The blogosphere peaked somewhere in the mid-2000s, so why would anyone start blogging in 2023?
Why Blog Now? An Introduction
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Recent Posts
State, Regime, Government, and Society in COVID-19 Response: Establishing Baseline Expectations
This is a guest post from Sofia Fenner, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bryn Mawr College. Her research explores co-optation under authoritarianism, with a regional focus on the...
Flattening the curve
This is a guest post Jonathan Powell, an Associate Professor in the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs at the University of Central Florida (Twitter: @prof_powell) and...
Deconstructing the blob
"The blob" has become a common term during the Democratic Primary. The DC foreign policy establishment, so the argument goes, has an overwhelming effect on all who engage with it, sucking them in...
More Recent Posts
Monday Morning Linkage
Good Mornin' Ducks! Here are some links on the crise du jour... Tim Shorrock discusses what what the US media is missing in its coverage of North Korea on FAIR's CounterSpin. (MP3 Podcast at 9.30 - 18:25) Kongdan Oh discusses how to understand North Korea and the "Republic of Pyongyang" on...
While the Ducks Are Away — Can We Bridge the Gap When They Get Back?
Practically the whole roster of Duck bloggers is out at the biggest IR conference of the year--the ISA Conference is in San Francisco this year--leaving this think tank Duck in DC alone and further pondering the divide between the policy and academic worlds. In light of this cri de coeur from a...
OAIS Awards: and the Winners are….
I am currently at the ISA of Madness. Near the top of the list of insanity is the Blogging Reception, which included an overflow crowd and some great "spoken blog posts" by Erica Chenoweth, Rob Farley, Amanda Murdie, and Dan Drezner. I recorded the event, and whatever the camera caught before the...
Friday Morning Linkage
ISA News: Congratulations to Dan and Patrick! They will be involved with ISQ -- ISA's flagship publication for the next five years. Dan has been selected as the lead editor, Patrick as the web editor. Congrats! I'm not a fan of the new grading software technologies, but maybe I can be...
Is It the Gate or the Stuff Inside?
One of the topics online and at the ISA has been the gated-ness of academic writings. Journal articles are almost always behind a paywall so that ordinary folks cannot get at them. This is likely to change as many folks are now complaining and the threat of ditching academic publishers for the...
Roger Ebert’s Legacy
Google N-Grams for "two thumbs up" in American English, 1800-2005.
Thursday Morning Linkage – ISA Special
Arriving in the middle of the International Studies Association annual meeting, here is your Thursday morning linkage... Man tries to smuggle 10% of endangered Madagascan tortoise population into Thailand DRC military facilitating poaching and pillaging in UNESCO world heritage site Just when the...
So, we’re at ISA
Posting will be light.
The worst questions to be asked at a conference
The following is a guest post by Peter Henne. -- Once again, the International Studies Association annual meeting is upon us, followed by the Midwest Political Science Association conference. It's a good bet that most readers of the Duck will be attending one or both of these, or other upcoming...
Monday Morning Linkage
Good Morning Duckies... Happy April Fool's Day. Here are some stories which we didn't make up just for this day...: Nicholas Sarkozy will soon be an employee of Qatar. The four year long battle for the Euro is not over. The top US adviser in Afghanistan is a former kebab restaurant owner from...
Nation’s international relations reference librarians despondent as Game of Thrones returns
The Canard "All the fake news that's fit to print" The long awaited return of HBO’s wildly popular fantasy series, the Game of Thrones, has not generated enthusiasm on the part of at least one group. The nation’s international relations reference librarians, those who help students and members of...
Small Modular Reactors and US Military Bases
Bear with me, because this post has a long backstory. As many of you know, I'm a former policy debater. Indeed, so are a number of guest and permanent bloggers at the Duck of Minerva. And not a few other international-relations scholars. Well, this weekend is the National Debate Tournament (NDT),...