I am currently at the Social Science Research Center in Berlin to present a paper on norm suppression. While here, I had the opportunity to learn more about some of the work being done by the Civil Society, Conflicts, and Democracy research unit. Listening to these folks talk about the stability of authoritarian regimes reminded me of some thoughts I had when I recently travelled to Cuba to present another paper. In addition to prepping for...
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Duck Takeover of Foreign Affairs on Schedule
Robert provides Foreign Affairs a "snapshot" on the South Korean election -- which Park won today. An excerpt: For all the talk of the "pivot" to Asia in the United States, the idea is not widely discussed in South Korea. And South Koreans are not all that interested in containing China. Although Korea was a tributary state of China for nearly a millennium, China never terrorized it the way Japan did. A January 2012 poll from...
Academic Administrative Fecklessness
I wasn't going to post anything about the cyber-intimidation campaign being directed at Erik Loomis, as that seemed like a job for Big Important Liberal Blogs and not for the Duck of Minerva. But now the issue has strayed directly into our territory. In brief, Erik Loomis is a history professor at the University of Rhode Island and a long-time blogger. His highest-profile gig is at Lawyers, Guns & Money. In the immediate aftermath of the...
New Podcast @ New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy
I already mentioned that this podcast was coming, but now it is out. From my summary at New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy: When I agreed to host New Books and Science Fiction and Fantasy there were a number of authors I hoped to interview, including Michael Gordin. This might come as a surprise to listeners, because Michael is neither a science-fiction nor a fantasy author. He is, rather, a prominent historian of science at Princeton...
Wednesday Morning Linkage
Michael S. Chase reports on the internal Chinese debate over Beijing's role in international affairs. A new China Security Report from Japan's National Institute of Defense Studies (via Taylor Fravel). Daniel Larison sees Chuck Hagel's potential SecDef appointment as a wakeup call to the GOP about its continued embrace of neo-conservative foreign-policy principles at the expense of realism and what used to be called "establishment...
Tuesday Late Afternoon Linkage
I'm now in a different time zone, although one rather less glamorous than the one I left yesterday. On the other hand, with temperatures in the mid-50s, it appears that my childhood home has decided to cease being part of the mid-South and instead become part of the tropics. One consequence of my not being in DC at the moment is that this is an unusually U.S.-centric package of links. This is also the consequence of Foreign Policy's apparently...
Firearms-Related Research
If you haven't been over there yet, the folks at The Monkey Cage are providing a slew of stuff on gun-control, gun-violence, and cognate topics.* And, yes, this was mostly an excuse to re-post my armed bear photo from Sun Moon Lake. *I've been critical in the past of The Monkey Cage for over-claiming the definitiveness of social-science research -- and issue that Rob Farley and I discuss in the still-delayed sixteenth Duck of Minerva podcast....
F*&k Freedom.
In the wake of the Connecticut shootings and in light of the hints dropped by Obama at the vigil for the victims, it seems we should be prepared for a debate in the coming weeks and months between those who advocate greater gun control to protect innocent lives and those who make a competing moral claim that such regulations infringe on the more important right to bear arms, which is supposed to be part of a general value of freedom. But that's...
Dispatch from Hong Kong: Asian Values?
This is a guest post by Jarrod Hayes. Jarrod is Assistant Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. He received his PhD in Politics and International Relations from the University of Southern California in 2009. From 2009 to 2010, he was the ConocoPhillips Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Oklahoma, a joint appointment between the Department of Political Science and the School of International...
Another Brief Podcast Note
Podcast No. 16 will be available by midweek. I left the power cable for the external hard drive on which all of my podcasting files are stored in my office.... Doh!
Monday Morning Linkage
Good morning... here's your Monday roundup... US & Europe The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found that Macedonian officials handed an (innocent) German citizen over to American officials who sodomized and tortured him in the presence of Macedonian officials and on Macedonian soil. Something to ponder as you watch Zero Dark Thirty. Central/South Asia Afghanistan: The AAN Network's S. Reza Kazemi discusses whether threats of a...
Saturday Afternoon Linkage
Via Twitter, Elke Larsen explains that France is "The Other Pacific Power." CSIS report on the Sino-Vietnamese maritime dispute: "Trouble Outside the Gulf of Tonkin" (via Taylor Fravel). Phil Davis provides a guide for gaming google scholar. Perhaps one day the counting citations game will collapse under its own weight? William M. Briggs unpacks what regression equations actually mean, and why so many textbooks get them wrong. Via Chris...