Markus Kornprobst is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the Vienna School of International Studies. His research appears in leading journals in the field such as the European Journal of International Relations, International Affairs, International Organization and International Theory. He has co-edited six books, most recently Theorizing International Orders, co-authored Understanding International Diplomacy, and...
Happy belated New Year! After a rather chaotic December – and lots of work on the backend of this site – we're getting ready to kickstart happenings here at the Duck. We've got a few posts and a symposium – all of which really should've been posted a while back – coming soon. You may already have seen that Adam has created a new "interviews" feature, and posted the first part of one he did with PTJ. I'm looking forward to seeing how that turns...
This is the first instalment of a new series of interviews on Duck of Minerva entitled Quack-and-Forths.
ymena Kurowska of Central European University joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Kurowska grew up in the northern part of Poland, at a time of world and local transition. She discusses what it was like to move around to 'closed' cities in a military family, having a father who served in the Polish military and also in a UN peacekeeping operation in Southern Lebanon. Xymena recalls how a karate injury almost kept...
One year ago today, a pro-Trump crowd attempted to shut down the certification of Joe Biden's electoral victory. America is still making sense of it. We're debating how it could have been prevented, whether it can happen again, how to prevent it happening again. But there's also a foundational debate about what to call the events of the day. I would argue 1/6/21 needs to be called a terrorist attack, for both conceptual and strategic reasons....
that I actually conceived of the idea for this post last week but was only able to force myself to write it today by promising myself a variety of self-care rewards like naps and whiskey.
I read a lot of crap this year, but the good stuff was really good. The Causes of World War Three, by C. Wright Mills This book is from 1961, just after Mills's famous "Letter to the New Left" and just before the Cuban Missile Crisis. The book basically predicts the Cuban Missile Crisis down to the U-2 incident. But what's remarkable is his ability to marry analysis and prose. His passionate critique of power rivals the evocative language of...
Joe Biden's "Summit for Democracy" was held last week. This summit meant to bring together the world's democracies, strengthening them and pro-democratic global norms. The hope is that this would reverse the growing trend of authoritarianism around the world. Some were hopeful. In his opening address, President Biden called on the "global community for democracy" to "stand up for the values that unite us." Some agree this gathering may be...
The Biden administration just issued the government’s first ever anti-corruption strategy. The upshot: It’s needed. It’s analytically informed. It raises the prioritization of fighting kleptocracy. The downside: It’s not all that realistic. It defines corruption so widely that it makes prioritization fanciful. And it defers most of the real work to some to-be-determined imaginary future on the other side of...
The practice of maintaining a long-term, peacetime military presence in another state (or “sovereign basing”) only developed in the last century. Before World War II, a foreign military presence usually meant one of three things: occupation, colonization, or a wartime alliance. This changed radically in the years after 1945.
As many of our readers have likely already heard, Robert Jervis died yesterday. The field has lost a gentle intellectual giant. Unlike many of my friends from Columbia, Bob wasn't on my dissertation committee; I only took one course from him. But I'll remember him as both brilliant and very generous. Indeed, back in November I received an email from a student in my "International Order" class. He was very excited because the Robert Jervis had...
Sebastian Schmidt is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include the historical origins and sociological foundations of security strategies, questions of international order, the modalities of American influence in the world, international monetary relations, and sovereignty. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Political Science Review, International...