Reacting to a recent event on the study of religion, conflict and peace
Watching Scientific Progress in Action
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Recent Posts
The Munich Agreement, but Negotiated by Oswald Mosley
When I was but a lad, it was still quite common for foreign-policy hawks to invoke “Munich” as an all-purpose rebuttal to compromise with (they would say the “appeasement of”) rival states, most...
The Frontier Politics of Horizon
In the recent Settling for Less: Why States Colonize and Why They Stop, Lachlan McNamee makes a rationalist argument—“colonization projects” are “characterized by a triangle of actors—settlers,...
6 + 1 Questions about “Compliance in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights”
1. What is the name of the article and what are its coordinates? Aníbal Pérez-Liñán and Angie García Atehortúa. 2024. “Oversight Hearings, Stakeholder Engagement, and Compliance in the...
More Recent Posts
Adam Sandler and the Rise of the Rest: Theoretical Myopia and the Liberal International Order
Film critics have approached Adam Sandler’s films the same way that IR scholars have analyzed the rise and fall of the Liberal International Order (LIO)
Recentering the Catholic Church in European State Transformation
Did the study of state formation ever lose its religion? There’s a new wave of interest in the Catholic Church as an institutional formation.
How Quals can avoid becoming our own worst enemies
Simple steps to promote qualitative research in journals It happened again. After months of waiting, you finally got that "Decision" email: Rejection. That's not so bad, it happens to everyone. But it's the nature of the rejection that gets to you. The reviewers (you assume fellow quals) didn't...
6+1 Questions About MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR Dictatorship
Why and how do authoritarian regimes manage their image abroad?
Welcome New Ducks and an Invitation
The Duck has a new look and a new lineup of our core group, what we used to call "permanent contributors." We haven't yet settled on a new term. Blog Jedi Masters came to mind. In this post, I wanted to thank long-time contributors who are stepping away from the core group but who may blog...
6+1 Questions about AMERICAN DOVE
American Dove makes pragmatic case for a dovish foreign policy. The use of force is a terrible foreign-policy instrument: it’s expensive and hardly ever works.
Light Summer Reading
Ah, those days when you did not feel guilty for reading something that does not contain the term “poststructuralism” and/or footnotes. Back in my teenage years, I used to devour all the books I could get during the summer. I had some favorites: Alexandre Duma’s The Count of Monte-Christo...
Is it time to abandon in-person academic conferences? or “Who’s kind of meh on going to APSA?”
I get the sense that lots of scholars are viewing the return (sooner or later) of in-person conference with a good deal of ambivalence. Is it time to take all conference online?
Episode 18: Name Your Discord Server “and Collaboration”
Arnold Wolfers is one of the most important figures of “mainstream” mid-20th century internationa…
Getting Counterinsurgency Wrong
I just published a piece in Foreign Affairs, which draws on my new book, Bullets Not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare. After two decades, the United States is finally leaving Afghanistan, and only 2,500 U.S. troops remain in Iraq. In both countries, the insurgencies continue. It...
Centering George W. Bush in the Etiology of the Iraq War
The second- and third-most downloaded articles at the journal Security Studies both tackle the causes of the Iraq War. This might reflect an imbalance of supply and demand: there aren't that many articles in leading international-relations journals that focus on the question of why the United...
The Vision Thing: More on the New Duck
Is there still room for a traditional academic international-relations blog? An overview of relevant history and the Duck’s approach to blogging.