Picture the scene: throngs of people gathering as the night descends. They are looking up at the building across the way—patiently, expectantly. There is a low-hum of voices. Gradually, the voices converge and they begin singing the same song… “Mu-ga-be! Mu-ga-be!”...
With Crimea's secession and accession drama still unfolding, we wait with baited breath about whether we will bear witness to yet another war (Kimberly Marten's post on the Monkey Cage is sobering)....
Note: The following is a guest post from Mlada Bukovansky, Professor of Government at Smith College. The word freedom has to come into it, when speaking of the Ukraine crisis. It has become...
I have a question for all those folks who study elections: any democracy hold an election within a week or two of being announced?
The logic of inappropriatenessBelow, Scott Weiner argues that Carly Rae Jepsen's song "Call Me Maybe" is an illustration of the dynamics of standard game-theory models, specifically the prisoner's dilemma and stag hunt. Weiner assumes that Jepsen is a rational actor, that both Jepsen and her beau are better off being together than being apart or with different partners, and that Jepsen is rationally choosing to communicate her availability to facilitate their coming together. I share these assumptions, but as I demonstrate Weiner misses the key points of the song. If, as Weiner suggests,...
Today I gave a lecture on the environment and the dilemmas of collective action in my course on Introduction to International Relations. Despite the best efforts of St. Elinor (the patron saint of political science and my alma mater), I'm still a fairly pessimistic adherent to Mancur Olson's diagnosis of public-goods provision. Consequently, the environmental lecture ("Saving the Sunlit Earth") is probably my most depressing canned talk. (The "sunlit earth" comes from a speech by Nobel laureate F. Sherwood Rowland, who co-discovered CFCs' harmful effects.)Simply put, unlike the Montreal...
Romney apparently said today "we've been 'turning to the United Nations' to 'raise our kids.'"I don't know if this is true,* but it raises a variety of questions/thoughts:Does the UN have stock in ink? Kids today seem to like tattoos. What is the curriculum include at UN Day Care?Learning How to Circumvent Your Parents' Vetoes? Membership 101: You can join any club you want as long as your name is ok (Taiwan, Macedonia) even if you fall short of standards (Human Rights Commission).The Golden Rule As Applied to Combat: Fire only if fired upon.What is the UN Day Care hours and penalties for...
I have bowed to popular demand responded to a small number of requests by creating a page (also accessible via a tab above) to host PDF versions of working papers posted at the Duck of Minerva. The page currently has links to three pieces, including compilations of Stuart J. Kaufman's and Patrick Thaddeus Jackson's recently serialized posts.I hope the section will grow with the responses people have planned to Stuart's piece, as well as with those of other scholars and practitioners interested in posting pieces that are something more than run-of-the-mill blog entries.
A majority of Americans support a no-fly zone in Syria. I expect that "no-fly zone" comes across as a relatively anodyne, costless policy to the US public. And, indeed, most of the policies that would be required to make such a zone work poll considerably less well. UPDATE: (via) Daniel Larson makes the same point, but with more words.
Photo by AuthorI didn't find it terribly surprising that Scotland's National Museum presents the industrial revolution as an important component of Scottish national identity. After all, what better way to combat the anti-Pict stereotypes peddled in such racially insensitive works as Brave than to present the Scottish people as industrious and innovative by nature? Because that in no way would ever contribute to offensive stereotypes, now would it?Photo by AuthorStill, the museum's example of a Jacquard Loom blew me away. It employs what are recognizable as punchcards to weave a pattern....
That's the takeaway from a new working paper by Brian Haggerty, a doctoral student at MIT. His conclusion:The United States and its NATO allies no doubt possess the capabilities required to achieve some measure of air superiority over northwest Syria and to maintain patrols over population centers to defend them from some incursions by Syrian forces equipped with heavy weapons. But as this analysis shows, an intervention to establish only three safe havens, in Homs, Hama, and Idlib, linked to each other and to the Turkish border via a humanitarian corridor, would be a substantial military...