IR Theory and Policy Processes

11 May 2011, 0209 EDT

A running theme around the office lately has been the deeply problematic character of causal mechanisms that international-relations scholars take for granted. For example, apparently simple claims about domestic institutions and credible commitments often require all sorts of heroic assumptions about public attention to policy processes, the degree of actual restraint institutions impose upon executives, and so on. They also have almost nothing to do with the way that policymakers assess the credibility of their counterparts. A related set of issues revolve around embedded neoliberal assumptions in US International Political Economy, particularly involving “free trade,” but I’ll save that for others.

This is all basically wind up for the part of this post where I tell you to go read Henry Farrell’s response to Kindred Winecoff’s critique of Paul Krugman’s rebuttal to David Brooks (don’t you just love the blogging world?).

Like Henry, I really enjoy Kindred’s blogging and think that IPE at UNC is a truly outstanding addition to the academic blogssphere. But, also like Henry, I find his arguments here detached from real political processes in ways that reflect larger problems with contemporary US IPE.

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.