section Book Prize)
Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540) was an Italian historian and statesman who served in the Florentine and papal diplomatic services and was the author, among other works, of the landmark History of Italy (Storia d’Italia), a foundational work on statecraft and grand strategy which combined careful historical research with general theorizing about the ethics and practices of international behavior. The Francesco Guicciardini Prize is given annually and recognizes the best book copyrighted in the previous two calendar years on subjects related to historical international relations. General...
What We Know, Don’t Know, Can’t Know and Need to Know About the DOD’s Classified Study on Drone Deaths
Just before Independence Day, an analyst for a defense research agency stated in a media interview that a classified DoD study shows that drones are likelier to cause civilian harm than attacks from manned fighters. Lawrence Lewis, a researcher for the Center for Naval Analyses, says these findings resulted from a statistical analysis he conducted using classified data from Afghanistan mid 2010-mid 2011 as part of a project funded by DoD's Joint Center for Operational Analysis. If true, this would dramatically shift the discussion about the humanitarian impact and value of armed...
Race, Gender and Civic Justice in America
The idea that citizens should be empowered by law to lethally judge who is a criminal threat is dangerous and wrong. Here's one reason why: Just a small-n social experiment? Yes, though here are some stats to demonstrate how this does and is likely to play out in the criminal justice system..
Monday Morning Linkage
Good morning... Jarrod Hayes discusses his new book, Constructing National Security: US Relations with India and China. Mark Safranski (i.e. zen of Zenpundit) points us to Lt. General Prakash Katosh's "Optimising the Potential of Special Forces." [Original Article] Shyam Saran argues that India's new role as an observer on the Arctic Council should be used to restrain the headlong rush into an ecological catastrophe. Steve Aftergood notes that the Obama Administration does not disclose most Presidential Policy Directives even when they are not classified. A reason for the lack of...