Having been newly promoted to permanent contributor, I'm delighted to join the esteemed Duck blogging crew (pictured above) on a more long-term basis. I'm looking forward to more lengthy substantive blog posts beyond the Thursday updates. I feel like I've been trapped in reviewer hell for weeks, just as it looked like I was clearing my inbox of book and article reviews, I kept getting another one in and the pieces always looked vaguely...
This is just a short note to explain the appearance of the phrase "temporarily un-gated PDF" in Peter Henne's guest post about contagion and the Syrian civil war. We've been linking to academic articles for quite some time, but usually to the abstracts or random versions available on the web. But after The Monkey Cage announced a partnership with academic publishers to temporarily un-gate political-science articles, it occurred to me that...
This is a guest post by Peter S. Henne. Peter received his PhD from Georgetown University in May 2013, and was a Fellow at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia during 2012-2013. His research focuses on religion and foreign policy; he has also written on terrorism and religious conflict. A recent article in The New York Times illustrates much of what, in my opinion, is concerning about US debate over the crisis in Syria. The...
I just completed a significant update of the international-relations theory syllabi collection. Although currently hosted at the Duck of Minerva, this collection is an initiative of the THEORY section of the International Studies Association. Massive props to the former THEORY officers for getting it running. I'm again asking for anyone who is interested in submitting syllabi to contact me. That's all, folks.
Ok, last week, I mentioned with anticipation how much I was looking forward to Game of Thrones. Little did I know it was the Red Wedding episode. I've looked for lighter fare stories this week and only sometimes does the world oblige. On the hopeful side of things, here is some good news: A look back at the millions of lives saved through PEPFAR: 10 years later A photographer captured all of the rare birds of paradise species in Papua New...
Happy Wednesday, everyone! Is Turkey a democracy? Jay Ulfelder is skeptical [Dart-Throwing Chimps] A more optimistic take on Turkey. [Suffragio] Dan Drezner properly criticizes two foreign policy missteps by the Obama administration, including news that Michelle Obama won't attend the PRC-USA summit. Given PRC First Lady Peng Liyuan's successes abroad, this seems like another in a seemingly long line of administration diplomatic misfires....
In case you don't know, the PRC has censored searches for "Big Yellow Duck." The reason? You can see a larger version here.The arrival of Florentijn Hofman's yellow duck in Hong Kong harbor sparked a great deal of excitement in China, where the duck has become incredibly popular. A number of stories document a proliferation of knock-off ducks throughout the country, including one large in Shanghai and numerous smaller imitations. So it...
We are still mucking around with the official page for the Theory Section. In what I hope will be a temporary expedient, I've created a dedicated page at the Duck of Minerva. There you will find: Links to posts directly related to the Theory Section; General Information about the section; Vital statistics about the section awards; and collected syllabi relating to international-relations theory. If you are interested in adding your own...
A few unconnected recent happenings have reminded me that I've meant to do a short post on Charles Tilly, bellocentric (or "bellicist") theories of state formation, and where all of this stands in 2013. If you mention "Charles Tilly" and "state formation" to knowledgeable social scientists, their first association is almost always his famous line "war made the state and the state made war" (PDF). Scholars most frequently cite his work on state...
Good morning Ducks. Hope your summer is off to a good start. Here are some links to start off your week... Joshua Foust argues that a technology ban on lethal autonomous weapons systems (e.g. autonomous drones) will not work. (I agree but then again I am putting all of my money down on the ED-209 cleaning up Detroit.) Ahsan Butt says there's not enough historical empirics taught in grad school. In particular, he asserts that a sanitized...
A twitter friend of mine was trying to figure out how to put together his proposal for the International Studies Association's Annual Meeting. The ISA has gotten into a nasty habit of having a really early deadline. So, folks are thinking about it today since the deadline is tomorrow. I have had a fair amount of experience on the other end, organizing the program for the Foreign Policy section of the APSA about a decade ago, doing the...
Alright folks, I don't really have much to say here. Instead, I'll provide a link (PDF) to a copy of the bid we submitted nearly a year ago. Be warned that it includes some egregious typos and other fun* stuff. Why do I think this will be of interest? For some time, I've been making noises about the future of journals in terms of how they interact with Web 2.0 technologies. There seem to be a number of different, if related, models. Arrange a...