When it comes to quantitative data in conflict studies, standards for collection, reliability, ethics, and usage remain behind the curve. We discuss five things that scholars can do to address these gaps.
Rob Farley has posted a Lawyers, Guns and Money podcast discussing my new research with Alex Montgomery on why reports of Americans' willingness to target civilians have been greatly exaggerated....
Last week, Dina Smeltz, Jordan Tama, and I had a piece in the Monkey Cage on the results of our 2018 survey of 588 foreign policy opinion leaders. We found that these opinion leaders misestimated...
A recent IR Twitter flare-up occurred on a seemingly innocuous topic illustrated by the flow-chart above: what should I call my professor? A PSA from Prof. Megan L. Cook recommended students to...
French troops took on an active combat role in Mali yesterday. Mark Leon Goldberg provides a short overview. After long delays, western African troops are reported to be headed for the country as well. There are interesting resonances here with Barak Mendelsohn's Combating Jihadism. In Syria, a...
Reader Anjali Dayal sends along this image from Foreign Policy (since corrected): Presumably Mr. Putin has not yet overturned Roe v. Wade. (On the other hand, I am reminded of this Onion classic.)
Brad Delong calls this "hoisted from the archives," which is clearly a better term for what I'm doing. But, as that's taken and I'm not as smart as the great economics professor, I guess I'll just have to stick with this alternative. Guns and Genocide, version 96.12b From 11 June 2005 After...
About a year ago I introduced an ocasional series called "Quarter-Baked Ideas." The idea was to blog about semi-formed thoughts related to international affairs. The whole notion turned about to be quarter-baked: I haven't done another one until now. Do rising powers have an intrinsic advantage in...
It’s that time of year again: the time when professors team up with their best buddies/colleagues/random-people-who-publish-in-the-same-area and endeavor to write a brilliant ISA/Midwest/APSA paper. At least, that’s what the spring semester always means for me. I like working by myself, don’t...
Yesterday, Dan Drezner's "one post about American gun violence" explicitly linked the post-Newtown debate about gun violence to Kevin Drum's interesting and provocative Mother Jones article on the disturbing relationship between lead (Pb) in the environment and criminal violence. "If the White...
Update: so the very first commentator revealed how much this was the product of a bad cold. Indeed, I've completely misnamed the post. It shouldn't be "standard stories" but "contextual assumptions." The most important rhetorical commonplace, in my experience, is exactly what the commentator said:...
Via Ari Kohen, a visualization of the nearest 100,000 stars in Sol's neighborhood. Sometimes blogs should just share cool stuff, no? Can't leave all that stuff to other social-media platforms.
The Canard "All the fake news that fit to print" --Washington A new report issued Tuesday by the American Political Science Association reveals that compared to their counterparts in American politics, comparative politics and political theory, international relations scholars are twenty times...
I'm home sick. With my daughter. Who is also sick. So this will be brief. Sean Kay makes the "case for Chuck Hagel" at the Huffington Post. Daniel Larison slams Jonah Goldberg and other "petty, spiteful critics of Hagel." The Onion reports that Israel "plan to use veto power" against Hagel....
The International Feminist Journal of Politics announces its 2nd Annual IFjP Conference, May 17-19, 2013, University of Sussex, Brighton, England: (Im)possibly Queer International Feminisms General Keynote: Lisa Duggan, American Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, NYU Queer Film...
There's been significant interest in Steve Saideman's criticisms of Mearsheimer's and Walt's working paper, "Leaving Theory Behind: Why Hypothesis Testing Has Become Bad for IR." Indeed, there are many comments in a discussion that harkens back to older posts at the Duck. Given this, it strikes me...