The second installment of our live taping at the British International Studies Association annual…
Episode 33: Status? You Just Met Us!
read more
Recent Posts
Economic Hegemony, Strategy, and Durable Peace: Part I of III
This piece is the first of a three-part series grappling with the role of political economy in making a just, sustainable international order. hat’s America’s story for how...
Episode 21: Constructivists All the Way Down
Is Constructivism best understood as a scholarly disposition, a body of theory, or an intellectua…
Whisk(e)y and Epistemic Pluralism: A Quack-and-Forth (Part III)
This is the third and final part of a three part interview between Adam B. Lerner (ABL) and Patrick Thaddeus Jackson (PTJ). It is the first instalment of a new series of interviews on Duck of Minerva entitled Quack-and-Forths.
More Recent Posts
Luis Videgaray, Mexican foreign policy and the open contempt for expertise
For the past few months, I've been observing with horror all the cabinet appointments in the incoming Trump administration and the Theresa May government . As someone who originally did a PhD with the intent to become a career diplomat (and yes, I realize there's a foreign civil service pathway...
Never Too Early for a Crisis in Civil-Military Relations
To be clear, the latest news is "intra-civilian" but is likely to cross over given the stakes. Remember the old days where the "smart" Bolsheviks left the personnel and other boring issues to Stalin? Yeah, so Stalin staffed the new Soviet government with his guys, and the theorists, well, they...
ISA Conferences in Trump’s America
In conversations with friends, I quickly realized that the International Studies Association faces some significant problems ahead. The advent of the Trump administration is likely to lead to two kinds of complications: it may be hard for foreign scholars to get visas to attend the conference...
A Plea for Cease Fire in the New American Civil War, Part II—The Case for Civility and a Changed Tone of Debate
Consider these two presidential statements: “Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Love!”—President-Elect Donald Trump’s New Year’s Twitter greeting “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be...
#RussiansDidit
Putin’s annual press conference is a chance for regular citizens to spend 3 hours in a great and rich Russia, where everything is in order and Putin is capable of installing presidents in foreign countries (according to one journalist). In general, the press conference strived to paint a picture...
The Rashomon-ization of the World Health Organization
An event happens. Four different people tell four different versions of what happened. How do we figure out how to move forward? This is a very rough plot summary of Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 masterpiece Rashomon, but it’s also a pretty accurate description of what is happening to the World Health...
Explaining the Obvious in the Age of Trump
The President-Elect has called for expanding the US nuclear arsenal, not just modernizing it (old warheads may not be good warheads). And when asked about whether this might lead to an arms race, he said woot! Who wins arms races? Arms manufacturers and their stockholders Maybe Ken Waltz (who is...
Public scholarship and the challenge of academics’ public engagement in a new global order
I'll confess that post-November 8th, 2016, I spent a large amount of time in despair and unable to write anything coherent on the topics I am most interested in contributing here at the Duck of Minerva. It was hard for me to imagine what the global order would look like with someone like He Who...
WPTPN: The Collapse of Embedded Liberalism in a Time of Populist Nationalism?
This World Politics in a Time of Populist Nationalism (WPTPN) guest post is written by Sean D. Ehrlich, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Florida State University who researches international and comparative political economy, trade policy, and democratic institutions. His first book,...
Before you leave for the holiday season: Nominate your friends for The Duckies!
Grades are in, reviews submitted, and I'm headed out for the holiday season. I hope you are wrapping up the semester and/or enjoying a well-deserved break. Please remember to submit your nominations for the 2017 Duckies before the end of the year. And, please remember to attend the The Duckies...
WPTPN: Outlier or Laggard? Canada’s missing Neo-Nationalists
This World Politics in a Time of Populist Nationalism (WPTPN) guest post is written by Stewart Prest is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His research focuses on civil conflict and non-violent...
WPTPN: The Anti-Corruption Racket: How Demonetization Cements Modi’s Mantle
This World Politics in a Time of Populist Nationalism (WPTPN) guest post is written by Nikhil Kalyanpur, a PhD student in Government at Georgetown University. He researches business-government relations and the relationship between security and finance. While Donald Trump has naturally...