In an article last week in the Financial Times on "Sex, Lies, and the Pitfalls of Overblown Statistics," John Kay bluntly wrote: "Always ask yourself the question: where does the data come from?" It's a good question, and one I frequently ask myself when I read yet another story about the hottest craze in the international development aid business today: the Open Data Initiative of the World Bank. Don't get me wrong. I think the World Bank's Open Data initiative is freaking awesome. You can now get free access to the Bank's World Development Indicators (hitherto accessible, but by no means...

The Canard "All the fake news that's fit to print" ---Earth The globe is suffering from a sudden decline in the volume of oxygen, sending world leaders scurrying to sustain life on earth. Although scientists recognize that there could be any number of reasons, such as increases in pollution and CO2, they believe that the drop is too steep to be explained by these gradual processes. Instead they are focusing their suspicions on the recent publication of Theories of International Politics and Zombies by Daniel Drezner, which is sucking all of the oxygen out of the earth. Since its publication,...

Rodger's post about the commercial success of Dan Drezner's Theories of International Politics and Zombies joins a long line of fellow Ducks' quacking about this book. I've been a part of the conversation, too, but I can write about the book from a perspective that I think is unique: I've just finished teaching an introductory course where I assigned the book. (Hence my complete lack of posting over the past several weeks.) In other words, not only have I read it, I've seen whether undergrads get anything from it.The verdict is clear: Zombies is a great complement for any introductory...

Can any readers here at the Duck direct me to the exact quote of Dean Acheson (I believe it was), who said something along the lines of 'nine tenths of foreign policy is managing the domestic ability to have a foreign policy' or something like that. It was his argument that domestic politics and coalition-building was paramount.Thanks!

Last week I had the great pleasure of visiting Boston and Washington DC.During this academic junket research-related visit, sparkling conversation was had with some of the liveliest minds on foreign policy in the US, including the established heavy-hitters Andrew Bacevich and Edward Luttwak, as well as some of the sharpest younger thinkers around including the hawkish idealist and internationalist David Adesnik, the sardonically skeptical Dan Nexon from here at the Duck, and one of the most astute observers of Afghanistan-Pakistan, Christine Fair.The subject of Israel ran like a razor-sharp...

This week, the Independent Evaluation Office at the International Monetary Fund released its report on the relevance and utility of research at the Fund (see also today's Financial Times article on the report). The report itself echoes an earlier IEO report on the Fund's performance running up to the 2008 financial crisis, which found that the Fund's failure to foresee the crisis was in part due to pervasive groupthink within the organization.The IEO report reveals much about the ideological culture of the Fund. Importantly, it draws from interviews and surveys with academics, national...

A Guest Post by Jonathan Caverley in reply to Dan NexonThe irony of being accused of taking texts in directions their original authors might not have intended by the scholar behind Harry Potter and International Relations is too delicious to pass up. Plus I am sensitive to accusations like Nexon’s (might as well confront that elephant head on).I am not slighting Professor Nexon’s excellent TNR piece and book. In fact our approaches are quite similar; we both drag a body of writing into a discipline to which the original authors evinced little desire to enter. There are always problems...

The ongoing saga over the leadership crisis at the IMF poses a bigger existential question about crisis and change in international organizations: do crises in fact provoke change? This was the question at the forefront of my mind as I was driving from Texas to DC last week to start teaching a summer graduate seminar for the LBJ School of Public Affairs on, of all things, Crisis and Change in International Organizations. I was struck by the irony that the last time there was a major leadership crisis in the Bretton Woods institutions, it was at the World Bank. In May 2007, then President...