Driving in Russia: And also: Justin Gengler on... well... just go read. In a move sure (not) to keep NATO defense planners up at night, China and Belarus hold a joint exercise. Long-term US unemployment as a loss of weak ties? National Geographic reports on the wave of politically-motivated self-immolations in Tibet (via 3QD). Arms Control Wonk holiday contest: nuclear lyrics. War-on-terrorism termination? Jonathan Hafetz ruminates. John Little...
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When the Asian Growth Model Starts to Stumble, or how Korea could go like Japan if it’s not careful
Newsweek Japan asked me for an long-form essay on Korea’s economy for its December 5 issue (cover story to the left). Here is the link in Japanese, but I thought it would be useful to publish the original, untranslated version as well. (If you actually want the Japanese language version, email me for it please.) The essay broadly argues that Korea needs to move beyond ‘developmentalism’ toward economic liberalism, as a lot of Asia does in my...
Thursday Morning Linkage
Last Monday President Obama reiterated that Syrian use of chemical weapons would cross a US red line. Today brings multiple reports of the Syrian military preparing for their use. The government claims to have retaken two of Damascus' suburbs, but the consensus certainly seems to be that the tide is turning against the Assad regime. Marc Lynch worries about how the international community is handling Syrian refugees. Jay Ulfelder on Star...
Status, Cliques, and the Political-Science Job Market
There are many things I find unsurprising about Robert Orisko's claims in the Georgetown Public Policy Review about hiring patterns in academic political science. Among those are the disparate reactions produced by its summary in Inside Higher Education. In brief, Orisko argues that academic political-science hiring displays dynamics more associated with status-conserving cliques than an efficient market. This tracks with (more...
What’s Wrong With This Picture?
This graph comes to you from a newly published article on the politics of the drone campaign published this week in International Studies Perspectives. I haven't yet read the full piece so cannot yet comment on it substantively or theoretically. Nor have I looked closely at the authors' code-book. However based on the abstract, the analysis appears to rest on the empirical evidence of a newly coded dataset (the latest of many out there...
Wednesday Mid-day Linkage
Ghana votes. Egyptian protesters move from Tahrir to the presidential palace. Rio's Olympics clean-up uncovers policemen collaborating with drug cartels. Chronicle of Higher Education visualization of gender and publication records across disciplines and over time. Political science not doing so well. For those interested in civilian casualties and war, Chinamanda Adichie has written a moving and very informative review of Chinua Achebe's...
In the year 2000….
Hi everyone. I haven’t been around much lately as I’ve been furiously writing a book. But it is almost done and I’m feeling reflective. Have you missed me? I’ve missed you. What’s that you say? Why yes, this is a new shirt. Thank you for noticing. I thought that I would offer some thoughts about where I think international relations research is heading in the near to medium-term future, based on what I’ve noticed about the job market, what...
Leader Comebacks
"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." So spoke Winston Churchill, after the Allied victory in the Second Battle of El Alamein. We could say much the same of his defeat in the 1945 general election. A core assumption underlying most of the work analyzing the impact of domestic politics on international relations is that leaders want to remain in office. Insofar as...
Guest Blogger News
We have two exciting developments to report concerning guest bloggers at the Duck. First, Adrienne LeBas' From Protest to Parties: Party-Building and Democratization in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2011) has been awarded "Best Book in African Politics" at the 2012 African Studies Association Annual Meeting by the African Politics Conference Group. Many congratulations to Adrienne on this well-deserved prize. Second, we are excited to...
Tuesday Morning Linkage
Dan's still ill so you're stuck with me for Day Two. Here's some links: Via The Monkey Cage (I'm not stealing, I'm curating) comes this link to an Inside Higher Ed article about the five-year humanities Ph.D.. Identity, legacy, institutions, and Indiana basketball One of the things that grabs me about IR scholarship is that (to my knowledge) churches are not among the IOs or NGOs that we study on their own terms. But consider the Anglican...
What I Did Not Know About the Prof Business
In the recent conversations about Policy PhDs and such, one of the frequent assertions was that people going into PhD programs had no idea what they were getting into. Why do we assert such things? All I can say is that I had no clue not just about what was involved in a PhD program, but also what was involved in being a prof. Let me review some of my beliefs and the realities I have experienced over the past two decades.* * I will leave...
Human rights NGOs: Just Hot Air?
Charli’s posts on Human Rights Watch and Autonomous Weapons got me thinking: should we really expect human rights international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to influence weapons systems? On the whole, human rights NGOs are a pretty powerless lot: NGOs don’t control military resources like states do and they are typically not at the decision-making table. Why would a powerful state ever listen to the musings of an NGO? Are all of...