It's the Ides of March. Be careful out there. Here's a random selection of this week's reads: How Fear made America. Scott Lemieux reviews Ira Katznelson's new book Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. Anatol Levien questions the "endgame" in Afghanistan. Ken Roth asks what rules should govern drone attacks. Charles Hunt on the on-going challenges of peacekeeping in DRC. North Korean propaganda video of life in the...
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In Defense of Homo Economicus
In this post, I seek not to defend the actions or priorities of a non-existent misanthropic being, but to defend the practice of analyzing models that assume human behavior mirrors that of Homo Economicus. (I hope you'll forgive me for choosing a slightly misleading title in order to preserve space.) It's easy to criticize those who assume that human beings are ultra-materialistic, narrowly self-interested, willing to collect all available...
Thursday Morning Linkage
Here is your Thursday morning linkage: - Breakthrough in the ongoing CITES meeting on the trade in endangered species, five shark species are listed, providing greater protection as shark finning for wedding soups in Asia threatens many species of shark with extinction - Vietnam and Mozambique are warned at CITES meeting to curb their consumption and poaching of rhino horn respectively or face trade sanctions - White House petition on behalf of...
USNWR Political Science Rankings
I performed a similar operation to Scatterplot, e.g., estimated the results of the current poll by assuming equal weighting for both the 2013 and 2009 poll results (explanation). For the Departments that moved from ranked to unranked in the 2013 rankings I assumed a 1.9--as it looks like 2.0 might be the cutoff for ranking schools. I forgot to include the actual rankings, though, so my spreadsheet (direct download) only includes scores. If...
Midweek Linkage
Casy Hogle reports on a World Peace Foundation panel on public-advocacy campaigns, which featured the Laura Sey and Amanda Taub. Edward Hugh on the decline of Portugal. The costs of the "eating local" movement: agriculture in the "global south." Daniel Martin Varisco: "life without honor." Adam Eluks: "a rack city on a hill: unsolicited advice to landpower and seapower." And also: The Disorder of Things has a new forum on "critical...
The Mythical Liberal Order: A Reply and Response
Naazneen Barma, one of the authors of the "Mythical Liberal Order," responded to my post of last week with a reply to my critique. With her permission, I'm posting her message here and my response. Readers, we'd love for you to weigh in with your views. Naazneen had this to say about my original post: I'd push back, in particular, on your straw man point. We started by defining the aspirations / ideal of the liberal order precisely because...
ISA 2013 Blogging Reception
The good people at SAGE just sent this image along. It's a mockup of one side of the reception postcards that will be handed out at ISA 2013. We will announce the winners of the awards at the reception. The reception will be from 7.30-8.30pm on 4 April in Yosemite A. Unfortunately, only conference attendees will be able to join us.
Tuesday Morning Linkage Club
Henry Farrell reflects on political economy, game theory, and methodology [Crooked Timber] ICYMI: Voeten links to Fukuyama on new measures of governance (ungated) [The Monkey Cage, Governance] Fukuyama seeks a measure of the actual quality of governance, regardless of regime type. For my part, I'll note that I've discovered "political scientists measure democracy using quantitative indices" is an unintended laugh line with students and...
Iraq 10 Years Later (1): How Culpable is Academic International Relations?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the war this month. I’ll be teaching it in the next few weeks at school because of the decade anniversary (March 20). My quick sense is that any defensible theory behind the war was simply buried by an execution so awful, disorganized, mismanaged, and incompetent that it invalidated the whole premise. The whole episode became just shameful, and regularly teaching and conferencing with non-Americans these last...
The Good Ol’ Cold War
In the aftermath of a long war, a new degree of suspicion ensues between two powerful countries that were nominally on the same side…one rattles its sabre, threatening small countries on its borders…the other shores up relations with the very same countries… a tit-for-tat arms race begins, waged with the advantages of recent technological advances…espionage takes the form of a new battleground as the stakes move progressively higher…for the...
Paying for Advice? Just Say No
How do we know the job market is broken for academics? Because people are willing to spend money hiring advisers. Really. This article documents the costs of being on the market these days. To be clear, this piece is deceptive and unrepresentative. But as a result, it is representative. Huh? How does that make any sense? Because the academic job market is so tough, it is poorly understood, and people then perhaps over-think what it takes...
Monday Morning Linkage in Space
Good mornin' Duck-o-nauts! Let's start the week in ... Space (i.e. Asia's Playground)... India is goin' to (orbit) Mars with a launch set for November 2013, only a few years after India landed an unmanned probe on the moon and detected water on the lunar surface. (The US is also sending an atmospheric orbiter to Mars this year.) India is not exactly new to space; it has had 101 successful space missions but mainly with satellites. The...