Steve Walt has a challenge:
…who are the most amusing, entertaining, or witty writers in the field of international relations and foreign policy? I don’t mean books or articles that are “funny” because they are wildly off-base; I mean scholars who are a joy to read because their prose is lively, they offer amusing asides, and maybe even manage a laugh-out-loud witticism on occasion. And to narrow the field a bit more, let’s exclude journalists (who are rarely all that amusing but usually have livelier writing styles).
Since I’m hosting Steve for a talk next week here in the Five Colleges, I have a challenge to Duck readers to come up with a stronger list than his readers can produce. I gotta figure that’s a slam dunk for Duck readers…
Although, we may have a problem — google “entertaining IR books” (in quotes) and see how many hits you get. Not pretty. (fyi, it doesn’t get any better if you unpack it to “entertaining international relations books”)
For my money, Richard Betts has the most lively prose and sardonic wit. I don’t know any one else who has called another scholar (Mearsheimer) a “party pooper” in the pages of Foreign Affairs (although outside the pages of Foreign Affairs is a different story).
As for blogging prose, no one can beat the posts by Stephanie or Brian here at Duck.
Jon Western has spent the last fifteen years teaching IR in liberal arts colleges at Mount Holyoke College and the Five Colleges in western Massachusetts. He has an eclectic range of intellectual interests but often writes on international security, U.S. foreign policy, military intervention, and human rights. He occasionally shares his thoughts about professional life in liberal arts colleges. In his spare time he coaches middle school soccer, mentors the local high school robotics team, skis, and sails.
- Jon Westernhttps://www.duckofminerva.com/author/jwestern
- Jon Westernhttps://www.duckofminerva.com/author/jwestern
- Jon Westernhttps://www.duckofminerva.com/author/jwestern
- Jon Westernhttps://www.duckofminerva.com/author/jwestern
- Jon Westernhttps://www.duckofminerva.com/author/jwestern
- Jon Westernhttps://www.duckofminerva.com/author/jwestern
In addition to Betts, I would say John Mueller, and Warner Schilling
I think the guy who wrote IR Theory and Zombies has to take the cake. Drezner was pretty entertaining on his blog before that, but his new opus puts him over the top.
Oh, me. Me! Me! I covet this award, more than even, say, ISA best book of the decade. Although I would only accept a co-award with Stephanie. I will soon post my official entry on the Duck.
Nomination Seconded! (Woo! Another line on that CV!)
OK, kids, I see I’m going to have to set some ground rules on this. We need a bigger list than Walt. So, let’s not waste time on the names he’s already given us — Mueller, Schelling, James Scott, Drezner, and Blainey (I really don’t get that one…). Come on folks, time to step up…this is serious! Haven’t you ever laughed (ok, maybe just briefly smiled) at least once while reading something IR?
Kratochwil’s constructing a new orthodoxy is fun and so is his 1993 piece. “people start with the counting of hands, on the one hand, on the other hand”, etc.
Colin S. Gray is (IMHO) not a great theorist, but he’s very provocative “another bloody century”, “house of cards: why arms controls won’t work”, “weapons don’t make war”.
How about Van Evera’s “don’t sleep across power lines” and kids are “enemies of knowledge” in his methods book?
There are a few folks who overclaim to the point where it is funny, but not worth mentioning…
I remember reading Chistopher Layne in my first year of PhD studies and laughing out loud. Here is an excerpt from Security Studies:
“Regional hegemony, however, is the geostrategic equivalent of lite beer – almost, but not quite (or as Dr. Evil would say, regional hegemony is the margarine, the diet coke of hegemony). By ruling out the possibility of global hegemony, Mearsheimer transforms offensive realism into diet offensive realism. Robust offensive realism, on the other hand, follows the theory to its logical conclusion: for a great power, “being all that you can be” means thrusting for global primacy. Diet offensive realism and robust offensive realism part company on the question of whether great powers “max out” when they attain regional primacy, or take it to the next level and seek global dominance.”
OK, that’s good.
can’t help myself but Carr’s Twenty Years’ Crisis was an excellent read!
I don’t know what it is but I usually find that English and Scottish IR scholars have the best style. I would nominate Norman Angel. I think historians and the comparativists have IR scholars way outclassed in the entertainment value of their workbut the nature of their work just sets up their jokes way more easily than the more abstract IR style. Someone like Meikins Woods comes close.
Actually, now that I think of it, can I nominate fellow Duck blogger, Chris Brown? A good explanation is here: https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/staff/brassett/publications/british_irony.pdf
Mark Blyth. Great writer and very funny.
Second. Scottish, too.
I’m going to go ahead and nominate Fred Halliday.
“‘it was the T-shirt and the supermarket, not the gunboat or the cheaper manufacturers, that destroyed the legitimacy and stability of the Soviet regime. Bruce Springsteen was the late 20th century equivalent of the Opium Wars.’”
Plenty more in Colas’ & Lawson’s tribute.
Seconded. More Fred-isms:
– ‘history repeats itself: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, the third time as a fad in IR Theory’;
– ‘one good post-graduate seminar is worth a thousand anti-ageing creams’.
– and one for the Brits: ‘the ESRC is a four letter word’.
Fred also frequently railed against the tendency to take seriously: ‘The Mid-Atlantic Journal of Inverted Abstraction’.
By the by, this one from the Colas/Lawson article isn’t bad either: ‘ there are many things that can be neither hurried nor done any more quickly in the contemporary world: boiling an egg, falling in love or building a democratic culture’.
Lene Hansen deserves mention for writing one of the best first lines I’ve read: “Before Barry Buzan descended on Copenhagen the town’s most famous attraction
was the Little Mermaid, located less than a ten minute stroll from the home of the
Copenhagen School” (Hansen, 2000, “The Little Mermaid’s Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School,” Millennium 29:2).