The Duck of Minerva

Jarrod Hayes

Jarrod Hayes is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. His research interests include the IR theory, social construction of threat, societal mechanisms of security within democracies, and the social construction of environmental problems. His first book Constructing National Security: US Relations with India and China was published in 2013 by Cambridge University Press and his second, an edited volume entitled Constructivism Reconsidered, was published by University of Michigan Press 2018. He has published articles in numerous scholarly journals including European Journal of International Relations, Foreign Policy Analysis, Global Environmental Politics, International Affairs, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Nonproliferation Review, and Security Studies.

Recent Posts

Trump, Brexit, and nationalist authority

Trump, Brexit, and nationalist authority

by Jarrod Hayes | 28 July, 2016 | , ,

In this, the first of a sequence of posts addressing Brexit in one way or another, I want to take a look at the shifting systems of authority in the current political climate and comment on how they might impact international relations into the future. At the time of the Brexit vote, commentators and news reports drew parallels between the British decision to the leave the EU and the tumult of the US elections, particularly the rise of Donald Trump. Many pointed to the resurgence of nationalism, but here I want to argue that while the concept of nationalism as a practice of identity...

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The Question of Quantum

The Question of Quantum

by Jarrod Hayes | 28 March, 2016 | ,

Tough as it is to follow Charli’s excellent post on terrorism, somebody has to do it and so I might as well. If this past ISA is any indication, quantum is a big deal. The panel on Alex Wendt’s new book linking quantum mechanics to the social sciences was standing room only (from what I hear, I could not be there). James Der Derian has Project Q at the University of Sydney. One of the papers I read as a discussant at ISA invoked the term superpositionality, much to my surprise. So, Newtonian World out, Quantum World in (not sure where Einstein fits).   This is all fascinating. Quantum...

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Is it possible to be a realist?

by Jarrod Hayes | 2 March, 2016 |

Some weeks ago, Stephen Walt lamented the absence of realist commentators in the American media space. What was striking to me at the time was Walt’s claim that realism is a ‘well-known approach to foreign policy.’ That claim—that realism is a foreign policy approach—makes sense in the context of Walt’s dirge, which focuses on the role of policy makers and media in shaping state behavior. But putting realism into a foreign policy context does not come without theoretical costs. Indeed, the grandee of modern realism in IR Kenneth Waltz rejected the idea that realism was a foreign policy...

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Climate Change and Rethinking Success

Climate Change and Rethinking Success

by Jarrod Hayes | 27 January, 2016 |

Last week, at the invitation of colleagues in the Center for European and Transatlantic Studies and the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy I participated on a panel discussing the 21st Conference of Parties (CoP21) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the resulting Paris Agreement. My comments focused on thinking about the nature of success in international negotiations over climate change. In a number of ways, if we go by the standard of previous environmental pollution treaties the Paris Agreement does not look like a notable success, hedging...

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Climate Change and Rhetorical Entrapment

Climate Change and Rhetorical Entrapment

by Jarrod Hayes | 6 December, 2015 |

Late last month the New York Times ran an interesting piece about the power of language and climate change. Central to the story is the concept of a carbon budget. On its face, the concept is simple. Drawing on complex models of the atmospheric and energy effects of carbon dioxide and other heat trapping gases, climate scientists have proposed a global carbon budget: the amount of carbon dioxide (or, we should add, the equivalent in other gases which can be far more potent) that can be emitted into the atmosphere without breaking the two degree Celsius mark. Turns out the numbers are not...

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The problem of authority

The problem of authority

by Jarrod Hayes | 8 November, 2015 |

Josh’s excellent tripartite (1, 2, 3) discussion of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy record in conjunction with with the narratives of Putin’s strategic leadership accompanying Russian military involvement in Syria have me thinking about the concept of authority. Specifically, I do not think we as academics (and as a result, policymakers) have a very good set of tools for thinking about leadership and authority in the international system. In large part I suspect the materialist foundations of much of IR theory are central to this gap, and indeed are reflected in the narratives...

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Put a DA-RT in it

Put a DA-RT in it

by Jarrod Hayes | 4 November, 2015 |

If you have been living under a rock as I apparently have, then like me you may be unaware of the DA-RT controversy that is brewing in the American Political Science Association.* Turns out that some of our colleagues have been pushing for some time to write a new set of rules for qualitative scholarship that, among other things will require “cited data [be] available at the time of publication through a trusted digital repository” [This is from the Journal Editor's Transparency Statement, which is what is being implemented Jan. 15]. The goal I gather is to enhance transparency and...

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Zen of teaching

by Jarrod Hayes | 21 October, 2015 | ,

There are a lot of really great aspects of professorial teaching. It at the core of education, and thus at the core of universities as institutions of higher education. Professors have the opportunity to watch students grow through discovery and skill building. Professors and students through the practice of teaching build a shared connection of knowledge and inquiry. For many faculty and (hopefully) students, teaching raises new perspectives and forces reconsideration of established ideas. Teaching has economic benefits for students, notwithstanding recent debates. All of this and more is...

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“There was something missing from scholars’ models of political and economic life: ideas”

“There was something missing from scholars’ models of political and economic life: ideas”

by Jarrod Hayes | 19 October, 2015 | ,

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a longish write-up on Pinar Dogan and Dani Rodrik’s efforts to exonerate Dogan’s father after he had been caught up in then Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s efforts to push Turkey’s generals out of the political arena. At the heart of this effort was the publication in 2010 of documents detailing an alleged plot—Operation Sledgehammer—by Turkish military leaders in 2003 to overthrow the government by undertaking a massive campaign of state terrorism. Dogan’s father was a general in 2003 and was, according to the documents, the leader of the...

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Prediction: For whom the bell tolls?

Prediction: For whom the bell tolls?

by Jarrod Hayes | 12 October, 2015 |

The idea of prediction in the study of international relations has been a persistent thought in my head for some time. Ostensibly, in our (mostly) non-experimental discipline, prediction represents the preeminent demonstration of a theory’s veracity. Of course, this perspective derives from simplistic conceptions of science as practiced in the natural sciences and as a consequence fit poorly with IR. Regressions struggle to develop models that ‘explain’ more than a small percentage of the variance in the dependent variable(s)—making prediction of outcomes nearly impossible. Our discipline...

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