It’s our first “actual” installment of Whiskey & IR Theory in Space! We discuss Star Trek: Th…
Episode 30: A Long, Strange Trek
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Recent Posts
A Marx Allergy
If you are allergic to, let’s say peanuts, you would always carefully check the packaging of the food you buy: does the factory use them? Can there be traces in the sauce? After an unpleasant...
When Data Closes Doors: Lessons for Sharing Unpopular Findings
Photo courtesy of the Negative Psychologist. When sharing unpopular findings, what obligations (if any) do scholars have when policymakers do not care to hear the message? This is a guest post...
Remembrances from Sean Kay’s Students
This is the fifth in our series of remembrances on the life of Sean Kay. This post is from 15 of his former students. May way we all have the good fortune to shape the lives of students in the way...
More Recent Posts
Thursday Linkage: Earth Day edition
Johannes gave a spirited and optimistic take on Earth Day, which was Tuesday April 22nd. I think as an advocacy strategy that an optimistic call to arms strikes the right tone. One of the core findings from some framing studies carried out in the early 2000s suggested that overwhelmingly negative...
Classroom Activity: When Silence Says a Lot
This activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture (slides) on international institutions, specifically the impact they have on patterns of armed conflict. The first half focused on peacekeeping, which works better (under some conditions) than many appreciate, while the latter...
Zucotti Park Redux: An Earth Day Field Report
"Frack Wall Street, Not Our Water" "The People Are Rising, No More Compromising" "Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Fossil Fuels Have to Go" It's Earth Day, and I am in Zucotti Park holding some parsley given to me by an unknown activist, chanting "oceans are rising, no more compromising!" with about 200 other...
Tuesday Linkage
Editor's note: this post previously appeared on my personal blog. I've been doing links posts on Tuesdays over there for a while now, so I guess I might as well start cross-listing them. 1. Excellent post by Reed Wood on targeting civilians in war. In it, he discusses two recent papers (one by...
Can Research Inform Climate Policy? A Columbia University Workshop
For me, yesterday's main activity was a home game workshop on the policy implications of research on climate policy. I co-organized the workshop with Alex Ovodenko and Scott Barrett, both of whom are active in the climate policy research community. We had a group of about 30 people, both academics...
Sanction Threats, Imposition, and Protest
Editor's note: a more detailed version of this post previously appeared on my personal blog. If sanctions are to succeed as a tool of coercive diplomacy, they must impose real costs on the target. Yet, in most cases, they fail to do this—at least, directly. The economic costs tend to fall...
Friday Nerd Blogging: Exceptional That Proves the Rule
I stopped collecting Spider-man long ago when it got all clone-tastic. I tend to hate TV/movies/comic books that use clones in their plots. However, there is one exception Orphan Black is back tomorrow night. Only ten episodes last season so plenty of time to binge to catch up. Just heaps of...
Classroom Activity: Gambling Over War
This activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture (slides) on information problems as an explanation for war—which I'd say is the most useful explanation we've got. The broad contours of the argument are pretty straightforward, but the full implications are not. (That's...
Thursday Linkage: Get the Duck out of this Semester
With the tale end of this semester bearing down on me, this Duck is barely keeping his head above water. Fortunately, time has stopped and nothing has happened in the world. Ukraine is fine (no more Russian incursions). The global environment has put the threat of major disruption from climate...
Call for Proposals: ISA Midwest 2014
Dear all, I'm currently the program chair for ISA Midwest 2014. The conference will take place from November 7th to 9th at the Hilton Ballpark in St. Louis. This is a fabulous conference - one I'd really recommend for all scholars but one that is especially inviting for junior scholars. Here is...
Joining The Club?
Dan Nexon argues that efforts to have Ukraine join NATO could be self defeating: Moscow’s greatest fear is that Ukraine winds up a member of NATO. The more that NATO suggests it views Ukraine as worthy of military confrontation, the more Moscow will become convinced that an autonomous Ukraine —...
John Vasquez, Territoriality, and Staying Ahead of the Game
by Brandon Valeriano and Andy Owsiak What follows is a dialog between us on John Vasquez’s contributions to the field of IR based on a recent roundtable honoring his work at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association in Toronto in March, 2014. Our remarks are cribbed from our...