Editor's note: this post previously appeared on my personal blog. I've been doing links posts on Tuesdays over there for a while now, so I guess I might as well start cross-listing them. 1. Excellent post by Reed Wood on targeting civilians in war. In it, he discusses two recent papers (one by himself and my colleague Jake Kathman, another by fellow PSU PhD Jakana Thomas) showing that insurgents who kill civilians—who resort to terrorism—do...
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Can Research Inform Climate Policy? A Columbia University Workshop
For me, yesterday's main activity was a home game workshop on the policy implications of research on climate policy. I co-organized the workshop with Alex Ovodenko and Scott Barrett, both of whom are active in the climate policy research community. We had a group of about 30 people, both academics and practitioners. The six presentations focused on climate negotiations, carbon clubs, and carbon markets. Why such a workshop? As some of you may...
Sanction Threats, Imposition, and Protest
Editor's note: a more detailed version of this post previously appeared on my personal blog. If sanctions are to succeed as a tool of coercive diplomacy, they must impose real costs on the target. Yet, in most cases, they fail to do this—at least, directly. The economic costs tend to fall disproportionately on the average person, while the regime and its elite supports often find ways to benefit from newly emergent black markets. But might...
Friday Nerd Blogging: Exceptional That Proves the Rule
I stopped collecting Spider-man long ago when it got all clone-tastic. I tend to hate TV/movies/comic books that use clones in their plots. However, there is one exception Orphan Black is back tomorrow night. Only ten episodes last season so plenty of time to binge to catch up. Just heaps of fun and some amazing acting.
Classroom Activity: Gambling Over War
This activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture (slides) on information problems as an explanation for war—which I'd say is the most useful explanation we've got. The broad contours of the argument are pretty straightforward, but the full implications are not. (That's something of an understatement. As I've discussed a few times before, a lot of very smart people have made incorrect statements about what this argument...
Thursday Linkage: Get the Duck out of this Semester
With the tale end of this semester bearing down on me, this Duck is barely keeping his head above water. Fortunately, time has stopped and nothing has happened in the world. Ukraine is fine (no more Russian incursions). The global environment has put the threat of major disruption from climate change on pause. It's clear skies in Beijing. All the poachers of wildlife around the world have dropped dead. I wish. Read on for what's really...
Call for Proposals: ISA Midwest 2014
Dear all, I'm currently the program chair for ISA Midwest 2014. The conference will take place from November 7th to 9th at the Hilton Ballpark in St. Louis. This is a fabulous conference - one I'd really recommend for all scholars but one that is especially inviting for junior scholars. Here is the call for proposals: https://www.isanet.org/Conferences/MidwestStLouis2014/Call.aspx Please feel free to email me if you have any questions about...
Joining The Club?
Dan Nexon argues that efforts to have Ukraine join NATO could be self defeating: Moscow’s greatest fear is that Ukraine winds up a member of NATO. The more that NATO suggests it views Ukraine as worthy of military confrontation, the more Moscow will become convinced that an autonomous Ukraine — rump or otherwise — will someday become a member of the NATO alliance. The net result: escalating efforts by NATO at military deterrence actually...
John Vasquez, Territoriality, and Staying Ahead of the Game
by Brandon Valeriano and Andy Owsiak What follows is a dialog between us on John Vasquez’s contributions to the field of IR based on a recent roundtable honoring his work at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association in Toronto in March, 2014. Our remarks are cribbed from our statements on the panel. Brandon- Sometimes it is so hard to find a picture of a Duck that looks like your mentor… For many scholars, the cap on their...
Preventing Further Russian Aggression
"The hour is getting late...all along the watchtower, princes kept the view...two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl." Bob Dylan America and Russia are not engaged in a new Cold War, but Russia is playing the global menace du jour. The U.S. and Europe need to take more aggressive action to prevent the annexation of eastern Ukraine, and time is short. Beyond this crisis the West needs an updated defense posture, but for now the...
The IPCC Working Group III Report on Climate Mitigation in 11 Tweets
The IPCC released the Working Group III summary report for policymakers on Sunday. I wrote about the Working Group II report on impacts on The Monkey Cage. Working Group III covers climate mitigation, that is the challenges of reducing greenhouse gases. Tonight, I read through the report and tweeted my sense of the main findings in an 11 part series that I embed below. My short take: there is not nearly enough in the 33 page document on...
ForeignPolicy.Com Fail
As I noted last week, for the final project in my linked seminar this year, my students have to design and launch a website to promote their fictitious human rights NGO. In prepping for the course and in developing the grading rubrics, I've spent quite a bit of time reading the literature on what makes for a strong and effective website and how to integrate design, functionality, and content. My students' websites are evaluated on all of these...