Like millions of other people around the world, I have spent much of the past few weeks playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TotK), the nineteenth installment in Nintendo’s widely acclaimed series.
This is a guest post from Sahar Khan, an editor at Inkstick and adjunct fellow of Defense and Foreign Policy at the Cato Institute. She tweets at @khansahar1. This is the third post in our...
Sean Kay, a much beloved international relations professor at Ohio Wesleyan, died suddenly of a heart attack in November. Though I blogged about Sean in December, we will be publishing a series of...
Photo courtesy of the Guardian UK. When engaging with policy audiences and organizations, how can one be truthful when telling the whole truth may be counterproductive? This post is part of an...
Lots of words have been spilled on this Crimea thing, and so it is reasonable to ask whether our opposition to Crimean self-determination might be more about our feelings about Russia than about secession/irredentism. Chris Blattman asked: Bleg: Someone please explain to me why I should accept...
In light of Russia's annexation of Crimea, Josh raised the question this morning about how we are all feeling about the war decline thesis. Also in reaction to Russia's actions, Mlada Bukovansky issued a strong call to end the complacency regarding the acceptance and influence of global liberal...
With Crimea's secession and accession drama still unfolding, we wait with baited breath about whether we will bear witness to yet another war (Kimberly Marten's post on the Monkey Cage is sobering). Sure hard to believe that Steven Pinker is right with Syria blazing, the Central Africa Republic...
Note: The following is a guest post from Mlada Bukovansky, Professor of Government at Smith College. The word freedom has to come into it, when speaking of the Ukraine crisis. It has become exceptionally difficult to use that term without wincing in the post-Bush era, but still I think it needs to...
I have a question for all those folks who study elections: any democracy hold an election within a week or two of being announced?
As Megan noted, ISA is coming up. I hope to see all of you at the blogging reception on Thursday evening, March 27th. As I’ve been preparing for the conference these last couple of weeks, I’m also preparing to be “blessed” with an unexpected visit from my grandparents in-laws today.[1] One of the...
It's that time of year again. IR freaks, geeks, superstars, and fans flock to the International Studies Association Annual Conference (except those wimps that avoid the cold Canadian destinations). Over the next week I'm going to write a few short, fun posts as we countdown to the jet lag,...
Note: This is a guest post by John Mueller of Ohio State University. The ongoing crisis/standoff in the Ukraine relates in some ways to a long-standing debate about the potential connection between economic interdependence and war. The debate is over the idea that the decline in interstate war has...
We're on spring break here in Austin, Texas so this will be a short post as I'm just back from some SXSW events (trying to steer clear of the drunk drivers). Mostly, I'll link to some news from the blogosphere, including changes at the Monkey Cage (4 new additions) and Foreign Policy (Drezner and...
There has been a bit of recent news lately suggesting international football* considerations are making the divisions between states greater, supporting the idea that sports might not be the path to peace and reconciliation. While a few cases cannot disprove an idea, recent moves point in a...
This activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture (slides) on political economy, a considerable focus of which was on identifying the winners and losers from economic cooperation. In that lecture, I argued that trade tends to enrich the owners of, employees of, and investors in...
Okay Ducks, here are your links from South Asia and Beyond! Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim, the Vice President of Afghanistan, has died of natural causes at age 57. Marshal Fahim fought along side the Lion of Panjshir, Ahmad Shah Massoud, during the Soviet Occupation. After Massoud's...