This is a guest post by Ardeshir Pezeshk, a PhD Candidate at University of Massachusetts specializing in civil wars, conflict-affected civilians and international law. Follow him on Twitter here. In an op-ed published in the NY Times over the weekend, Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro argue that the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928... worked. While they concede that the Pact did not succeed in its aim to end all war, the Pact was "highly...
Displaying Results for ""
Swan Song – For Now
In some sense, it is with a heavy heart that I write my last permanent contributor blog post at the Duck. I’ve loved being with the Ducks these past years, and I’ve appreciated being able to write weird, often off the track from mainstream political science, blogs. If any of you have followed my work over the years, you will know that I sit at an often-uncomfortable division between scholarship and advocacy. I’ve been one of the leading...
I can’t identify as a woman! Political discourse and Germany’s general elections campaign
The next US presidential elections are around the corner and the Democrat US President has already announced that he will not run for the Presidency again. He defines himself as pro-choice, and it is now up to the Vice President, a woman, to position herself – and fast – on the issue of women’s rights to abortion. She also needs to propose the maximum number of weeks up to which it is acceptable to have an abortion. Because she is the only...
Five Things Everyone Should Know about Totalitarianism
It seems that “totalitarianism” is everywhere these days. I suppose that is the point of totalitarianism. Nonetheless, the buzzword has seen a remarkable resurgence in popular usage and misusage in the context of domestic and international politics. The number of articles comparing Trump to a totalitarian ruler are not easily countable (though here and here are some examples). Some, have attributed current US foreign policy issues related to...
The Borg are bad. Antimicrobial resistance is worse.
Microbes are turning into the Borg; our resistance is becoming futile. As any Star Trek: The Next Generation nerd knows (and this is an IR-related blog, so I’m guessing the Venn diagram of DoM readers and ST:TNG fans shows quite a bit of overlap), this is incredibly worrisome for humanity and threatens to give all of us the life expectancies of a red shirt. The international community may yet have a chance to fight back, but it will require...
Monday Morning Linkage
As one of the new Ducks, I'm linking to bits and pieces catching my eye/getting me thinking for the first time this morning. Enjoy! Academia Handy guidance on 'how to get rid of your fake academic self' supplied by David Berliner. APSA I wasn't at APSA but John Yoo put in a controversial appearance along with the iconic orange jumpsuit and a barrage of protesters. See APSA members' letter against the appearance and APSA's response (and let's...
Law and the Post-Conflict Protection of Women from Violence
The following is a guest post by Dr. Jillienne Haglund, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Haglund is a contributor to a forthcoming special issue in Conflict Management and Peace Science on gender and political violence. All of the articles in the special issue are now available on Online First and several are currently available to download for free. In her 2015 statement, the Special...
Fall of Giants
Footage of toppled Confederate statues all over cities in the US reminded me of the events my homeland went through a couple of decades ago and might go through again in some years. Some experts already compared the toppling of Confederate statues with “Leninopad” – razing of Lenin statues in Ukraine, but renaming streets and bringing down monuments was a la mode in newly independent Russia as well. Most Westerners might be familiar with the...
Welcome to New Guest Ducks!
We are pleased to welcome some new guest Ducks, including an exciting new partnership. We also are pleased that guest bloggers, Lisa Gaufman, Jeff Stacey, Jeremy Youde, and Will Winecoff will continue to blog for the Duck. We wanted to thank all the guest bloggers who contributed last year including Maryam Deloffre, Alexis Henshaw, Charles Martel, Raul Pacheco-Vega, and Mira Sucharov. Our first guest is a little different than the others. We...
Minding Climate Change: Presidential Power and the US National Interest
This is a guest post by Manjana Milkoreit, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University. Her research integrates international relations scholarship and cognitive theory to study actor motivations and policy design in global climate change politics. She is the author of Mindmade Politics: the Cognitive Roots of International Climate Governance (The MIT Press 2017). If Harvey’s unprecedented battering of...
Should APSA and ISA have a “No Manels” Rule?
The Financial Times just announced guidance that there will no longer be all male panels -- manels -- at any FT or partner events. It made me think whether APSA or ISA should adopt a similar policy. Pleased that @FT has established a "no manels" rule for FT panels and FT panellists as one of our diversity/inclusion initiatives. pic.twitter.com/6VZSuhlkEo — Andrew Hill (@andrewtghill) August 21, 2017 The Emerging Norm Against Manels In the past...
Basic Rules of US Civil-Military Relations and Trump’s Afghanistan Policy
Trump's speech has something for everyone ... to criticize. I will not focus here on how icky the first part on loyalty was. Instead, I focus on the rules of US Civil-Military Relations: the US military does not like to start new wars (see Deborah Avant) once involved in a war, the US military likes to escalate. They want more troops, as if more means better. More can be better, but that really depends on the strategy and the adversary and...