by Rodger Payne | 5 Oct 2005 |
Last week (September 26th), I commented on Dan's post on "Realism and Constructivism" by writing this:"Critical" constructivists are in many ways realist-constructivists. They argue that material power and self interest typically shape outcomes, but they (normatively) want ideational factors to have a predominant role. It is a transformation from brute force to the "forceless force of the better argument."Of course, critical theorists need not...
by Dan Nexon | 5 Oct 2005 | Featured
If you're coming here via Henry Farrell's Chronicle of Higher Education article, take a look around and let us know what you think. A particularly warm "hello" to any international-relations scholars who might be new here. I think it is about time to admit that we all read (at least) Daniel Drezner's blog anyway, so maybe it is time to really get onboard with blogging :-). Heck, the worst thing that could happen is that it fizzles out, like all...
by Bill Petti | 4 Oct 2005 | Featured
Yesterday, Vice President Dick Cheney gave a speech at Camp Lejeune, N.C., to Marines who recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. In that speech he, of course, reminded the audience that the Bush administration will vigorously pursue terrorism “in Iraq and every other front”. While this is nothing new, nor too surprising, it was what else he said that is most interesting.The Vice President claimed that the terrorist attacks of September...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 1 Oct 2005 | Featured
William Bennett -- you remember, the guy who used to be Secretary of Education before he went out and wrote The Book of Extremely Reactionary Virtues -- made an even-more-ridiculous-than-usual comment on his radio show yesterday. To quote a Washington Post article on the incident:"But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your...
by Bill Petti | 30 Sep 2005 | Featured
For those of you who where wondering where I have been (yes, all three of you:)), I have been stranded in comprehensive exam hell. Thankfully the process is now over and I passed with flying colors. Now its on to prospectus hell and dissertation hell (why do I get the feeling that grad school is a lot like Dante's Inferno, a series of ever worsening levels of pain--let's leave that discussion for another time....).On to something substantive....
by Dan Nexon | 29 Sep 2005 | Featured
'Tis the season to be a neurotic mess - if you're late-stage ABD or newly minted PhD.Between, on the one hand, emails from students and friends and, on the other, trolling around anonymous academic blogs, I have reached the inescapable conclusion that it is, indeed, the time of darkness and pain known as "the academic job market."So, in the spirit of Daniel Drezner's advice columns for graduate students, let me share my own words of wisdom...
by Dan Nexon | 29 Sep 2005 | Featured
I've been reading the International Security forum on "soft balancing." I'll have more to write about it when I finish my next installment of "Balancing and the balance of power." My initial reaction is that the "soft balancing" arguments, at least as presented by Robert Pape and T.V. Paul, are not very persuasive.But both of the articles raise an orthogonal question, one that has been troubling me for a while. Both Pape and Paul spend a great...
by Dan Nexon | 28 Sep 2005 | Featured
Mansur Mirovalev of the AP reports:TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - A senior State Department official said Tuesday the president of Uzbekistan made it clear that American forces must leave their air base in the Central Asian country, and the U.S. intends to do so "without further discussion."The demand came as relations soured following U.S. criticism of Uzbekistan's crackdown on anti-government protesters in May in the eastern city of Andijan.Regular...
by Dan Nexon | 26 Sep 2005 | Featured
A while back, Marc Lynch threw down the gauntlet and declared the last decade of international politics a vindication for the constructivist approach to international relations.Warning: what follows is a very long post, one that will be primarily of interest to people who care about academic International Relations (IR)Marc wrote:Back in the 1990s, the International Relations subfield of Political Science was consumed by the so-called...
by Dan Nexon | 26 Sep 2005 | Featured
Via Robert Farley.The title of my twenty-third post was: "Nineteenth-Century Soft Power."The fifth sentence was part of a quotation from Anders Stephanson:Laggard by comparison, the United States nevertheless had enormous potential for emulation.Directions:1. Go into your archive.2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.Passed...
by Rodger Payne | 26 Sep 2005 |
Professor John Ikenberry of American Abroad has written an excellent post on the "Crisis of Global Governance." After outlining a litany of recent institutional failings -- the unsuccessful efforts to reform and modernize the UN, the collapse of the EU constitutional process, and the weakening of various other institutions, rules and norms (including NATO, the NPT and WTO) -- Ikenberry asks: where are the vibrant and growing global and regional...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 25 Sep 2005 | Featured
I'd like to think that the Duck's patron saint Max Weber would have been slightly apoplectic after reading this story in this morning's Washington Post about a new museum outside of Cincinnati dedicated to the promulgation of a "Young Earth Creationist" understanding of life, the universe, and everything: "It holds that the world and the universe are but 6,000 years old and that baby dinosaurs rode in Noah's Ark."This would be laughable --...