Even when Latin Americans are allowed to speak, IR scholars and practitioners do not listen to them due to the language in which they produce knowledge, epistemic violence and access barriers.
Even when Latin Americans are allowed to speak, IR scholars and practitioners do not listen to them due to the language in which they produce knowledge, epistemic violence and access barriers.
126 countries now publish a national security strategy or defense document, and 45 of these feature
a leaders’ preambles. How these talk about the world, or not, is surprisingly revealing of historical
global strategic hierarchies.
Scotland's independence drive won't disappear anytime soon. In "Scots Wha Hae," (from which the title of this post comes) Robert Burns calls on Scots to remember their victory over the English at...
A controversy broke out the weekend before Christmas, when Fr. Edward Beck, a Roman Catholic priest, claimed Jesus was a "Palestinian Jew" while discussing the current war between Israel and Hamas....
For nearly three decades, a pervasive, unspoken fear of civil war created an "ugly stalemate" in Israel, a 'public secret' that pervaded its electoral politics and foreign relations. Thanks to the government's attempted "judicial overhaul," that fear is now very much in the open, Almost overnight, the Israeli public has developed a shared imaginary in which a civil war is not only thinkable, but familiar. How did this happen? What does it mean for Israeli politics? Statism and Revisionism The recent "stalemate" in Israeli politics reflects longstanding tensions within Zionist ideology. As...
I recently had the good fortune to participate in a week-long academic exchange to Israel, along with 20 or so other political scientists and historians. Because Israel isn’t one of the countries I have a lot of knowledge of, I thought this might be an opportunity to learn more about the country and wider region. My mom’s side of the family is Jewish, and I have distant relatives who died in the Holocaust and some who escaped death from Auschwitz. While the immense human suffering of the Holocaust makes me sympathetic to the Jewish people, the Palestinians’ plight and oppression are also...
This week, King Charles had a second coronation in Scotland, following the official one in London. He took part in a parade through Edinburgh and received the Scottish crown jewels in St. Giles Cathedral. While this was not technically necessary, as England and Scotland share the same throne, it indicated his desire to unify Great Britain and increase his standing among Scots. They were, as the New York Times reported, "ambivalent." While many appeared to cheer the parade, many others protested. Charles is not polling very well in Scotland, where his mother seemed rather popular. What was...
The Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage (“The World Heritage Convention”) entered into force in 1975. The world heritage regime, in effect, produces the shared heritage of humanity. States use their right, as set by the Convention, to nominate sites within their borders; the files accompanying the nomination make the case for the site’s “outstanding universal value.” The relevant Advisory Body—for cultural heritage sites, the International Council of Museums and Sites (ICOMOS)— evaluates the site and its file. The...
The Russian government has developed a symbiotic relationship with the country’s pseudoscientific community.
Election observation is at a turning point. Roughly 80-85% of elections around the world are subject to election observation. The majority of these are in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. While international election observation is important for democracy promotion and electoral integrity, it has undermined the agency of those being observed. A growing push for domestic observers highlights the importance of local involvement, expertise and accountability during the electoral process. My research is particularly interested in how African international organizations use election...
Millions of people around the world are watching breathlessly as teams compete in the World Cup, held in Qatar. Many others--like me--tune it out, turned off by that guy in grad school who spent a semester in Barcelona and then pretended to be a life-long Spain fan. But this year, the World Cup caught my attention for a nerdier reason: the constant talk of Qatar's "soft power" through the tournament. My fraught relationship with soft power Soft power is one of my scholarly areas of interest. I've written on conceptual issues with the way people discuss soft power, and have a chapter in a...
Initial speculation about Nord Stream reveals both the strengths and limitations of using international-relations models to make sense of unfolding events