Like millions of other people around the world, I have spent much of the past few weeks playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TotK), the nineteenth installment in Nintendo’s widely acclaimed series.
This is the first in a series of guest posts by Stuart J. Kaufman of the University of Delaware. Stuart advances a long-running dispute with PTJ about whether "what goes on inside people's heads" is...
Anne-Marie Slaughter's recent Atlantic article, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All,"Â has stirred up a fair amount of controversy in the last couple of days. Dozens of my Facebook friends have posted...
From Mother Jones, of all places. Gayle Falkenthal comments.
I can't resist sharing this wonderful news clip from Malawi. I challenge Duck readers to have fun with this: What might the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street movements learn from Malawi?Malawi protests scheduled for January 15, Chilembwe Day12 January 2012tags: chilembwe day, malawi, protestby dadakimThe following call to protest in Malawi on January 15 (Chilembwe Day) was sent as an email, and has been reported on by opposition online news agency Nyasa Times.***********************CONCERNED CITIZENS OF MALAWI — PRESS RELEASEFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 11 JANUARY 2012TIME FOR ACTION AGAINST ECONOMIC...
 Given some of the recent discussion on the Duck about the use of force in the Arabian Gulf, I thought I'd point out something interesting from the recent TRIP survey of international relations scholars. It turns out that between 60 and 90 percent of IR scholars surveyed simply reject the U.S. use of force in five hot-button regions. Asked "Would you approve or disapprove of the use of U.S. military forces in the following situations?", scholars responded:War between North and South Sudan: 84.6% disapprove.If it were certain that Iran had produced a nuclear weapon: 79.9% disapproveIf...
Unless... Nothing.Nothing at all.Four years ago, we knew neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum would be president.Six months ago, we knew neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum would be president.One month ago, we knew neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum would be president.Two days ago, we knew neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum would be president.This morning, we know neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum will be president.Given the cavalcade of crazies that has populated the Republican primary to date, amazingly, the party is on the verge of nominating Willard Mitt Romney--the heartfelt choice of...
At The Monkey Cage, Erik Voeten notes the ascendancy of constructivism within International Relations (although "non-paradigmatic research" is an even more popular category).I suppose that's it for realism, then. So much for the null hypothesis that every article in IR published in the past 20 years has treated as a punching bag. From now on, I hope that we can all agree that theory articles don't have to start by attacking the bogeyman of structural realism and can instead begin with a more interesting discussion of the problem at hand.Next from Steve Walt: Cultural Revolution and...
Actual blogging soon.
I think I did a reasonable job restraining myself while suffering through Breaking Dawn this past weekend with my daughter and her friend. I didn't vomit once!And fortunately I didn't have to. The pathetically destructive and sexist representations of romantic love, family, marriage and motherhood in the Twilight series were all the girls talked about on the way home. And they didn't even need the HP/SW allegories to notice it. The same night we saw the film my daughter sat me down unprompted to hear her guffaw loudly at this series of satirical YouTube videos making fun of all things...
Kathleen R. McNamara lays out the reasons to be skeptical that the euro can survive in anything like it's current form. McNamara's brand of political economics begins from the right presumption: that in political economy, politics comes first. Models that fail to account for the role of institutions, of beliefs, or of power will fail to capture any of features that matter most when systems begin to fail. Politics is an autonomous part of social life. It has its own logic and its own explanations. Although political science is a discipline of magpies forever borrowing from other fields'...
Finally after a busy teaching term I've got a chance to add some thoughts to the great post and articles by Jon Western and Joshua Goldstein on humanitarian intervention. Bottom line: I think Jon and Joshua make a robust case that not only can intervention work, but that the international community is learning effectively how to go about it. As they argue, it is a technique of statecraft that is being refined and better understood. It might not necessarily transform societies on every metric of human well being, but prompt military action combined with due attention to the rule of law,...