Political Science isn’t sterile laboratory. The discipline is riddled with politics and deeply influenced by policy concerns.
The Leakage Between Political Science and Policy Goes Both Ways
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Donald Trump is trying to refute my new book before it’s even come out.
The past week has not been a good one for global health. What gives? I can only come up with one explanation: the Trump Administration is doing its darnedest to disprove the argument in my new book....
Has Sunshine Returned to the Korean Peninsula?
Ahead of the 2018 Winter Olympics, the media has become fascinated with a common narrative that the erstwhile “bitter enemies,” North and South Korea, will march under one flag. The identity and...
Size Doesn’t Matter
Any woman would tell you that. What matters is what you do with it and whether you know how to use it. Whatever Brobdingnagian thing you’ve got going on there, it’s way more important to have a game...
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Path Dependence, Iraq Edition
With the fall of Mosul to the jihadists of Syria and Iraq, there is much blame-casting to be had. Some are blaming Obama for not keeping a residual force in Iraq although it is not clear that a small US force would have kept the Iraqi military from breaking. This always, always frustrates me because it ignores what the US faced in 2009--the accumulation of dynamics produced by the bad decisions of the past. In this case, if people remember, there were many stories where Iraqi elites said two things: yes, we want the U.S. to stay, but no, we cannot say that in public. Why? Pretty simple:...
Don’t Confuse Me With the Facts: Costs of Lethal Autonomous Weapons
This is a guest post by Heather Roff-Perkins, Visiting Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School, University of Denver. On June 12, Christof Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, will brief the United Nations Human Rights Council on the human rights implications of lethal autonomous weapons. Last month, member states were likewise briefed by panels of experts at an informal meeting under the auspices of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), which Charli Carpenter has blogged about here. Much of the discussion pertaining to lethal...
The Unwritten Rules of AMERICAN IR? (or, things American IR scholars don’t always know about ‘doing’ IR ‘in the rest of the world’)
Laura Sjoberg recently wrote a post listing "The Unwritten Rules of IR." While it is an interesting review of some of the power relations, maneuvering, and indeed game-playing that goes on in the field, it also captured a particular American (maybe even just a personal) experience of being an IR scholar. Of course this makes sense, since Sjoberg is an American doing IR in America...but it felt a little bit more like 'Mean Girls- the IR Sequel'- like when Regina George (yes, I remember the main character/villain's name outlines the 'rules' of the table....maybe the problem is the table, not...
Happy Belated Birthday To Lawyers, Guns and Money
One of my favorite blogs turned ten this past weekend. Lawyers, Guns and Money was an early entrant to the IR blogosphere and Rob Farley and his crew are some of its most well-known voices. Last weekend they ran a series of anniversary reflections which I hope you'll surf on over and read. They're all amazing, funny, heart-twanging, and Rob's in particular has a lot of history and depth to it and some nice reflections on how the blogosphere has changed in the last decade. Since I contributed to LGM for eighteen months between January 2010 and May 2011, I also contributed an anniversary post...
The Public “Conscience” and Killer Robots
At my side event presentation at the UN CCW Experts Meeting on Autonomous Weapons last month, I presented public opinion data showing strong US opposition to the idea of deploying such weapons. Since the panel was specifically focused on "morality and ethics" and since my remarks were on measuring the public "conscience" per se rather than public opinion in general, I re-examined my coding of open-ended comments with a view toward whether popular arguments for or against the use of autonomous weapons systems (AWS) were based on humanitarian principles or interest-based reasoning. At the...
Bergdahl and the Band of Brothers Dilemma: understanding the ‘patriot’/’traitor’ debate
Let's be honest, the circumstances surrounding the 'prisoner swap' between Bowe Bergdahl and five high-ranking Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo Bay just don't add up. The initial narrative President Obama pitched of the prisoner swap as a signal of successful negotiations, a necessary response for a fellow soldier whose health was in jeopardy, and further evidence that the 'war' in Afghanistan is indeed drawing to a close, has completely disintegrated as waves of questions continue to be raised about the facts, legality, and implications of the exchange, including: Did President Obama break...
Discourse Analysis of Internet Trolls?: the whys and hows of analyzing online content*
Online mediums can be perceived as attracting wacky ranters unrepresentative contributors and exchanges and, therefore, forums or chats are often treated as if they do not provide an effective picture/sample of political discourse. But since over 80% of Americans are online, 66% of American adults have engaged in civil or political activities with social media, and about half of those who visit discussion groups post/contribute, isn't this an interesting- and increasingly relevant- medium for a discourse analysis? Why cut out such a vast political resource? What is different about 'doing' a...
Brazil Linkage
Here are some stories we've been reading about Brazil: Street artist captures iconic image of impending World Cup (see mural above) Rio residents ambivalent about the World Cup Datafolha poll of people in Sao Paulo: 76% of people say Brazil is not prepared to host the World Cup. 22% say ready or partially ready. — Gabriel Elizondo (@elizondogabriel) May 22, 2014 Sao Paulo experiencing incredible drought, reservoir down to 8% of capacity Speaking of water, sewage and dead dogs make the site for Olympic rowing in Rio a possible nightmare Andy Revkin's students explore the challenges Brazil...