Political-Science Lab Leaks: a Symposium

"Lab Leaks" in Political Science • Bridging the Gap • Featured

30 August 2021, 0915 EDT

Today we’re kicking off a new symposium on Paul Musgrave‘s Foreign Policy article, “Political Science Has Its Own Lab Leaks.” In it, Musgrave likens academic disciplines to labs; academic theories that exercise political influence, in his metaphor, are like viruses. Perhaps, his piece suggests, international-relations scholars should exercise a bit more caution in their drive to “bridge the gap” between theory and policy.

The contributors to the symposium include scholars who share an interest in, and experience with, the relationship between international-relations scholarship and the policy world. But they have very different perspectives on the matter.

The symposium starts today with a contribution from James Goldgeier. Tomorrow, Erica De Bruin weights in. On Wednesday we hear from Ido Oren, on Thursday from Rebecca Adler-Nissen, and on Friday from Tarak Barkawi. Paul Musgrave responds to their comments on Saturday.

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.