I've had it. Recently I was asked to review a book that will not be named for a journal that will not be mentioned. It was by an author with a pretty good reputation with an excellent press on a subject that I am well informed on. (I won't mention names. Dan can take him or her to the woodshed later.) I thought I would be doing the field a service and forcing myself to read what I thought would be an entertaining book that I might not otherwise...
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Famine, Climate Change, and the Horn of Africa – part I
So, I will ultimately come back to climate change and public opinion in this country, but when I haven't been handwringing over the debt ceiling, I’ve been preoccupied by the humanitarian tragedy unfolding in Somalia and East Africa more broadly. I'm going to tackle this topic in a couple of parts since this post is already quite long. The United Nations estimates that as many as 11 million people are being affected by the current crisis, seen...
Abdullah Khadr, Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism: Or what I was really trying to say
I was quoted in Canada’s Globe and Mail today about a trial involving a Canadian citizen, Abdullah Khadr, who the US has requested for extradition on terrorism charges. (This is the older brother of Omar Khadr who is still in Guantanamo prison.) It’s an interesting case for a variety of reasons so I thought I would expand upon my thoughts here – and the fact that I’m slightly concerned that the summary of my comments in the article were...
In Defence of Flawed Giants
OK, its confession time. I don't really agree with them much, but I loved reading the post-Cold War 'blockbusters' of Samuel Huntington, Francis Fukuyama and John Mearsheimer, (all beautifully surveyed a little while ago by Richard Betts).I was psyched to read Fukuyama's prophecy that with the American-led era of market democracy, humankind had overcome the historical dialectic struggle of ideologies and had hit upon an ultimate way of being...
Anders Breivik: Isolated Mad Man or Tip of the Far-Right Racist Iceburg?
Co-authored with Alison Howell, author of Madness in International Relations: Psychology, Security and the Global Governance of Mental HealthThe recent events in Norway have revealed the pitfalls of speculation within a 24-hour new cycle/instant social media environment. Almost immediately after information about the bombings and the shootings emerged, facebook, twitter, and media outlets were saturated with possible theories on the source of...
SSRN Bound Editions
The question before us: does SSRN now include a Vanity Press option, or it the new AllAcademic?In the email box:SSRN recently released our Purchase Bound Hard Copy Service. Authors and readers can now order printed copies of select papers in the SSRN eLibrary, which provides another format for users to access research papers. The Free One-Click Download option is not affected by this new service.For $9.99 plus shipping, the reader will receive...
On Paradigms, Policy Revelance and Other IR Myths
I had every intention this evening of writing a cynical commentary on all the hoopla surrounding Open Government, Open Data and the Great Transparency Revolution. But truth be told, I am brain-dead at the moment. Why? Because I spent the last two days down in Williambsurg, VA arbitrating codes for a Teaching, Research and International Politics (TRIP) project (co-led by myself and Jason Sharman) which analyzes what the field of IR looks like...
“Sure I’m against war and exploitation- but don’t make me feel guilty about my diamond ring”
Wanna know a guaranteed conversation stopper- great for engagement parties or wedding receptions? Mention the politics of diamonds.Now don't get me wrong, I'm not into being a political Debbie Downer at social events. God knows I have the ammunition. Yet, in my experience women and men are more comfortable with discussions of wartime sexual violence, amputations, and children born as a result of rape than they are about clear gems.So what...
Tears of Appreciation (and McDonald’s) in North Korea
Sorry for the blogging hiatus, I've been on the road in South Korea and Japan for the past six weeks and not able to blog. I've spent quite a bit of time talking to folks in Seoul about the situation in North Korea and whether or not we are likely to see any movement in the relationship. North Korea is again suffering acute food shortages and another famine appears to be unfolding. The poster above, according to North Korean Central Television...
Stuff Political Scientists Like #7, International Relations edition: Isms
Lest you ask, I do understand the irony of me writing this particular post and risking being a one-hit blogger with the continuation of this series. But I haven't read a single Harry Potter book, so there is not much I can do. Enjoy!If you show up at the bar at a conference of international relations scholars, you will immediately stumble upon a conversation about paradigms or ‘isms.’ You will quickly learn that almost all of those same...
Key Constraint on Policy Relevance
Dan Drezner has a great post today about how the foreign policy smart set (his phrase) gets so frustrated by domestic politics that they tend to recommend domestic political changes that are never going to happen.I would go one step further and suggest that one of the key problems for scholars who want to be relevant for policy debates is that we tend to make recommendations that are "incentive incompatible." I love that phrase. What is best...
Pirates, Hackers, and Terrorists
A hypothesis: Pirates, hackers, and terrorists are perennial actors in international relations. They will never be permanently defeated; the frontier will never be permanently settled.The underlying material reason that these actors exist is actually quite simple. Each of these (Weberian) ideal type actors emerges as a consequence of the (proto-capitalist or industrial-capitalist) overproduction and networking of standardized technologies. [I...