Last week's vote for gay marriage in New York state was a signal win for U.S. advocates. Two weeks earlier, in a move hailed by gay groups and the Obama administration, the UN Human Rights Council voted 23-19 to commission a study on “discriminatory laws and practices and acts of violence against individuals based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.” Do these and other recent advances for gay advocates demonstrate that a new...
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Yes, Steve, Kyrgyzstan is Important
Is it crazy to think that "the situation in Kyrgyzstan has a critical bearing on US national security?" Steve Walt thinks so:The first sentence of the announcement informed me that "the situation in Kyrgyzstan has a critical bearing on American national security." As my teen-aged daughter would say: "OMG!" Did you know that your safety and security depends on the political situation in.... Kyrgyztan?" Yes, I know that the air base at Manas is a...
R2P, Louise Arbour and the Responsibility to Reality
She's cool, but she's wrong.I have a short piece on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in the October 2010 Review of International Studies Special Supplement on "Evaluating Global Orders" (that came out last week? I don’t get journals). It’s basically a reply to Louise Arbour, former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) who argued in 2008 that R2P was becoming “a duty of care in international...
Dear Professor Rathbun….
Friends, Unfortunately I recently received this rejection letter from Political Science Job Rumors for my recent post, Stuff Political Scientists Like #5. Apparently they do not actually like this. I thought I would share it with you.BCRDear Professor Rathbun,We are writing to inform you that unfortunately we cannot recommend your recent submission on the Duck of Minerva, "Stuff Political Scientists Like #5: a Large-N, for cross-listing on our...
Climate Change: The Elephant in the Room
This is my inaugural post on this site, and I thought I would start with a topic I’ve been puzzling over for a while. It may take me a couple of posts to get it all out, but here goes: What happened to Republican elites on climate change?Republicans have long been more reluctant than Democrats to address the problem. However, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and Al Gore’s slide show and mov(i)ement, moderate Republican governors – Arnold...
Stuff Political Scientists Like to Obsess About
Not to step on Brian‘s territory, but I just wanted to cross-post here something that I wanted to propose.One of the recurring themes on my blog and at the Poli Sci Job Rumor site is that of rankings. See here, here, and here for a taste of my fixation. Anyhow, I am always reminded of a simple fact when I see any political science ranking of journals, presses, departments whatever: that whenever a ranking is suggested or revised, it is always...
Who Will Arrest Gaddafi? Not It!
On June 27th the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, his son Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi, and chief of military intelligence Abdualla Al-Senussi for:crimes against humanity (murder and persecution) allegedly committed across Libya from 15 February 2011 until at least 28 February 2011, through the State apparatus and Security Forces.The judges believe there is "reasonable grounds" to attribute...
Partisanship vs. Policy: the Housing Bubble Debate
Morgensen's and Rosner's new book appears to have breathed new life into claims that responsibility for the housing bubble can be laid at the feet of Democrats, ACORN, and Fannie and Freddie. Given that buyers of the book at Amazon are also snatching up works by Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, and Andrew Breitbart, I'm pretty sure that it is on its way to becoming the housing-bubble bible for all those who also are learning how Constantine's...
The Balkans after Mladic
With Mladic's arrest last month, Bosnia and the rest of the Balkans are getting some much needed international attention. The New York Times has a nice run-down of some of the debates about the situation in Bosnia -- especially the debate between Kurt Bassuener from the Democratization Policy Council and Gerald Knaus from the European Stabilization Initiative. The piece is a spin-off from a conference that Daniel Serwer from SAIS helped put...
Stuff political scientists like #5 — a Large N
I have been doing a lot of work with survey data lately, as well as some reading in critical theory. Maybe that inspired my deconstruction of the gendered language of stats. Or maybe I just like to work blue. Your girlfriend has told you, "Honey, your data set is big enough for me. It's OK if it doesn't get you into the APSR." She might tell you, "It is not the size of p-value that matters, it is what you do with it." A good theory can make up...
En Garde, Lagarde
I happened to be walking up 19th Street in downtown DC today in the early afternoon. Numerous media vans were parked along the road, and the sidewalks between F and H Streets were filled with eager reporters and bemused staff, obviously enjoying a long lunch break. A stranger, clearly new to the area, came up to me and asked, "Do you know where 700 19th Street is?"Me: "Are you looking for the IMF?"Lost stranger (from the UN in New York, as it...
New Deal for BBC World Service Weakens Britain’s Soft Power?
Una Marson, George Orwell, T.S. Eliot and others at the World Service during WW2The reputation of the BBC World Service around the world reflects that of Britain generally. It’s an institution tied to colonial history. It aspires to global reach. Through its journalism it tries to uphold values of impartiality and objectivity, and therein lies the attractive, soft power dimension. As an institution, however, it cannot escape appearing partial –...