More thoughtful posts to come. But for starters, here are some tidbits from conference papers I read or heard presented while AWOL at the International Studies Association conference last week:1) Isaac Kamola: The recent securitization of Somali piracy is a pretty big mystery given how few vital interests are at stake. Peter Andreas points out that it's therefore also a mystery that no major IR journal has published a serious IR paper on this...
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Mullah Baradar and Stringer Bell
My first thought when I heard of the capture of Mullah Baradar, "Mullah Omar's #2 man," was of Stringer Bell, "Avon Barksdale's #2 man" from "The Wire.""The Wire" was the ultimate show for Political Scientists. Beneath the gritty surface of a stale cops-n-robbers thematic is a brilliant show about dynamic organizations - mainly "po-lice" and criminal gangs, but also the city's decaying educational system, the media, city hall, etc. The...
ISA: Renewing my call for comedy
I'm just back from the 2010 ISA conference in NOLA, but I don't have time for a full convention report right now. Among the highlights: First, I attended a panel on blogging featuring the Duck's Charli Carpenter on a stage with Dan Drezner, Rob Farley and Steve Walt, among others. Later, over drinks, I got to meet a few of the newest Duck bloggers.These events motivated me to blog more frequently. We'll see, eh?In any case, in addition to...
Is Sovereignty the Worst Organizing Principle — Except for All the Others?
The IMF has changed course and legitimated capital controls (under certain circumstances). Former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson (among others) bemoans Greece's inability to devalue its currency (given that it is locked into the Euro) in light of its balance of payments difficulties:"If Greece still had its own currency, everything would be easier. Just as in the case of the United Kingdom since 2008, the Greek exchange rate would depreciate...
Does Social Science Training make us Selfish and Immoral?
Tim Hartford (whose blog at FT.com you really must read) discusses the results of a recent survey that suggest the answer is yes:A recent survey by Yoram Bauman and Elaina Rose, two economists from the University of Washington, explains that in experiments, economics students are less generous, more likely to choose an unco-operative approach and more likely to accept bribes.Bauman and Rose's survey built upon an earlier study 30 years ago...
How ISA is Different from the Olympics
Blogging may be lighter than usual over the next week while I and many colleagues and co-bloggers descend upon the city of New Orleans for the International Studies Association Annual Conference – or, as I explained cheekily to my students yesterday, the “Olympic Games of IR geekdom” – a gathering where scholars from different schools of thought and methodological perspectives contend for the limelight, pitted against one another through the...
Dictators, Torture Conventions, and Signaling
Charli linked to a great round-up of theories circulating that propose to answer the rather interesting question of why countries that sign the Convention Against Torture seem to have a greater likelihood of committing torture.One working paper in particular , by James Hollyer and Peter Rosendorff of NYU, has caused quite a stir. They propose that dictators use the signing of such a treaty as a costly signal to domestic opposition groups that...
Google On The Defense
Google is backpedaling amid the buzz about Buzz, apologizing for its premature launch and the privacy issues it created, and promising to make Buzz more like other social networking sites, where users can choose the friends they associate with. The brou-ha-ha goes to show that "privacy is still a social norm," to contradict the claim of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg last year that people these days want the whole world to see what they put online....
Who Dat? Old Chap!
The International Studies Association meeting is getting underway shortly in New Orleans. I’m not sure who’s very strange idea it was to combine academics and “Mardi Gras” – (I can’t wait to see the “Professors Gone Wild! Video…. Actually, I can… ) but we’re here and letting the bon temps rouler – as it were.Of course this year’s Mardi Gras has a very important unofficial theme – the New Orleans Saints – who won the Superbowl this year. There...
The Hurt Locker
When I heard that the "Hurt Locker," a drama set in the midst of the Iraq War, was nominated for several Oscars, I was intrigued. Americans have not shown much interest as a people in either of the current official wars and even less interest in documentaries about and dramas set in these conflicts. My initial hunch was that this film, was selected to balance out "Avatar", the narrative of which clearly questions militarism and imperialism...
The Oatmeal Olympics
Following on Charli’s excellent post about the Olympics, I thought I’d add my two cents.If you live outside of North America, (okay, and Scandinavia) you probably didn’t know. The fact is the international coverage seems to be lacking, at least if my experience in London is to be judged by. Here, the Six Nations Rugby Tournament is getting far more coverage. Not to mention the Football/Soccer. I have been trying to figure out why this might be...
Olympic (Pipe) Dreams
Last week, Ban Ki-Moon made his standard plea for an Olympic Truce during the XXI Olympic Winter Games from Feb. 12 to Feb. 28 February and the X Winter Paralympic Games from March 12th to 21st.Thing is, the concept of the Olympic Truce is based on two fallacies: 1) that nation-states (which are the units of contestation in the Olympics) are also the containers of political community and 2) that they are the wagers of war against one another...