When delicate political negotiations are needed, perhaps journalists need to get out of the way. Gadi Wolfsfeld’s studies of peace processes have shown how journalistic discretion in Northern Ireland created space for political leaders to make individual compromises. Such compromises would probably each have been unacceptable to their constituencies if lit up by a media spotlight, but only became public once the full package of a peace treaty...
Thanks to Erik Voeten, I have just discovered a fabulous blog, Better Book Titles:This blog is for people who do not have thousands of hours to read book reviews or blurbs or first sentences. I will cut through all the cryptic crap, and give you the meat of the story in one condensed image. Now you can read the greatest literary works of all time in mere seconds!Some of my other favorites from the site:blinkthe curious incident of the dog in...
There's been a small break (understatement) in my posting as I dealt with some pressing stuff personally and professionally, and to post about some time-sensitive stuff (like Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which I couldn't resist, though I did resist talking about Wikileaks). I will now return to "Feminist IR 101," a series of posts designed to provide audiences that had (intentionally or not) an understanding of feminist approaches to IR that caused...
Over the years, the so-called global "war on terror" (or "war on terrorism") has had its ups and downs as a foreign policy framing device. The George W. Bush administration, of course, relied upon the frame to sell virtually all its major foreign policies over a period of many years -- even though the Pentagon at one point preferred "struggle against violent extremists." Britain stopped using the phrase some years ago (at least in the Labor...
I run a small international-relations reading group at Georgetown University, and thought some of our readers might be interested in the list of books we're tackling this semester.Michael Horowitz, The Diffusion of Military Power: Causes and Consequences for International Politics (Princeton, 2010); 26 January.Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations: Philosophy of Science and Its Implications for the Study of...
So, this is it -- Tunisia is vindication of the Iraq War. Here's Jennifer Rubin's great insight: Recall when President George W. Bush talked about democracy taking hold in Iraq and then the region? Now Bush's vision seems very prescient....One question that deserves further consideration: How much did the emergence of a democratic Iraq have to do with this popular revolt in Tunisia? This is similar to a point Max Boot made recently at Amherst...
Of possible interest to some Duck readers, I reproduce notes that I posted on my class blog in preparation for our next section. Comments and suggestions welcome.The narrative of Watchmen enjoys, at best, a quasi-linear relationship to time. Events in the past and present intermingle. At the same time, Moore gives significant space to Dr. Manhattan’s relationship to space-time. It might be interesting, in this context, to skim the Internet...
Unlikely to become a tradition.
In 1991, with the Soviet Union on the verge of collapse, the rump regime of Mohammad Najibullah finally cut a deal with Iran. The Iranians were allowed to supply the Hazarajat in central Afghanistan with armaments and other goods through direct flights to Bamiyan in exchange for supplying petroleum to western Afghanistan, including to the Kabul regime's military forces. The arrangement provided Tehran with unfettered access to an area which...
The conversation on last week's tragedy in Tucson has gone from the absurd to the absurd to the absurd. The late George Gerbner who was the long-time Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at UPenn and who later finished his career at Temple University was a pioneer in the study of media influences on society and violence. He frequently warned against assuming or inferring a direct relationship from a specific media event or elite cue to...
The visit of the Indian External Affairs Minister, S.M. Krishna, to Afghanistan a few days ago overlapped the Afghan High Peace Council's visit to Pakistan to establish a joint Afghanistan-Pakistan Peace Jirga. Although the overlap of the two events appears to be coincidental, it highlighted the complex trilateral dynamic that must be negotiated.India has now fully backed the reconciliation process with the Taliban in Afghanistan, although...
Vesla Weaver and Amy Lerman have published a study in the American Political Science Review on the relationship between contact with the US criminal justice system and disaffection from US government and politics. They find that even after controlling for other important factors, contact with the criminal justice system is a significant predictor of civic and political disengagement and mistrust of government.Contact with the criminal justice...