The Duck of Minerva

Phil Arena

I am an assistant professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. I mostly write here about "rational choice" and IR theory. I also maintain my own blog, fparena.blogspot.com.

Recent Posts

Ranking IR Journals

by Phil Arena | 7 January, 2014 |

Editor's note: this is a guest post by Brian J. Phillips, of the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics. What are the best International Relations journals? How do we know if one journal is better than another? And how should this affect your decision about where to send a manuscript? I recently worked on a ranking of IR journals at the behest of an institution, and this blog post shares some of the information I learned in the process. This might be helpful for graduate students and junior faculty still getting a feel for where to send manuscripts. A number of questions came up...

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The Importance of Screening

by Phil Arena | 20 December, 2013 |

Editor’s Note: this is an abbreviated version of a post that originally appeared on my personal blog. In my previous post, I articulated one way international institutions can deter bad behavior. In this post, I'll argue that even if we assume institutions don't have access to information that isn't already available to states, they still matter more than some appreciate. One of the most prominent criticisms of institutions is that they are epiphenomenal---that they put a name on behavior that would have occurred anyway. That is, some have argued that the good news about compliance is not...

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The Importance of Angry Letters

by Phil Arena | 12 December, 2013 |

Editor’s Note: this is an abbreviated version of a post that originally appeared on my personal blog. How can international institutions foster cooperation given that they lack enforcement capability? One view, quite simply, is that they can't. This view is shared by realists and many outside the academy. Many would argue this critique is unfair. It is too easy to jump from "can't control rogue states" to "completely worthless" or "false promise" or what have you. Even states that view one another as friends sometimes fail to reap all the possible benefits of international cooperation due to...

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Flipping the Classroom

by Phil Arena | 7 November, 2013 |

I'm going to try it out this spring with my Introduction to International Relations class. (I'll also post my lectures online, which I believe will make mine the second Intro IR course available to the general public---though if you know of others, please provide links in the comments.) Have any of you tried it? If so, I'd love to hear about your experiences in the comments. Below the fold are some thoughts on why I think it will help some students get more out of my class. Giving students the ability to pause, rewind, and relisten... I talk fast (I sadly have but two modes: too fast and way...

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Engineering Peace

by Phil Arena | 25 October, 2013 |

Can third parties do more than foster temporary, unstable ceasefires? Without perpetually holding the belligerents at arms' length via heavily militarized buffer zones? Is it possible to make peace self-enforcing at a reasonably low cost? Recent work on conflict management suggests not. Less intrusive approaches to mediation, such as information provision, fail to solve the problem that poses an obstacle to efficient negotiate between the belligerents in the first place. More intrusive approaches such as deploying armed peacekeepers are often successful, at least if they come after a...

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Review of Braumoeller’s The Great Powers and the International System

by Phil Arena | 16 October, 2013 |

The following is an all too common path through graduate school: spend 3-9 months wondering what the heck you signed up for and why realize that every topic you're interested in has been written on and assume there's nothing left to say gain a little confidence and criticize everything you read for leaving something (inconsequential) out begin doing your own research and realize it's not so easy write a dissertation about a very small, very timely, very answerable question convince your committee that your answer is profound, timeless, and required extraordinary insight cry when the first...

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International Institutions Mobilize Opponents Too

by Phil Arena | 9 October, 2013 |

Members of international institutions typically honor their commitments. But that does not, by itself, tell us much. States are unlikely to join institutions that require them to do things they have no intention of doing. Indeed, some argue that institutions merely act to screen out those least likely to comply. Others, however, have argued that institutions do in fact constrain states - that they are not mere epiphenomena. One prominent mechanism through which institutions are thought to alter state behavior is by mobilizing pro-compliance groups domestically. Institutions may lack...

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The American Civil War as an Illustration of War to Forestall Adverse Shifts in Power

by Phil Arena | 3 October, 2013 |

A prominent "rationalist" explanation for war concerns commitment problems created by the anticipation of rapid shifts in power (see also here and here). When a state expects that the mere passage of time will lead it to fare worse in a potential future war against its rival, the rival's inability to credibly promise not to exploit its future power by demanding a revision of the status quo can lead tempt the first state to attack so as to forestall (or at least slow down) the shift in power. The canonical example of this was provided by Thucydides, who wrote in History of the Peloponnesian...

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What if Iran Did Get the Bomb?

by Phil Arena | 19 September, 2013 |

Casual observation suggests that the two most common answers to the question above are: 1) there's a very good chance that they'd start a nuclear war with Israel; and 2) there's no real reason to think any other state would be impacted in any significant way. I find both unpersuasive for reasons I'll discuss below. Before I do, though, let me get something out of the way---in this post, I will argue neither for nor against the use of force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. To answer questions of what should be done, one must not only draw upon some set of beliefs about the...

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How Could US Signals of Weakness bring Russia and Syria to the Table?

by Phil Arena | 14 September, 2013 |

That's essentially the question Steve Saideman asked here (and which he more explicitly asked on Twitter). His answer, which I find problematic, is But here is the big problem in all of this: perhaps much of IR is not about bargaining and persuasion about commitment and resolve. Perhaps much of IR is a conflict of interests, and that countries engage in conflict when their various interests cannot be resolved. He goes on to say The amateur game theorist might want to argue that this then is not chicken or prisoner's dilemma but deadlock.  And they would probably be right--that much of what...

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