At his own blog, PM writes:So why were my undergrad classes so much more educational for me? The simplest explanation is just that this was the second time I'd gone through the material, and so the review made clearer connections that had been obscure. The more profound difference, though, is that undergrads are more incentivized to ask questions. Graduate students are vastly more risk-averse about asking dumb-sounding questions, not least...
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Revolution, Revolution until Victory
"... Yet the crowds were not placated, and they spent the next hour in the courtyard repeating the classic songs of the uprising, "thowra thowra huta nasr" (revolution, revolution until victory)." -Al Jazeera (4/25/2011)The revolution which overthrew Hosni Mubarak is in danger. While Western media outlets have given primacy in their coverage of events to speculative discussions about the historic, current, and future role of the Muslim...
Reciprocity and International Law: A reply to International Jurist
On Wednesday, Xavier Rauscher at International Jurist posted his response to the hullabaloo over international law and the death of bin Laden. I’ve said my piece on it here and I’m getting tired of the issue, but Rauscher’s post is interesting because he tries to look at the “big picture” – noting that the manner in which bin Laden was killed has thrown more fuel on the fire over the “war on terror” vs “law enforcement” debate. He also notes...
A Good Storyline Won’t Win a War – Did the Taliban out-communicate our Generals?
(Written with Alister Miskimmon) Following the death of Osama bin Laden, political pressure is mounting for an early scaling down of British military troops presence in Afghanistan ahead of David Cameron’s deadline of 2014 for the end of Britain’s combat mission. With this in mind the British defence establishment is trying to understand their role in Afghanistan since 2001. Much of this soul-searching has focused on trying to explain why...
Random Friday stuff
Blogger has finally started to restore posts, but it doesn't look like everything is back yet. Meanwhile, my partner's off to Kazakhstan, I've got 38 seminar papers and 16 short essays to grade, and my daughter's become obsessed with Naruto. So, in lieu of posting anything substantive:Rob Farley has some thoughts on the air campaign in Libya;PM's thoughts on qualitative and quantitative methods deserves more commentary from our academic...
Congratulations!
The folks at The Monkey Cage win blogger of the year. Well done!
The 1950s are calling — they want their theoretical debates back
Daniel Drezner takes another stab at the Brooks-Krugman-Winecoff-Drezner-Farrell dustup. I merely wish to make a few points:Most voters are information specialists; they do not tend to specialize in the intricacies of policy debates. Thus, they are unlikely to know, for example, the actual distributional implications of the Bush-era tax cuts or understand the details of Iraq.Many of the more engaged voters are partisans; they process...
The Tea Party and the Future Face of American Power
With the politics of "budget crisis" dominating the political discourse, what does a Tea Party-dominated Republican foreign and defense policy look like? Not good. Gutting diplomacy and development and leaving defense spending largely uncut means American power becomes more blunt and unwieldy. I've written up my take in the current issue of Current Intelligence. Here's a portion: Republican Congressional leaders have pledged that nothing is off...
Of Quals and Quants
Qualitative scholars in political science are used to thinking of themselves as under threat from quantitative researchers. Yet qualitative scholars' responses to quantitative "imperialism" suggest that they misunderstand the nature of that threat. The increasing flow of data, the growing availability of computing power and easy-to-use software, and the relative ease of training new quantitative researchers make the position of qualitative...
IR Theory and Policy Processes
A running theme around the office lately has been the deeply problematic character of causal mechanisms that international-relations scholars take for granted. For example, apparently simple claims about domestic institutions and credible commitments often require all sorts of heroic assumptions about public attention to policy processes, the degree of actual restraint institutions impose upon executives, and so on. They also have almost...
Office Hours…..
Stacie Goddard and Tom Burke from Wellesley created this "typical meeting between a student and faculty member at the Political Science Department of Wellesley College" for their annual Political Science majors' dinner. Well done.
The bin Laden Killing and Assassination Explained in 4 Paragraphs Not By Me
At the risk of beating a dead terrorist horse, I want to cite W. Hays Parks (former Special Advisor to the Office of Legal Counsel on Law of War Issues at DoD, JAG and possible stand in for Clint Eastwood in that Grand Torino movie) on the Osama bin Laden assassination/murder/killing debate that has kind of been driving me nuts. In a response letter in the Washington Post, Parks writes: The May 2 lead story by Scott Wilson and Craig Whitlock on...