William Kakenmaster (wkakenma@nd.edu), is a PhD candidate in comparative politics and methodology at the University of Notre Dame and a PhD Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. His research examines the politics and political economy of climate change and the environment using a mix of quantitative, causal inference techniques and process-tracing analysis of qualitative evidence for climate (in)action in Algeria, Morocco,...
While immigration has not only continued but also increased in recent years, the strict stances of some politicians and policy makers of destination countries, especially European countries, brings to mind the question: Who should host states oppose: immigrants or their corrupt undemocratic states? Human rights issues have provided a ground for supporting immigrants. At the same time, host states have often had relations with the origin states,...
Sabah Mofidi is a postdoctoral researcher in the Political Science Department at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on Kurdistan's political history, political identity and the relationship between religion and politics.
“A specter is haunting strategic studies—the specter of peace.” These bizarre words are from Richard Betts, who provocatively presented peace itself as a problem in a largely forgotten article from 1997 asking, “Should Strategic Studies Survive?” Betts answered his title question in the affirmative. As one of the most prominent scholars that strategic studies has ever produced, it’s unsurprising Betts would come to the field’s...
Associate Provost and W. Harold Row Professor of Global Politics Jamie Frueh, of Bridgewater College, joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Jamie and Brent have been friends for over 15 years, meeting at the ISA-Northeast conference in 2009. Jamie is also the only (other) person on this podcast besides Brent who is from Iowa; Jamie also hosts his own podcast, The Teaching Curve. Jamie talks about growing up in Des Moines, with parents who both...
Ah, the avalanche of racism and misogyny that came after the Kamala Harris announcement. The “Kamala is not really black” narrative has been dissected by Adam Serwer in great detail. Spoiler alert: all of these “DEI” discussions are inherently racist and white supremacist because they assume that a person of color is unable to succeed in the same way as a white person. Even though so far the GOP has focused on cats, biological children,...
The implications of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump over the weekend remain unclear. Will it lead him to strike a more conciliatory tone during the upcoming Republican National Convention? Will it make more Americans sympathize with him? And then there are the questions of what led to the shooting. Why did this individual try to kill Trump? These questions were intensified by the news that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation...
A lot of ink has been spilled and bytes spent on the reflections over Trump's failed assassination this past weekend. I won't pretend I know better, although as a regular academic that's kind of my job and an occupational hazard. But as soon as my co-author texted me about the events in Butler, PA, I responded that a carnival usually ends with the execution of the mock-king. Once more details started to come in, especially about the identity of...
When I was but a lad, it was still quite common for foreign-policy hawks to invoke “Munich” as an all-purpose rebuttal to compromise with (they would say the “appeasement of”) rival states, most notably the Soviet Union. The failure of the 1938 agreement — which handed Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in an effort to avoid a general European war. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain infamously...
In the recent Settling for Less: Why States Colonize and Why They Stop, Lachlan McNamee makes a rationalist argument—“colonization projects” are “characterized by a triangle of actors—settlers, indigenes, and the central state,” and for his purposes, we can “assume that all settler migration is voluntary and economically driven”. McNamee is not the only one with such a reading of colonial politics. Director, co-writer, and star Kevin Costner...
1. What is the name of the article and what are its coordinates? Aníbal Pérez-Liñán and Angie García Atehortúa. 2024. “Oversight Hearings, Stakeholder Engagement, and Compliance in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.” International Organization. 2. What’s the argument? Compliance with international law is hardly guaranteed. International bodies can secure greater compliance with their decisions by requesting regular reports from relevant...
Angie K. García Atehortúa is a human rights and criminal lawyer based in The Hague.