by Dan Nexon | 11 Jan 2011 |
As James Poulous reminds me, 2010 ain't got nothing on 1968, let alone the long 1960s. Violent rhetoric?Worse.Societal polarization?Worse.Political violence, including assassinations?Much worse.It is something of a testament to how far we've come that what outrages us now is relatively tame compared to the spewings of the far left and the far right less than half a century ago.I still don't have much use for claims that center-left politicians...
by Dan Nexon | 10 Jan 2011 |
If you haven't noticed, there's a debate going on about the relationship between rhetoric and violence (meta). I basically agree with Henry Farrell's take:One can say that there is (moderate) evidence supporting the argument that violent rhetoric makes violent action more likely. But this does not and cannot show, in the absence of other evidence, that any particular violent action is the product of a general atmosphere of violent...
by Vikash Yadav | 10 Jan 2011 | Featured
The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that the hackitivist collective [?] "Anonymous," famous for DDOS attacks on Mastercard and Paypal after the Wikileaks Cablegate fiasco, is attacking the government of Tunisia's website in support of the growing and increasingly violent protests there:"But the unrest has since spread to a wide cross-section of Tunisian society, reflecting broader discontent with inequality and autocratic leaders...
by Charli Carpenter | 10 Jan 2011 |
John Sides at the Monkey Cage weighs in with some social science on the relationship between militant metaphors in political speech and individuals' willingness to engage in actual political violence against government officials. The findings he cites: an experimental study has shown there seems to be no effect on the overall population of exposure to "fighting words" in political ads, but there is an effect on people with aggressive...
by Laura Sjoberg | 9 Jan 2011 |
This week, the New York Times published a (largely true) piece about the evils of going to law school, echoed by my friends on twitter and in the blogosphere have responded quickly, and in agreement. Like many political science professors, I am constantly telling our students not to go to law school - when 53% of our majors list it as their primary goal after undergraduate school. I even spoke a seminar at UF called "Why NOT go to law school -"...
by PM | 8 Jan 2011 |
Glenn Greenwald reports on the case of Birgitta Jonsdottir, the Icelandic MP and former Wikileaks volunteer. The U.S. Department of Justice has subpoenaed Jonsdottir's Twitter records, as well as the records from many other users of the service, from November 2009 onward on the grounds that the department believes that the records may be used in a criminal investigation. What is newsworthy about this is not that the U.S. DoJ continues to...
by Dan Nexon | 6 Jan 2011 |
Context available through an additional click.
by Dan Nexon | 6 Jan 2011 |
Brad Delong:The treaties of Muenster and Osnabrueck in 1648—the Peace of Westphalia—and the earlier peace of Augsburg in 1555 established the principle in European international law that internal affairs were nobody else’s business.No, it didn't. In addition to stipulating a number of territorial adjustments, the Peace of Westphalia:Reformed the Imperial Constitution to create non-violent processes for adjudicating religious disputes;Reduced...
by Charli Carpenter | 6 Jan 2011 |
Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann at the New America Foundation are keeping one of the most useful datasets on drone strike fatalities that I know of. They've been tallying reports of strikes since 2004. They limit their data to those reported by:"news organizations with deep and aggressive reporting capabilities in Pakistan (the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal), accounts by major news services and networks (the...
by Rodger Payne | 5 Jan 2011 |
Annually, the University of Louisville awards significant cash prizes in five fields: Music Composition, Religion, Education, Psychology, and Ideas Improving World Order. Next year, the prize will be at least $100,000 in each category.For over 15 years, I have directed the administration of the award for the World Order award. Basically, I chair the initial review committee that is housed within the Department of Political Science -- and...
by Dan Nexon | 5 Jan 2011 | Featured
Robert Farley has written a veritably excellent post on the need for liberals (er, "progressives") to get serious about defense policy.I only wish to add that it is time for international-relations scholars to re-engage with defense policy and "hard" security questions. We're going through a revolution in military affairs, a power transition, and two U.S.-led wars, but not that many political scientists work on "guns and bombs" issues.*...
by Jon Western | 4 Jan 2011 |
I just finished reading Dominic Tierney's new book How We Fight: Crusades, Quagmires and the American Way of War. As the title suggests, he presents the standard American exceptionalism argument about why and how the US begins wars -- that both the public and elites hold deeply entrenched beliefs of America's "benign power" to transform the world. But, these same wars often end when the public and elites turn against these "crusades" after...