The Bidens are serving the Macrons US-made wine and cheese. A cute gesture or a clumsy diplomatic move?
Say “cheese”!
read more
Recent Posts
Episode 7: A Relational Theory of World Politics, part 1
Yaqing Qin’s book marks, according to Astrid Nordin, a long-awaited “full-length English-language…
Will Covid-19 reshape government-NGO relations? Observations from India
This is a guest post from Suparna Chaudhry, incoming Assistant Professor of International Affairs at Lewis & Clark College. Her research focuses on human rights, international law, and political...
Why are Egypt&Turkey sending medical equipment to the US? International Status and lazy explanations in IR
Like so much else in international relations, the answer to this question seems "obvious." But, like so much else, it gets trickier when we really investigate the situation, and it reveals nuances...
More Recent Posts
The Citation Gap: Results of a Self-Experiment
Both because of the unexpected direction yesterday took, and because I haven't worked through my thoughts about any number of pressing current events, I thought I'd write about an experiment that I've been engaging in with my recent academic papers. You might recall the Maliniak, Powers, and...
Recent Reading List
I have been thinking of listing a bunch of my favorite 2000s+ Political Science books, and a variety of circumstances has inspired me to finally write the list . These books make my list because they made me see the world differently. Most persuaded me of their core arguments, but all made me...
Why I Pulled the Post
Some of you have asked why I pulled the post, “Intellectual Jailbait: Networking at APSA,” which I put up last night. First, a lot of people were obviously hurt by the post. Those of us who blog of course want to be read, and I try to use humor to get my points across. I think that most humor, or...
Networking is Hard-Working
The question of networking tends to arise as conferences approach. With APSA less than two weeks away (which means discussants are going to be getting papers any day now--ok, in about a week if they are lucky), I thought I would post some thoughts about networking. There was a post earlier today...
More Papers, Please: Video Games and International Studies
In our conclusion to Kiersey and Neumann's Battlestar Galatica and International Relations, Peter Henne and I lament the relative lack of interest among cultural-turn international-relations scholars in video games. Our case rests on a comparison of the number of people who have played franchises...
Thursday Morning Linkage
Sad turn of events in Egypt, a situation in which the U.S. is inextricably implicated. Not sure if there was a policy course we should have followed that would have been different. I understand the defenders of the democratic process who would have wanted Morsi to leave via the ballot box. I also...
Sexual Harassment in Political Science and International Studies
The last two years saw some major stories in my corner of the blogsphere concerning sexual harassment. Colin McGinn's resignation from the University of Miami saw widespread discussion across the academic interwebs, even if we didn't say much about it. McGinn's case seems not terribly unique in...
Where Are All the Republican Realists?
In light of the brouhaha between Chris Christie and Rand Paul over foreign policy, conservative columnist Ross Douthat opined in The New York Times that the Republican Party seems to be missing the sort of realist pragmatists of old that might have mediated between these views. He attributes the...
The (American) Job Market and Interpretive Methods in Political Science
M. David Forrest, a soon-to-be-assistant-professor of American politics, forwarded the following letter to the "interpretation and methods" listserv. He agreed to let me post it at the Duck. Given the methodological heterogeneity of our readership, I thought it would be of interest. It reads: [I...
Resistance is Not Futile.
A claim common among opponents of a treaty ban on autonomous weapon systems (AWS) is that treaties banning weapons don't work - suggesting efforts to arrest the development of AWS are an exercise in futility. Now this claim has been picked up uncritically by the editors at Bloomberg, writing in...
Wednesday Addams Linkage: Special Andragogy Edition
Sorry for the lack of Wednesday linkage posts recently. Bizarrely, on a day when I undertake an intercontinental move, I finally have time to catch up on linking. To commemorate the end of summer teaching and the brief respite between summer school and real school (hey, didn't I join academia so I...
Favela Ninjas and Apartheid Samurai
Neill Blomkamp's "Elysium" packs a punch for an action sci-fi film even if its punches don't land. So yeah ... Jodie Foster doesn't give her best performance and the other roles for women in the film are completely lame. A beefy Matt Damon, bless his heart, is poorly cast. The core plot line...