This is the first in a series of guest posts by Stuart J. Kaufman of the University of Delaware. Stuart advances a long-running dispute with PTJ about whether "what goes on inside people's heads" is relevant to social constructionism. PTJ doesn't think so; Stuart disagrees. After the final post, we will make the entire piece available as a PDF -- consider it our first true "working paper" publication.When scholars hold up physics as a model for...
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Who needs experts to forecast international politics?
This is a guest post by Michael C. Horowitz, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.Who can see the future? For us mere mortals, it’s hard, even for so-called experts. There are so many cognitive biases to take into consideration and even knowing your own weaknesses often does not help. Neither does being smart, apparently. So, what does make for “good judgment” when it comes to forecasting? When, if ever,...
IR Course Uncovers the Romantic Comedy Foruma
My students and I have unlocked the key to writing a blockbuster romantic comedy script. When lecturing on masculinities in my Gender and Human Rights course I gave students the following challenge: think of an stereotypical, ideal-type character that symbolizes one form of hegemonic masculinity. Remembering that hegemonic masculinities are fluid ideal types that vary across history and context, students came up with answers like "the macho...
When Political Scientists Do Not Understand Political Science
[cross-posted at SSSpew]When Political Scientists Do Not Understand Political Science .... they get published in the New York Times.I tried, I really tried, to ignore the screed at the NYT against political science (especially of the quant variety), but Jacqueline Stevens's rant is such a poor effort that I know it will be widely read and influential. Why? Because bad ideas often spread further and faster than good ones (see Clash of...
Open Access and IR Journals
Some time ago Thomas Rid had an amazing post arguing for an open-access revolution in our field. I won't repeat the arguments here; you can read them for yourself. The open-access movement is showing signs of momentum. Indeed, at BISA/ISA in Edinburgh, a number of people agitated for open access for the Review of International Studies (RIS) at its relaunch event.It seems that there are very few significant IR journals in a position to go open...
Being realistic about (academic) realism
At the BISA/ISA panel on pluralism Jennifer Sterling-Folker stressed that realism is not the "dominant paradigm" of North American international-relations scholarship. Instead, she argued, neoliberal institutionalism rules the roost. How do we know this? Among other reasons, neoliberal institutionalists don't spend a lot of time on 'big theory' -- on thinking about the scientific ontology of world politics. They take their worldview for...
“Having it all” and a (non-essentialist) feminist politics
Anne-Marie Slaughter's recent Atlantic article, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," has stirred up a fair amount of controversy in the last couple of days. Dozens of my Facebook friends have posted and reposted it, and it has prompted many of them to reflect on their personal experiences with womanhood, femininity, parenting, and/or motherhood. Several students have asked me about the article and my opinions on it, and it seems to be stirring...
Friday Nerd Blogging
From Mother Jones, of all places. Gayle Falkenthal comments.
Stuff Political Scientists Like #16 — Summer Break
Political scientists love summer break. They do not sail, as they have no money for a boat. They do not sun bathe, as they would burn outdoors. Spending time with children is not high on the priority list, at least for male political scientists, who generally use their paternity leave as a sabbatical to finish a book. And it is well known that political scientists are all deathly afraid of kites. No, political scientists love summer break for...
IR, Policymakers, and the Gender Balance
I'm pretty sure this is a Soviet poster for International Women's Day.Are IR scholars relevant to policy? IR scholar and famous policymaker Anne-Marie Slaughter addresses that puzzle, which principally concerns only IR scholars, in a roundabout way in a new article in The Atlantic asking whether women can "have it all"--a puzzle that concerns a great many more people. She also addresses these concerns in a follow-up Q&A on The New York Times...
Ranking US Allies: A Response to Stephen Walt, Andrew Sullivan & all those Canadians…
<img alt="" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('9ab6f160-8fa0-4fcc-a292-405526f7884b'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = "";" src="https://lh4.ggpht.com/-PqxwrrtujtM/T-JEowomCmI/AAAAAAAAAPA/yY5-l-pt3y8/videocbda4184ad6b%25255B66%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" />Who knew Canada could be so controversial…Last week, I tried to rank US allies, drawing response from both Walt and Sullivan...
Is International Relations Useful?
I just returned from a week long program at American University called Bridging the Gap: the International Policy Summer Institute (IPSI). Organized by the new Dean of AU's School of International Service Jim Goldgeier, Duke's Bruce Jentleson, Berkeley's Steve Weber, and Smith College's Brent Durbin, this was the faculty complement to the New Era program for graduate students that initially started at Berkeley several years ago by Steve, Brent,...