Does Whataboutism work? A new article has answers.

Does Whataboutism work? A new article has answers.
Our next Bridging the Gap Book Nook features Rachel Whitlark, an associate professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She discusses her recent...
WHAT IS THE NAME OF THE BOOK AND WHAT ARE ITS COORDINATES? Peter S. Henne, Religious Appeals in Power Politics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023 WHAT'S THE ARGUMENT? Religious...
If Donald Trump was President of the United States when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, instead of Joe Biden, Trump’s personality would have led to a very different U.S. response. Trump would not have swiftly and strongly condemned Russia or clearly sided with Ukraine in the initial stages of the invasion, and he would not have brought together a multilateral front against Russia – as Biden did.
Name of the Book Justin Schon. 2020. Surviving the War in Syria: Survival Strategies in a Time of Conflict. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). What’s the Argument? Civilians in conflict zones face a range of threats and opportunities. They adopt survival strategies that reflect how they perceive those threats – where they come from, how severe they are, what options exist to respond to them – and what opportunities they believe are available to them. People with advantaged social status, wasta in Syria, typically see more opportunities to take action. The key thing is that they don’t...
Ludvig Norman answers 6+1 questions about causal inference in interpretative scholarship
Raymond Kuo answers 6 (+1) questions about his 2021 book on why the institutional design of alliances changes over time.
Dov Levin answers 6 (+1) questions about 2020 book on foreign electoral interference. When do great powers back a specific party or candidate in another country? Can they change the electoral outcome? Find out.
What if how presidents talk about ending wars contributes to the cycle of U.S. military intervention? Stephen J. Heidt answers 6+1 questions about his new book.
Why and how do authoritarian regimes manage their image abroad?
American Dove makes pragmatic case for a dovish foreign policy. The use of force is a terrible foreign-policy instrument: it’s expensive and hardly ever works.
Whether scholars embed policy recommendations in their work is a flawed measure of whether work is policy-relevant. Across a series of articles and book chapters, Michael Desch and Paul Avey have argued international relations scholarship is declining in policy relevance, with IR scholars falling into what Stephen Van Evera has called a “cult of the irrelevant”: a hermetically-sealed professional community that values technique and internal dialogue over broader societal and political relevance. As evidence, they cite data demonstrating a marked decline in the frequency...