This is a guest post by Betcy Jose and Peace Media. Betcy Jose is Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Denver. She tweets @betcyj. Peace A. Medie is a Research Fellow in the Legon Centre for International Affairs and Diplomacy at the University of...
Am I the first to use the pun “ducking out”? I can’t be, someone has to have used that to describe leaving the Duck of Minerva before. Regardless, this brings up two key problems with blogging,...
Let's face it, most commencement speakers aren't really all that inspiring. Every spring, tens of thousands of graduating seniors, proud parents, faculty, and others sit through seemingly endless...
Brian Cranston and Godzilla apparently did not get along that well: Check out the story here.
This graph comes to you from a newly published article on the politics of the drone campaign published this week in International Studies Perspectives. I haven't yet read the full piece so cannot yet comment on it substantively or theoretically. Nor have I looked closely at the authors' code-book. However based on the abstract, the analysis appears to rest on the empirical evidence of a newly coded dataset (the latest of many out there presuming to calculate the percentage of civilians - v. non-civilians - killed in drone strikes) to make claims about the justifiability of such...
Ghana votes. Egyptian protesters move from Tahrir to the presidential palace. Rio's Olympics clean-up uncovers policemen collaborating with drug cartels. Chronicle of Higher Education visualization of gender and publication records across disciplines and over time. Political science not doing so well. For those interested in civilian casualties and war, Chinamanda Adichie has written a moving and very informative review of Chinua Achebe's controversial new book on Biafra. Jim Scott has a farm. Chris Blattman reads Scott's new book and says that the biggest problem with international...
Hi everyone. I haven’t been around much lately as I’ve been furiously writing a book. But it is almost done and I’m feeling reflective. Have you missed me? I’ve missed you. What’s that you say? Why yes, this is a new shirt. Thank you for noticing. I thought that I would offer some thoughts about where I think international relations research is heading in the near to medium-term future, based on what I’ve noticed about the job market, what friends are writing, and the sometimes surprising reactions to what I am doing on the part of others. Obviously this is all anecdotal and unsystematic, as...
"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." So spoke Winston Churchill, after the Allied victory in the Second Battle of El Alamein. We could say much the same of his defeat in the 1945 general election. A core assumption underlying most of the work analyzing the impact of domestic politics on international relations is that leaders want to remain in office. Insofar as ensuring national survival, territorial integrity, and policy autonomy might help leaders retain power, focusing on political ambition often does not tell...
We have two exciting developments to report concerning guest bloggers at the Duck. First, Adrienne LeBas' From Protest to Parties: Party-Building and Democratization in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2011) has been awarded "Best Book in African Politics" at the 2012 African Studies Association Annual Meeting by the African Politics Conference Group. Many congratulations to Adrienne on this well-deserved prize. Second, we are excited to introduce a new guest blogger, Dr. Jeffrey Stacey. Jeff is currently Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Paul H. Nitze...
Dan's still ill so you're stuck with me for Day Two. Here's some links: Via The Monkey Cage (I'm not stealing, I'm curating) comes this link to an Inside Higher Ed article about the five-year humanities Ph.D.. Identity, legacy, institutions, and Indiana basketball One of the things that grabs me about IR scholarship is that (to my knowledge) churches are not among the IOs or NGOs that we study on their own terms. But consider the Anglican communion. (Please correct me, don't flame me, in the comments--and remember that Dan isn't writing this.) Or, of course: habemus twitter. Despite what...
In the recent conversations about Policy PhDs and such, one of the frequent assertions was that people going into PhD programs had no idea what they were getting into. Why do we assert such things? All I can say is that I had no clue not just about what was involved in a PhD program, but also what was involved in being a prof. Let me review some of my beliefs and the realities I have experienced over the past two decades.* * I will leave aside the job market stuff (like not controlling where I would live). Despite warnings from my adviser at Oberlin, I thought profs spent much of their...
Charli’s posts on Human Rights Watch and Autonomous Weapons got me thinking: should we really expect human rights international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to influence weapons systems? On the whole, human rights NGOs are a pretty powerless lot: NGOs don’t control military resources like states do and they are typically not at the decision-making table. Why would a powerful state ever listen to the musings of an NGO? Are all of these reports and calls-for-action by NGOs really just hot air? This large question – the impact of organizations like Human Rights Watch – has been on...