Perhaps the first Monkey Cage post at the Washington Post presents some numbers that show that policy-makers tend not to like the higher tech kind of poli sci (or theory)Â We knew this from previous TRIP reports and other studies, but still it is important to consider...
We have all quit from time to time. Choosing when to quit and move on is tough proposition, especially for researchers. I never really thought much about the issue and how it relates to our work...
Brief but important interview with Andrew Gelman. Here's one thing regarding "great applied work": Ask yourself the question: What makes a statistician look like a hero? You might think that the...
Peter Campbell and Michael Desch write in Foreign Affairs that the National Research Council's rankings of political science departments are systematically biased against international relations...
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Andrew Bennett. It is the fifth installment in our "End of IR Theory" companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post refers to Bennett's article (PDF). A response, authored by Stacie E. Goddard, will appear at 10am Eastern. Other entries in the symposium--when available--may be reached via the "EJIR Special Issue Symposium" tag. As the internet lends itself to a rather different tone from that of referred journals, I adopt the pose of...
Well into the Syrian civil war the Assad regime has made a costly miscalculation by staging a significant chemical weapons attack. The U.S. and its allies have been wary of a full-scale military operation in Syria, but spurred by this attack they are now preparing to intervene. To succeed western allies must be focused not only on degrading Syrian capabilities but also on avoiding mistakes beyond the short term that they made in Libya and Iraq. The U.S. needs to intervene with as much legitimacy as it can muster, which appears to have a fighting chance in Congress (though Congressional...
The Duck has a symposium which engages the European Journal of International Relation's special issue on "The End of IR Theory." One of the pieces is the final version of the draft that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt circulated last winter. If y'all remember, I had a few words to say about the paper. In short, I was not a fan. Now that the final version is out and they have a post at the Duck, I could take more swings at it, but I don't think that is necessary as Dan Reiter has an excellent and much more succinct take on it. Plus I said much of it last January. Instead, other than a...
My views on the role of assumptions are no secret. Â Nor are they without detractors. Â In hopes of advancing the debate, I invite anyone who disagrees with me to enrich themselves while proving me wrong. Pick any scholarly paper you have written, published or not. Â If I cannot identify three patently false or fundamentally unfalsifiable assumptions in the paper, as judged by a mutually agreed upon third party, I will pay you $1000. Â If I can, I ask only that you admit publicly that your view about the role of assumptions is untenable. Â You won't owe me any money. I'm completely serious about...
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by  Dan Reiter. It is the fourth installment in our "End of IR Theory" companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post responds to John J. Mearsheimer's and Stephen M. Walt's article (PDF). Their post appeared earlier today.  Other entries in the symposium--when available--may be reached via the "EJIR Special Issue Symposium" tag. Thanks to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt for writing such an important and provocative article. I agree...
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt. It is the third installment in our "End of IR Theory" companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post refers to the article of the same name (PDF). A response, authored by Dan Reiter, will appear at 10am Eastern. Other entries in the symposium--when available--may be reached via the "EJIR Special Issue Symposium" tag. Theory is the lodestone in the field of International Relations (IR). Its...
[Editor's Note:  This is a guest post from Professor Anthony F. Lang, chair in International Political Theory and  Director of the Centre for Global Constitutionalism at the University of St. Andrews.] Since I wrote my short defence of punitive air strikes against Syria last week in a post at Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs , a number of commentators have given their own, more critical, accounts of this use of military force (see, for instance lots on Duck itself, such as Charli Carpenter; Stephanie Carvin on Opinio Juris ; , and Dan Kenealy and Sean Molloy in The...
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Inanna Hamati-Ataya. It is the second  installment in our "End of IR Theory" companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post responds to the introduction (PDF), written by Tim Dunne, Lene Hansen and Colin Wight. Their own post is available here. Other entries in the symposium--when available--may be reached via the "EJIR Special Issue Symposium" tag. The EJIR Special Issue is not only a new opportunity to collectively reflect on the...