Raymond Kuo answers 6 (+1) questions about his 2021 book on why the institutional design of alliances changes over time.
6+1 Questions about Following the Leader: International Order, Alliance Strategies, and Emulation
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The Trump Syllabus: Duck Input Needed!
Even though ISA provided some much-needed group therapy, in the end we still need to grapple with and teach about #45. I was inspired by some ideas in syllabi 1, 2, and 3, but I also needed some...
Perhaps Our Incentives Are Not as Perverse as Believed: Are Citation Counts the Devil?
I have regularly seen stuff online or in academic publications complaining about professionalization and what it has meant for Political Science. The basic idea is that things were great before...
Friday Nerd Blogging Tribute to An Old Duck-ster
Robert Kelly used to blog here before he made the big-time on the BBC, so here's a salute via Friday nerd-blogging. BEAUTIFUL pic.twitter.com/EQo7JJJ8gW — Lindsey B (@lindseybieda) March 17, 2017...
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Report: US Drone Casualty Estimates Are Likely Too Low
Defense analyst Lawrence Lewis has authored an unclassified report critically analyzing the metrics used to estimate civilian casualties from drone strikes.* Lewis is an analyst and field representative for the Center for Naval Analysis, which published the report today. He has led numerous projects on operational effectiveness for DOD, including the Joint Civilian Casualty Study in support of General Petraeus, and knows of what he speaks. He is also the author of a classified study of casualties from manned and unmanned air attacks in Afghanistan. This remarkably balanced analysis begins...
Why I Participate At Political Science Rumors
The first rule of the internet is not to read the comments for any op-ed one posts. Why? Because the cover of anonymity allows people to say awful stuff. Of course, Twitter amply demonstrates that people will say awful things on the internet even when one can be clearly identified. Anyhow, over the past several years, a series of websites have been gathering spots for both aspiring and experienced political scientists to exchange in rumors and opinions about the profession (to be clear, anyone can post so it might be economist students seeking to troll or other folks entirely). Given...
Thursday Linkage
As we hurtle to the end of the semester, here are some stories for the week that caught my eye: Felix Salmon on why wonk bloggery is the future of journalism From Kyle Dropp and co-authors, Americans who can't find Ukraine on the map are more likely to support intervention there. What does this say about low information voters? Kim Yi Dionne and coauthor review the strange raid of a US-funded AIDS effort by Ugandan authorities as part of the emergent state-backed homophobia campaign Rich Cincotta pours cold water on the idea that food prices drove the Arab Spring: local prices didn't...
Number Crunching the ISA Twittersphere
Felix Haas has written a monster blog post over at Bretterblog with interesting descriptive statistics from the #ISA2014 hashtag. Among other fascinating points: 11% of IR scholars at the conference tweet, compared to only 2% of the global population The most popular tweet of the conference contained the Sheraton lobby wifi password Most prolific tweeter: Annick Wibben Number of tweets sent by Laura Seay while simultaneously participating on the Twitter roundtable: 61 Haas also details how he gathered and coded the tweets, which itself is interesting methodologically in terms of how social...
An Academic Woman’s Rant of the Week: Professor vs. Teacher and Dr. vs. Mrs.
Like any good protestant preacher, I’ve decided to start a multi-week series where we can examine a topic in depth from multiple angles.[1] My chosen topic: women in academia. This is a topic that has been written on extensively in peer-reviewed articles and on the blogosphere (see The Monkey Cage's wonderful discussion for a recent summary). However, to my knowledge, most of those writing on the topic have been senior: the perspective of a woman “in the trenches” (ie junior) has been somewhat missing in the discussion. I want to add my two-cents to the discussion and I’ve purposely...
You Make My Work (Im)Possible: Reflections on Professional Conduct in the Discipline of International Relations
This is a guest post by Professor Cynthia Weber, Department of International Relations at the University of Sussex Five months ago, ‘Michaela’ posted this query on the website Political Science Rumors in a thread called ‘a good place to study queer IR?’ am currently a MA student looking to move into a PhD program in the next 2 years. I am interested in studying queer IR and was wondering if you can recommend some good programs. I'm more interested in systemic theorizing than individual level (1st image) type of stuff. Thanks. A Google search for Political Science Rumors describes the site as...
Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement: Some Analytical Questions*
(This is a solicited guest post by University of Chicago's Eric Hundman, who is currently conducting fieldwork in Taiwan. Also follow him on Twitter.) At around 7:30pm on Tuesday, March 18, around 300 protesters scaled the fence around Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan (Taiwan’s equivalent of a parliament) and occupied the building. The protesters then barricaded themselves inside the legislative chamber and began organizing, with the help of opposition legislators and the acquiescence of “patient, though confused police.” The executive branch in Taiwan probably* does not* have the authority to send...
Political Science without a Net
Marc Maron, on his popular WTF Podcast, made an offhand remark that he does not prepare for his comedy performances. He feels that preparing is for cowards, that you need to be ready and willing to fail in your work since there is a fine line between a unique achievement and total failure. Skirting this line led him to ruin many times in his career, but it has also led him to the transcendent place he is at now. He has reached the heights of his field by putting it all on the line and risking total devastation by focusing on his Podcast, a new and untested medium at the time. Now he has...