Last year I was much better at blogging about the UK General Election. I thought it was going to be incredibly boring, but then there was the rise of a third party in an unexpected way which changed the balance of power. This year with Canada’s turn to re-stack the...
As much as the proposal to put Mummar Gaddafi’s outfits up for display at the Costume Institute of New York should be true in a fully just world, I would imagine that it isn’t.Alas, the West shall...
This is a guest blog by Jarrod Hayes, who is is an assistant professor of International Relations at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research broadly focuses on the social construction of...
Stephanie has seconded below Drezner's challenge to name three books most useful for a President-in-waiting. Please obey her.These should not be academic in nature because, Dan implies, politicians...
In my seminar at Amherst College today, my students discussed the status of their final research papers, their research designs, and the use of sources. One student asked what were the rules for using quotes or pulling block text from other sources. Since so many folks seem to be reading Alan Kuperman's stuff these days, I showed my students the Kuperman article that Patrick linked yesterday in which Kuperman argues the case of moral hazard in Libya. I asked them to pay close attention to the use of the quote from the New York Times:By helping rebels, we thus increase the risk of retaliatory...
The following word cloud from Crystal Smith's The Achilles Effect blog reflects the vocabulary commonly used for toy advertisements directed toward young boys (i.e. those toys in the 6-8 year old boy's section of the Toys 'R Us website were classified as "boys' toys"). While the data visualization was not meant as part of a rigorous study, it is nevertheless interesting anecdotal evidence pointing toward the ways in which gender stereotypes are shaped and/or reinforced, particularly when the word cloud is compared to toys targeted toward girls from the same age group. (Yes, I am aware that a...
Before I begin, I should thank those who have offered encouragement to continue the series and note, to those few who have not, that this is satire. Like all satire, it is an exaggeration of things that nevertheless have a kernel of truth. I myself am guilty of some of these things, like collecting original data. It is not an indictment of the field of political science, only a send-up of its pretensions. OK, here we go.Political scientists like discovering the strategic logic behind all political phenomena, reducing everything to the self-interested calculations of individuals. They...
Some questions about Libya.To clear the decks, I'm instinctively uneasy with international interventions in civil wars, given the historical difficulties of keeping such interventions limited and the unintended consequences and moral hazards of such undertakings. Not to mention the burdens that states like the US and UK are now shouldering, with the constraints and pressures on our statecraft after Iraq and with Afghanistan, the global financial crisis, and the need to preserve what Walter Lippmann called a 'surplus' of power in reserve.But the general strategic context aside, this post is...
Hello, readers of the Duck!Dan Nexon has very kindly invited me to do some guest blogging at this site.Introducing myself in brief: I'm an Australian academic with an over-fondness for cigars. Working at King's College London at the Defence Academy, as a Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies. In September I'll be moving to Reading to take up a Readership in Strategic Studies.My main interest these days is in the history and theory of US grand strategy, with an historian's background but also in a dalliance with IR. I guess I quite like Strategic Studies as a kind of inter-disciplinary twilight...
In my American Foreign Policy class, I typically try to find some time to engage students about Puerto Rico. After all, most of them never have cause to think about Puerto Rico's quasi-colonial status in the US geostrategic orbit. Some Puerto Rican nationalists seek freedom from US domination, but even progressive activist American students interested in global affairs tend to overlook the plight of Puerto Rico in favor of other concerns.Apparently, beyond my students, more people in Louisville are now going to learn a little something about Puerto Rico's legacy. Cardinal basketball coach...
Starbuck's away and has various guest bloggers filling in at Wings Over Iraq. David Costelloe of Never Felt Better is among them, and his latest post is one more for my dataset on BSG analogies in Egypt commentary. In particular Costelloe argues Egypt can learn from the flaws in Colonel Saul Tigh's character and the absence of civilian supremacy it represents: Let’s break it down. He shows hesitance when handed some responsibility during a crisis, at the cost of lives (mini-series). He displays open contempt of the government in public (Colonial Day). He is the lead officer in the actual...
I am very, very ethnic.For those of you who weren’t following Canadian politics this week (I’m assuming that’s 98% of the Duck audience) the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC or “Tories”) took a lot of flack this week for calling up supporters and asking them to wear “ethnic” costumes. This is, of course, to make the Tories look more diverse and possibly have another colour of hair in their audience than white. The flack, in my opinion, is well deserved – minorities are not well staged photo-ops. They are, however, a group that all political parties have tried to reach out to.Liberals have...