Back in 2019, Uri Friedman wrote that we “find ourselves—as you will have heard in the corridors …
Episode 31: Great Balls of Power
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Recent Posts
Indonesia’s Half-hearted Response to COVID-19: The Role of Politics and Historical Legacies
This is a guest post from Alexander R Arifianto (Twitter: @DrAlexArifianto), a Research Fellow with S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore....
The Interviews for Teaching World Politics Project
In less than a month, I'll be teaching "Introduction to International Relations" for the first time in over ten years. As luck (for certain values of "luck") would have it, this means I'm building a...
Love, Loathing, and Loss: America’s COVID-19 Response and the View from Canada
This is a guest post from Jennifer Mustapha and Eric Van Rythoven. Mustapha is an Assistant Professor at Huron University College in London, Ontario and studies the politics of the War on Terror,...
More Recent Posts
Special Event: “The End of IR Theory” Symposium
It is with great pleasure that I announce the start of a special collaboration among the European Journal of International Relations, SAGE Journals, and the Duck of Minerva: The "End of IR Theory" Symposium. A number of developments over the past few years spurred Colin Wight, Lene Hansen, and Tim...
Ducks Ducks Everywhere
To help offset the departure of two permanent contributors, we would like to welcome a few extra additions to our guest blogging pool. Burcu Ayten Bayram is Assistant Professor at University of Texas-Arlington, specializing in international organizations, political psychology, identities and...
Does it Pay to Divide and Conquer?
The intuition behind the maxim divide et impera is clear. If they're busy fighting each other, they not fighting you. And that's obviously in your interest (assuming, that is, you are some sort of occupier or metropole seeking to extract rents from a local population.) Devious and underhanded?...
New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy Interview with Ben Hatke
In addition to phasing out of the Duck of Minerva, I've also been slowing down my activities at New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy. The channel has a new host, Michael Zummo, who has taken over most responsibilities. Still, I'm not entirely done. I have a new interview up with Ben Hatke....
Wednesday Addams Linkage
There's linkage! Allies release details of alleged Syrian chemical attacks. There have been many of them and they have killed a lot of people. [The New York Times] As Charli mentioned yesterday, congressional debate on Syria shows new support for an attack. Poignant: Kerry invoking his and Hagel's...
Belated Tuesday Linkage
Syria Boehner is backing Obama after this briefing. via CIVIC, the unclassified version of the USG's assessment of the Ghouta attack. Drezner on IR theory in practice. Academica The politics of academic salaries. Via. Rising star Dara Kay Cohen is featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education for...
The Strategic Signaling Dynamics of Assistant Professor Office Decorating Decisions
Having all read the canonical signaling literature within International Relations, new faculty members in IR are faced with a crucial and excruciating dilemma: how best to decorate their academic office. The following blog post examines this dilemma in detail and is intended to create an...
Monday Linkage
Buzzfeed reports Internet memes about Obama's Syrian policy are 10-1 negative. And some are pretty funny. Will Imboden on why professors don't make good presidents. The Arab League has endorsed international action on Syria. Human Rights Watch points out that as norms go, the civilian immunity...
Syria: in Defense of a Broad Military Authorization
Editor's Note: as per my earlier announcement, I am phasing out of the Duck of Minerva. But my blogging won't officially end for around another two weeks. That means that, although administrative inquiries should be sent to other team members, I have not gone cold turkey on the writing front. I...
An Announcement
As many of our readers know, I am the incoming editor-in-chief of International Studies Quarterly, the "flagship journal" of the International Studies Association. My team will begin to take new submissions in October. The full handoff occurs in January of 2014. The scope and nature of the...
Syria and the problems of compellence
To my mind, the situation in Syria has prompted an incredibly thoughtful debate within the political science community, one that undermines the idea that scholars have become irrevocably detached from policy. Ian Hurd and Charli Carpenter have written excellent pieces on the legality of chemical...
Friday Nerd Blogging: Galactica (Not) Actual and the Sci-Fi / Sci-Fact / Globalization Intertext
The Chinese state media could perhaps be forgiven for mistaking fictional Battlestar Galactica blueprints for future US fleet schematics this week, given this. This incident has me thinking about Nexon/Neumann's argument regarding the fuzzy relationship between science fiction and ""reality.""...