Does Whataboutism work? A new article has answers.
6+1 Questions about “The Diplomacy of Whataboutism”
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Recent Posts
Talking Great-Power Competition in the Heart of Empires Past
It turns out that it’s hard to write a roundup of happenings at the Duck of Minerva when there aren’t many to speak of. Much of that’s on me. What’s my excuse? Well, the kid finally contracted...
Was anarchy always what states made of it?
Like a lot of academics, I love Google n-grams, but not as much as the digitized archive Google uses to produce it. It’s a great warren of rabbit holes – even better than wikipedia – and I often...
6+1 Questions about From the Ashes of History: Collective Trauma and the Making of International Politics
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More Recent Posts
Law and the Post-Conflict Protection of Women from Violence
The following is a guest post by Dr. Jillienne Haglund, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Haglund is a contributor to a forthcoming special issue in Conflict Management and Peace Science on gender and political violence. All of the articles in the special...
Fall of Giants
Footage of toppled Confederate statues all over cities in the US reminded me of the events my homeland went through a couple of decades ago and might go through again in some years. Some experts already compared the toppling of Confederate statues with “Leninopad” – razing of Lenin statues in...
Welcome to New Guest Ducks!
We are pleased to welcome some new guest Ducks, including an exciting new partnership. We also are pleased that guest bloggers, Lisa Gaufman, Jeff Stacey, Jeremy Youde, and Will Winecoff will continue to blog for the Duck. We wanted to thank all the guest bloggers who contributed last year...
Minding Climate Change: Presidential Power and the US National Interest
This is a guest post by Manjana Milkoreit, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University. Her research integrates international relations scholarship and cognitive theory to study actor motivations and policy design in global climate change politics. She is the...
Should APSA and ISA have a “No Manels” Rule?
The Financial Times just announced guidance that there will no longer be all male panels -- manels -- at any FT or partner events. It made me think whether APSA or ISA should adopt a similar policy. Pleased that @FT has established a "no manels" rule for FT panels and FT panellists as one of our...
Basic Rules of US Civil-Military Relations and Trump’s Afghanistan Policy
Trump's speech has something for everyone ... to criticize. I will not focus here on how icky the first part on loyalty was. Instead, I focus on the rules of US Civil-Military Relations: the US military does not like to start new wars (see Deborah Avant) once involved in a war, the US military...
Preparing Files for Reappointment and Tenure: Some Sharp Guidance
This is a guest post by James Goldgeier, Professor of International Relations and former Dean at the School of International Service at American University, building on a twitter thread that addressed tenure and reappointment and the narratives people write that go into their packages. At many...
On Race, Nationalism and “White Pride” in America
This is a guest post (begun as a set of hasty scribbles on Facebook in the wake of Charlottesville) by Sean Parson, Assistant Professor in the Departments of Politics and International Affairs and the MA program in Sustainable Communities at Northern Arizona University. He is the author of...
Calling New Ducks
As the fall semester approaches, we're looking for a few good Ducks. We'd like to bring on a new slate of guest Duck bloggers to continue to bring IR-related insights to bear on important real world problems, to explore important debates in the academy, and to do some professional introspection....
The Transgender Ban and Politics of Exclusion
The following is a guest post from Jennifer Spindel and Robert Ralston, Ph.D. Candidates in Political Science at the University of Minnesota. On 26 July 2017, Donald Trump announced, via Twitter, that the US Government would “not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in...
Two legs or One. It has nothing to do with planets- just pants.
Sometimes when we look for a rallying call to join us as humans around a common cause or to show us our equal vulnerability, we say these trite sayings like “ Common-sense says that all men put their pants on one leg at a time.” This is supposed to reassure us that we are all equal in the most...
A Drinking Person’s Guide, Day 186
A guest post by Layna Mosley, Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (with contributions from John Granville Peterson Cluverius, Mark Copelovitch, Roger Halchin, Andrew Herring, Jordy Lobe, Julia Lynch, W.K. Winecoff). Financial markets continue to take...