Scholars of international relations don’t agree on much, but they at least agree that anarchy (th…
Episode 25: The New Hierarchy Studies
read more
Recent Posts
It’s Duckies time!
This is a guest post from Kindred Winecoff, current Chair of the Online Media Caucus for ISA. The Online Achievement in International Studies Reception and Awarding of the Duckies will take place on...
Opening the Envelope of Oman’s Succession
The following is a guest post by Andrew Leber, a PhD candidate in Government at Harvard University. The death of Sultan Qaboos bin Said, and the succession of Haitham bin Tariq as the country’s new...
An American died in an Egyptian jail. Why didn’t this well-connected human rights community speak out?
Earlier this week, Mustafa Kassem, an American held in Egypt, died. The Trump Administration did little to help him. That wasn't surprising. What was surprising was that the international religious...
More Recent Posts
Monday Morning Linkage
Good mornin' ducks... Here's some linkage you might want to read (on stuff other than the NSA)... The IMF admitted to violating its own rules to bailout Greece and that the austerity program which accompanied the bailout did not restore market confidence. The housing bubble in America is back...
Random Saturday
Comet vs. Sun. Letting go of Mandela (via). Putting the DoD civilian workforce in perspective. Chinese grand strategy. Music, social movements, the body, and emotions. Some NSA stuff: Drezner, Levinson-Waldman, Lemieux. And: How economists aren't physicians. Adversity and affinity in...
New Podcast: Interview with Patrick James
Well, sort of. I've been getting a surprising number of emails asking for new podcasts. This semester was a killer, and no one else on the team wants to spearhead the effort. I hope to do some more before all hades breaks loose next academic year. But for now, I should note that my series over at...
Having your Cake and Eating it Too: US Defense Cuts without Capability Cuts
The Center for a New American Security released a report yesterday entitled “The Seven Deadly Sins of Defense Spending.”[1] In it, they lay out some very basic (but very fundamental) ways that the DoD can cut costs but “preserve a strong and highly capable U.S. military.” Many of the suggested...
Time to Wind Up a Long-Standing Debate?
In the vein of recent graduations everywhere and the exams students had to take to get there, and thinking there is now ample evidence out there to get closer to winding up a debate that has raged in both policy and academic circles, let's keep in succinct: "Fukuyama was right. Huntington was...
Friday Morning Linkage
The PRISM slides: two nice touches you may have missed (Someone put some real thought into presentation -- this is not your grandparents' NSC-68): Top secret, code word, art work. There's a special seal for "Special Source Operations" that has an eagle lifting a bundled globe -- very impressive;...
Friday Nerd Blogging: Predictable But Enjoyable Mashup
Do not click if one has not read the third book of Game of Thrones or did not see the most recent episode, as spoilers dwell within: Ah, any deployment of Princess Bride is, well, magical, but, in this case, given the over-reactions on the internet Sunday night and Monday morning, this is just...
Who’s on Duck?
Having been newly promoted to permanent contributor, I'm delighted to join the esteemed Duck blogging crew (pictured above) on a more long-term basis. I'm looking forward to more lengthy substantive blog posts beyond the Thursday updates. I feel like I've been trapped in reviewer hell for weeks,...
SAGE and the Duck of Minerva
This is just a short note to explain the appearance of the phrase "temporarily un-gated PDF" in Peter Henne's guest post about contagion and the Syrian civil war. We've been linking to academic articles for quite some time, but usually to the abstracts or random versions available on the web. But...
Is Syria Infecting the Middle East?
This is a guest post by Peter S. Henne. Peter received his PhD from Georgetown University in May 2013, and was a Fellow at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia during 2012-2013. His research focuses on religion and foreign policy; he has also written on terrorism and religious conflict....
IR Theory Syllabi
I just completed a significant update of the international-relations theory syllabi collection. Although currently hosted at the Duck of Minerva, this collection is an initiative of the THEORY section of the International Studies Association. Massive props to the former THEORY officers for...
Thursday Morning Linkage
Ok, last week, I mentioned with anticipation how much I was looking forward to Game of Thrones. Little did I know it was the Red Wedding episode. I've looked for lighter fare stories this week and only sometimes does the world oblige. On the hopeful side of things, here is some good news: A look...