Another day, another op-ed or blog post saying that the social sciences contribute nothing and that we must be more policy-centric or policy-relevant or policy-synergistic or policy-policy-policy-policy. You know, it's funny. I've just finished reading a history of Bell labs (these journalistic nonfiction books go by quick--about the same time as a movie and a half) and the takeaway was that apparently esoteric research (e.g. Claude Shannon's...
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Tuesday Morning Linkage Club
Tim Burke suggests ways to fix the dissertation, but I'm skeptical that the way to reduce the overproduction of Ph.D.s is to lower the costs of earning a Ph.D. [Easily Distracted] Will Moore wonders what the standard for presenting results as a consensus is; a response to Voeten and Nexon. Via Anton Strezhnev, a critique of Pad Thai. [The Morning News] Yet it’s not entirely fair to complain about the authenticity of Pad Thai. It’s the noodle...
What Patterns of Trade Might Tell us About the Democratic Peace
Stop me if you've heard this one: it appears that wars between pairs of democracies are relatively rare compared to wars between other pairs of states. Some people even think this relationship might be causal. In the decades since this empirical regularity first got everyone's attention, a number of different theoretical arguments have been developed to account for it. A little known problem with all such explanations is that their additional...
The Politics of “Political Science”: Mushroom Cloud Edition
Erik Voeten has a nice piece up about recent research on the benefits of nuclear superiority. Does nuclear superiority provide an advantage to states engaged in crisis bargaining? In the most recent issue of International Organization (ungated version) my colleague Matthew Kroenig argues that in a crisis between two nuclear powers, the state that enjoys a nuclear advantage is willing to run more risk than its opponent. This gives the nuclear...
Podcast No. 20 – Interview with Phil Schrodt
The twentieth Duck of Minerva podcast features Phil Schrodt of Pennsylvania State University. The interview includes Professor Schrodt's views on a number of interesting topics, including the history of quantitative and computational conflict studies, his "seven deadly sins" project, advice for graduate students in political science, and an explanation of his decision to take up blogging. This is the third podcast to...
“Other scientists agree, at least when quoted selectively.”
Ouch. This hurts. Satire by Alan Dove (via): In a groundbreaking new study, scientists at Some University have discovered that a single molecule may drive people to perform that complex behavior we’ve all observed. Though other researchers consider the results of the small, poorly structured experiment misleading, a well-written press release ensures that their criticisms will be restricted to brief quotes buried near the bottoms of most news...
What Political Science Says About Papal Elections
Given the news that Pope Benedict XVI will resign at the end of this month, the first bishop of Rome to do so since the middle of the last millennium, the college of cardinals will soon convene to elect his successor. Political scientists Forrest Maltzman, Melissa Schwartzberg, and Lee Sigelman researched how Pope John Paul II changed the papal constitution to force an outcome. As they wrote after Benedict's selection in 2005, Officially,...
Monday Morning Linkage
Good Morning, here's your linkages... Let's start the week in South Asia: Afghanistan General Allen, the 15th of 16 commanders of ISAF in a dozen years, is delusional if he really thinks ISAF is on the road to victory in Afghanistan as he exits to become the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. Unless of course, by the word "victory" he just means handing the ball off to the Afghans while the insurgency continues and the country crumbles....
Weekend Omnibus
Slow weekend at the Duck, eh? Some of our bloggers are snowed in. Not sure how to explain the rest of us. I've been playing lots of FTL and working on a manuscript review. And the kid's been sick. So here's some stuff resembling content: More trade networks from Thomas Oatley. Did Steve Walt rename "offshore balancing" "a more distant and hands-off strategy?" Hard to tell. But it doesn't seem like a step forward in the science of branding....
Friday Morning Linkage
Winter Storm Nemo is bearing down on us and everything is shut down up here in the Northeast. No classes and no office hours! Here's the quick snow edition: Why are we now naming winter storms? Canadians dissing on Toronto. Moscow has received its heaviest snow in a century. With pictures. I used to do this on really cold snow days growing up in North Dakota -- blow soap bubbles and watch them freeze and shatter. (There really was nothing...
The New Structuralism in International Relations and its Discontents: Prefatory Remarks
Some years back I participated in a series of workshops that culminated in a book on New Systems Theories of World Politics (value priced at $115). PM and I have been working, somewhat haphazardly, on a review essay dealing with contemporary imperial formations that deals with what I've called the "New Hierarchy Studies." There's also a draft blog post hiding somewhere or other on that subject. But I think that renewed interest in hierarchy...
How Reality-Based Is the Community?
John Quiggin at Crooked Timber