The Duck of Minerva

Germany won the Men's World Cup. The other half of the tournament takes place next year, in Canada. Calling the men's half of the tournament 'The' World Cup while excluding half the world's population including some of the best players in the world is really nothing more than gendered language at its sexist best. At Huffington Post last week, Jezebel's Valerie Alexander penned a terrific piece on why this semantic distinction is so important: American commentators, please stop announcing that Landon Donovan is the "all-time U.S. leading goal scorer." He is not. With 57 international goals,...

Rob Farley and I talk on BloggingheadsTV about new books (his and mine); the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots; how political scientists might study the circulation of science fiction and fantasy in real-world politics; and the meaning of Game of Thrones' fourth season.

This is a guest post by Ari Kohen, Associate Professor of Political Science at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  He blogs at Running Chicken and tweets @kohenari.  As I write this, Twitter and Facebook inform me that air raid sirens are going off in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as well as several cities and towns closer to the Gaza Strip, while Israeli forces have launched air strikes against Gaza and are considering the mobilization of as many as 40,000 reservists for a possible ground incursion. The numbers of dead, wounded, and terrorized are mounting. This most recent escalation comes on the...

This is a guest post by Matthew Bolton, Assistant professor of political science at Pace University and author of Foreign Aid and Landmine Clearance. He blogs at Political Minefields. Imagine never knowing whether your next step will be your last, whether your children are safe in the fields around your house, whether objects they find in the street are toys or deadly explosives. For people living where landmines lie in wait long after wars end, such frightening thoughts are daily realities. “The humanitarian impact is heartbreaking,” said Kiman Lucas of Clear Path International, which...

Just in time for you to head to the beach with a copy, my new book is now available from Cornell University Press.* As many of you know, this is the culmination of a my 6-year NSF-funded research project on why some human security problems get on the global agenda and others don't. The answer in a nutshell: it's all about what's going on within the advocacy networks. A teaser of the first chapter is here. A nice write-up by the Chronicle of Higher Education is here. The book includes a longer version of the argument in this article, and three case studies on human security campaigns that...

Our periodic rotation of guest bloggers is underway. This season's newcomers: 1) Jarrod Hayes is Assistant Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and is the author of Constructing National Security: US Relations With India and China.  You may have seen his IO article on securitization, and his guest posts on nuclear policy, Crimea, the Arab Spring and other topics; and you probably know him as a long-time Duck reader and commenter as well. Jarrod is keen to blog on security, US / Asian foreign policy and climate change in between hiking, kayaking, and working on his house....

Last Spring the International Studies Association approved a new ISA journal, the Journal of Global Security Studies. I am normally pretty sanguine about new journals in the discipline but in this case I feel genuine excitement. Why? Because JOGSS is not just another outlet for scholarship but is actively positioning itself institutionally to cultivate much-needed bridges and conversation across divides within the sub-field: "The mission of JOGSS is to publish first-rate work from across the entire range of methodological, epistemological, theoretical, normative, and empirical concerns...

Last Spring the International Studies Association approved a new ISA journal, the Journal of Global Security Studies. I am normally pretty sanguine about new journals in the discipline but in this case I feel genuine excitement. Why? Because JOGSS is not just another outlet for scholarship but is actively positioning itself institutionally to cultivate much-needed bridges and conversation across divides within the sub-field: "The mission of JOGSS is to publish first-rate work from across the entire range of methodological, epistemological, theoretical, normative, and empirical concerns...

This is a guest post by Philip Martin, PhD student in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, columnist David Brooks advises a U.S. approach to Iraq which uses military force to arm-twist Iraqi elites into forming an inclusive new government, since “if you get the political elites behaving decently, you can avoid the worst.” At Political Violence @ a Glance, Barbara Walter also argues in favor of a negotiated settlement based on power-sharing as the optimal solution to Iraq’s current political fragmentation,...

Context here. On proper dragon-chaining technique, see this must read.