The University of Chicago’s Paul Poast claims that G. Lowes Dickinson is was the OG “modern” theo…
Episode 26: Anarchy vs. The Anarchy
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Featured
Introducing Bridging the Gap’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Fellow: Emmanuel Balogun
The Bridging the Gap team is thrilled to announce the addition of a new member of our leadership team: Emmanuel Balogun, the inaugural BtG Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Fellow. We recently sat...
Not everything outside the Pentagon is “soft power”
As someone who works on religion and politics, I encounter the term "soft power" a lot. Most of the time it's in a good way; soft power is a means to advocate for policies that draw on our values...
Writing a Dissertation isn’t Running a Marathon… it’s Training for One
Hilary Matfess is a PhD candidate at Yale University, an incoming professor at the University of Denver’s Korbel School, and a 2020-2021 United States Institute for Peace (USIP) Peace...
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In Domestic and Foreign Affairs, ‘It’s the Institutions, Stupid’
Trump’s election may amount to an inflection point in the institutional fabric of our political system. I do not simply mean our domestic republican institutions. I also mean the broadly liberal-republican international order constructed after World War II. Indeed, these two sets of institutions are profoundly bootstrapped to one another. This dual threat amounts to the greatest challenge to the American experiment since the early years of the Cold War.
Is the International Criminal Court’s “Legitimacy” Problem Also a Gender Problem?
Yesterday, Russia became the fourth country in recent weeks to announce its intent to withdraw from the Rome Statute and the International Criminal Court. In doing so, it joins South Africa, Burundi, and Gambia in expressing concern about the institution’s functionality and legitimacy as an international institution. The Philippines is also reportedly contemplating departure. Because Russia never actually ratified the Rome Statute, its act of “departure” is--as many have pointed out--largely symbolic. Yet it also comes with a stinging rebuke from the government of Vladimir Putin, which...
Applying the Emerging Trump Doctrine to Syria
By and large, world leaders have gone from being taken aback about Donald Trump’s unexpected victory to being outright alarmed. Exceptions to this rule are Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad, both of whom expect Trump to be far better to deal with than Secretary Clinton. Yet, while it still is not remotely clear what a Trump Doctrine will strategically comprise, his coming moves in Syria do not bode well. Russia and the Syrian regime look to be the chief beneficiaries of the coming shifts in U.S. policy toward the 5-year old conflict that has weaponized half the country as refugees, killed...
Trump and the Fall of Númenor—a comment from a sad political scientist
This is a guest post by Eric Grynaviski, an Associate Professor of Political Science at International Affairs at George Washington University. He is the author of Constructive Illusions (Cornell, 2014) .He studies sociological approaches to cooperation and conflict, and international ethics. Over the last few days, protestors have taken to the streets to combat what they believe is an evil power that will soon occupy the White House. The problem of evil has featured in rhetoric about this election, in fact, for months, as featured in the Washington Post commentary on the election. The tropes...
The Death of Political Science is Greatly Exaggerated
There is a lot to think about in the aftermath of Trump's win. Lots of early hot talks will be wrong. One of the first reactions has been to wonder about the value of political science (which is not the most important thing to think about but we have plenty of time and bandwidth to cover this and everything else): "Should we just bury political science as a discipline?" Some of this week's best reactions to Trump's win: https://t.co/OD707adPkR — OpenCanada (@OpenCanada) November 11, 2016 To be clear, folks in the discipline will be thinking about this election for some time to come, trying...
Should we empathize with Trump voters?
In the wake of the shocking US election results, what sometimes seems like an agreed-upon virtue has become controversial: the demand for empathy. Writing in the New York Times, longtime Democrat Rabbi Michael Lerner has put out a call for empathy towards the many voters who supported Trump. As Lerner sees it, there are deep class fissures in America coupled with a spiritual crisis that requires redress. “We need to reach out to Trump voters,” Lerner writes, “in a spirit of empathy and contrition. Only then can we help working people understand that they do not live in a meritocracy, that...
Nicaragua: Less Interesting Than Netflix
An American first lady is about to make history. No, not that one. Nicaragua’s November 6 election has drawn few headlines internationally, but this week the New York Times ran a profile on Rosario Murillo, the first lady who appears on this year’s ballot alongside her husband Daniel Ortega. With the outcome relatively certain, this will be Ortega’s third consecutive term in power, and his fifth time overall leading the country. Constitutional changes passed by his party, the FSLN, have solidified his position in power, and positioning his wife as vice president is a move widely seen as an...
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