Political science has long had debates over methodology - i.e., ways of knowing about the world - but has had fewer over ontology - i.e. what exists in the world. This was noted by Peter Hall in his 2003 book chapter, “Aligning Ontology and Methodology in Comparative Research,” but other authors like Colin Hay and Liam Stanley have made the same critique. Why is this a problem? Two examples, one personal and one not: When I was a...
This is a guest post from Prof. M. Victoria Pérez-Ríos. Pérez-Ríos holds a PhD in Political Science from The Graduate Center, CUNY (City University of New York); and graduated from the Law School of Saragossa, Spain. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and at the Social Science Department at LaGuardia Community College. Her research interests include civil rights,...
On October 2, I sat in the audience of the first of six public events in what appears to be MIT’s semester of climate change. Introducing the great and good of climate science, MIT president Rafael Reif made a comment that struck me. To paraphrase, he argued (or at least I think he did, I was grading at the same time) that in an era of diminished federal and state funding for research, it is incumbent on universities to seek out funds to...
It's happened to all of us. You get that email "Decision on Manuscript...," open it with a bit of trepidation, just to find a (hopefully) politely worded rejection from the editor. Sometimes this is justified. Other times, however, the rejection is due to the legendary "Reviewer #2," a cranky, ill-informed, hastily written rant against your paper that is not at all fair. The details can vary--they don't like your theoretical approach, don't...
This post will be quick for me to write, but may suck up the rest of your morning. caveat lector. Rachel Navarre—my friend from grad school, who works at Bridgewater State—compiled what was then an up to date collection of links on Impeachment. As she notes, keeping up with the latest developments is a full time job, and most of us already have full time jobs. But she has links to background as well as some of the most recent...
This is a guest post from Paul Poast, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Earlier this spring, Poast wrote a post about the Asshole Theory of US Foreign Policy and the structural conditions that may facilitate the United States playing the role of a jerk on the international stage. In part 2, we embedded Poast's thread on President Trump's gauche offer to buy Greenland from Denmark....
This is a call for a new series that grows out of a panel held at ISA earlier this spring. We have a few posts in process that come from participants on that panel, but we want to open it up to other contributors under the hashtag #ScholarActivism. Questions that you could explore include: What's your idea of the appropriate balance between scholarship and activism?What's been your experience?Does one's activism potentially serve as grist for...
The basic principles that should guide letters and their RFDs hold across every kind of decisions. However, we need to recognize important differences between, say, a rejection and an R&R. In this post, I lay out my thoughts about letters for the types of decisions that we made at ISQ. Not all journals use the same categories or mean the same thing. For instance, a (rare) "reject and resubmit" at ISQ meant that we would consider a revised...
This is a guest post from Matt Evans (mevans8@nwacc.edu), who is Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwest Arkansas Community College. His words represent his own opinions as an individual, and not (necessarily) his employer. This is the fifth in the series on changing the field. #IRChange [i] The answer for change is simple: Political Scientists should consider how our ideas, practices, and institutions (dis)able our students...
Public Domain — From Pixabay For caveats and background, see my introductory post. Editors write a lot of decision letters. At high-volume journals, editors write so many decision letters that it can become a tedious grind. For authors, though, the information communicated in decision letters matters enormously. It can affect their job prospects, salaries, and chances of advancement. Of course, authors, especially in the moment, overestimate...
This is a guest post from James Guild who is a PhD candidate in political economy at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. His research interest is economic growth and infrastructure development in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, and his work has appeared in The Diplomat, Jakarta Post and New Mandala. Follow him on Twitter @jamesjguildThis is the fourth in the series on changing the field. #IRChange The dominance of...
The following is a guest post by Dr. Daniel Nicholls. Daniel Nicholls is an adjunct professor of IR at ESADE and the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. His research looks at the interplay between relational structures, roles and hierarchy. In an interesting piece on the Japan-South Korea spat in Foreign Affairs, Bonnie S. Glaser and Oriana Skylar Mastro argue that by failing to mediate the dispute between the keystones of its Asian...