by Charli Carpenter | 24 Jun 2011 |
I was recently asked whether Game of Thrones was going to become "the cult IR series of 2011." My initial response, spouted on a FB update was, "it remains to be seen," not least since by next Spring GoT will of course be competing with Blood and Chrome.)As of today, however, "seen" it has clearly been, with multiple IR bloggers posting on various "IRGoT" themes. So I guess that answers that. We can look forward to a veritable bevy of...
by Patrick Porter | 23 Jun 2011 |
Must strategy be named to be practiced? Nowadays we tend to look for strategy as something that folk write down and codify. We live in logocentric times, where strategy is linked to formal declaratory documents, advisory councils and institutions dedicated to thinking about how to relate our power and our commitments, our resources and our goals.Of course, that dubious definition would disqualify all sorts of states from having a grand...
by Steve Saideman | 23 Jun 2011 |
Charli Carpenter has thrown down the gauntlet. She has pondered (on facebook) whether/why IR folks have not been blogging about Game of Thrones. Why? Because we are tired. Every episode is such great TV that we are left in awe. Our brains are so focused on getting the names straight, understanding the dynamics within each family and between them, that we no brainpower left to use.Spoilers lurk below: Ok, that was an excuse. The real...
by Alana Tiemessen | 21 Jun 2011 |
Foreign Policy magazine has just released their yearly Failed States Index ("A Year in Misery: The 2011 Failed States Index"), which also includes their photo essay called "Postcards from Hell."This photo essay raises the ire of those who criticize it as "poverty porn." This criticism is usually directed at aid organizations (see here and here) that exploit and misrepresent people's poverty and insecurity through shocking images to generate...
by Kate Weaver | 21 Jun 2011 | Featured
This week, the Independent Evaluation Office at the International Monetary Fund released its report on the relevance and utility of research at the Fund (see also today's Financial Times article on the report). The report itself echoes an earlier IEO report on the Fund's performance running up to the 2008 financial crisis, which found that the Fund's failure to foresee the crisis was in part due to pervasive groupthink within the...
by Dan Nexon | 20 Jun 2011 |
Michael Lind treats Niall Ferguson to the contempt he so richly deserves (via). A sample:The right-wing British historian Niall Ferguson seems to have conquered America: pushing his latest perishable book, "Civilization," this one based on the trendy and quickly dated conceit of the six (or is it seven?) "killer apps" of Western civilization; writing cover stories for Newsweek; debating foreign policy on TV with Zbigniew Brzezinski; and pouting...
by Charli Carpenter | 20 Jun 2011 |
Among the books I'm digesting this month as I work on my manuscript is this gem from Thomas Richard Davies - a case study of the transnational disarmament movement in the interwar period. I especially like two things about this book. First, it deals with a case of campaign failure, as the movement clearly did not meet its goals of general disarmament. This sets Davies' book apart from most of the transnational advocacy literature that focuses...
by Charli Carpenter | 17 Jun 2011 |
1: A mysterious little Father's Day gift for certain Dads among us. Speculation here.2: Your GoT satirical post of the week. (H/T Steve.)3: No, I haven't read it yet, though this is definitely on my summer beach-book-list. Judging by the critical reviews (Robopocalypse is being compared to World War Z) my immediate sense is that the zombie craze of which Drezner speaks may be coming to its end, and that Glen Weldon's new novel may be the start...
by Charli Carpenter | 17 Jun 2011 | Featured
A Guest Post by Jonathan Caverley in reply to Dan NexonThe irony of being accused of taking texts in directions their original authors might not have intended by the scholar behind Harry Potter and International Relations is too delicious to pass up. Plus I am sensitive to accusations like Nexon’s (might as well confront that elephant head on).I am not slighting Professor Nexon’s excellent TNR piece and book. In fact our approaches are quite...
by Brian Rathbun | 17 Jun 2011 |
Just yesterday I cautioned a graduate student not to get on the wrong side of some powerful people for the sake of principle if he could not truly effect change. And yet here I sit typing this right now, about to begin a rant on David Lake's new ISQ article: "Why ''isms' are evil: Theory, Epistemology, and Academic Sects as Impediments to Understanding and Progress." Nexon started it. It is his fault.The piece is taken from David Lake's keynote...
by Charli Carpenter | 17 Jun 2011 |
Part of the research project that is keeping me too busy to blog involves capturing, coding and visualizing the issue agenda for various transnational networks. Here is a visualization of the core human rights network on the World Wide Web, circa 2008.* (Nodes represent organizational websites and ties represent hyperlinks between them. Node size corresponds to in-degree centrality within the network.)You can click for a larger view.It looks to...
by Dan Nexon | 16 Jun 2011 |
Dave Noon Erik Loomis relates two anecdotes about the workings of US power. Both are a bit extreme. The US-Haiti relationship, in particular, is about as unequal as you can get in contemporary world politics. Still, Loomis' stories illustrate why some of us leave short-term stints in government with the impression that Washington is both much more powerful and much weaker than US academics often assume.US officials find themselves significantly...