by Jon Western | 25 Feb 2010 |
I'll have more to say about the ISA conference in a few upcoming posts, but let me begin with some comments on the host city. ISA was held in New Orleans, in part, to provide a lift for the city after Hurricane Katrina five years ago. Somewhere around 5,000 folks descended on the city with cash in hand to help the local economy. The conference started the day after Mardi Gras and came less than two weeks after the Saints' Super Bowl victory. A...
by Laura Sjoberg | 25 Feb 2010 |
My post-ISA blogging is slower than it otherwise would have been, due to an unfortunate interlude with food poisoning. But I figured I'd start with the "working group" that Jennifer Lobasz and I ran at ISA, called "Gender and Security: Theory and Practice," which Charli mentioned in her previous post. A Working Group at ISA meets on the day before the conference, and then twice during the conference, and members are asked to attend common...
by Rodger Payne | 24 Feb 2010 |
I spent a fair amount of time at ISA attending panels and very little sitting in the NOLA bars. Perhaps I wasn't fully engaged in the "business of conferencing," though we'd all probably agree that "ISA is what we make of it." So, what did I make of ISA 2010 (beyond what I wrote Saturday)?Over several delicious dinners through the week, I learned that Abita Amber is over-carbonated. This Duck recommends ordering the Turbodog. The next time ISA...
by Charli Carpenter | 24 Feb 2010 |
Does a video blog post satirizing a scholarly debate count as a contribution to that debate? This is the question I meant to pose when I chose to preface my remarks with a YouTube clip about academic bloggers on the ISA panel entitled “Do International Relations Blogs Inform Practice? Theory? Both? Neither?” Naturally, the equipment failed. So it wasn’t until Q&A when I had a chance to hit “play” – and then only in the context of a question...
by Charli Carpenter | 23 Feb 2010 |
Among events I attended last week at the International Studies Association Annual Conference: an informal discussion on the relationship between IR feminist theory and security studies, organized by fellow Duck Laura Sjoberg. Some of the questions posed to the participants in advance: What (if anything) can feminist theory teach security studies? What (if anything) can security studies teach IR feminism? My key answer to the first of these...
by Charli Carpenter | 23 Feb 2010 |
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...
by Vikash Yadav | 22 Feb 2010 | Featured
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...
by Rodger Payne | 21 Feb 2010 |
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...
by Mlada Bukovansky | 20 Feb 2010 |
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...
by Bill Petti | 18 Feb 2010 |
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...
by Charli Carpenter | 17 Feb 2010 |
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...
by Bill Petti | 16 Feb 2010 |
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...