The Duck of Minerva

Rodger Payne

Rodger A. Payne is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisville. He serves on the University’s Sustainability Council and was a co-founder of the Peace, Conflict, and Social Justice program. He is the author of dozens of journal articles and book chapters and coauthor, with Nayef Samhat, of Democratizing Global Politics: Discourse Norms, International Regimes, and Political Community (SUNY, 2004). He is currently working on two major projects, one exploring the role of narratives in international politics and the other examining the implications of America First foreign policy.

Recent Posts

2008 Election: New favorite Among Dems?

by Rodger Payne | 7 February, 2008 |

I don't typically blog about domestic elections at the Duck, preferring to save my analysis and preferences for my personal blog.However, Super Tuesday was a unique political event. No primary election ever had so much at stake -- at least in terms of the number of states and delegates to the national convention.Hillary Clinton was once the odds-on favorite to win the 2008 Democratic nomination. She secured backing from much of the Party establishment, raised tons of money and led in the polls throughout 2007.Now, she's the former frontrunner -- managing to earn only about 50,000 more votes...

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Interpreting the surge in Iraq

by Rodger Payne | 30 January, 2008 |

I have a longstanding apathy towards State of the Union addresses. If a President says anything important (like declaring states part of an "axis of evil"), then I figure that the text serves just as well. My actions are bipartisan -- I don't watch anyone named Bush give these addresses and I didn't watch Bill Clinton either. And I generally didn't watch Ronald Reagan's efforts. However, there's a case to be made that I should have watched the address this year -- not because of what Bush said, but because of how specific members of the audience reacted.After all, both of the remaining...

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Government’s Little Helper

by Rodger Payne | 24 January, 2008 |

Does the press often serve as "government's little helper"?As you might guess, I am still thinking about the apparent failure of the public sphere (or "marketplace of ideas" if you prefer) to work properly during foreign policy crises. Many readers graciously provided interesting and helpful comments on my post from last week. Thank you! For now, however, I continue to explore the academic literature about the alleged timidity of journalists during such crises.In 1990, University of Washington scholar Lance Bennett theorized that journalists "index" the slant of their news coverage to the...

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Patriot games

by Rodger Payne | 16 January, 2008 |

In preparation for a conference paper (warning: large pdf) due in a couple of months, I've been carefully reading a number of academic articles about the failure of the public sphere (or if you prefer, the "marketplace of ideas") to function effectively during periods of foreign policy crisis. The post-9/11 period featured limited debate about many foreign policy choices -- leading to the Iraq war, for example. Keep in mind that I'm a proponent of deliberative democracy and would like to see "the" public sphere function effectively in all political contexts. If national or global public...

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Post-surge offensive

by Rodger Payne | 10 January, 2008 |

Wednesday, in Slate, Phillip Carter looked at what he called the first post-surge offensive by the U.S. military. Roughly 10% of American forces in Iraq are conducting operations in the the Diyala province. However, as Carter cautions, this is "an attempt to clear an area without there being a sizable number of troops available to occupy it afterward."Carter documents that this is a sizable offensive force -- bigger even than what the US employed in November 2004 during the second assault on Fallujah. Unfortunately, the size of the force will not guarantee mission success: One truism about...

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The debate climate of the climate debate

by Rodger Payne | 16 December, 2007 |

The press has periodically made note of various allegations, but the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee just released (December 12) its full report on Political Interference with Climate Change Science Under the Bush Administration. The Committee has been gathering evidence for 16 months and examined 27,000 pages of documents from the Bush administration. It also conducted multiple hearings and interviewed key figures.What did the Committee find? The Report's homepage provides this summary:The evidence before the Committee leads to one inescapable conclusion: the Bush...

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Political judgment: Iraq edition

by Rodger Payne | 10 December, 2007 |

In January, I was skeptical about the prospects for the new Iraq strategy, commonly called "the surge." As everyone knows, the strategy was built around securing Baghdad: The Bush administration asserts that the violence in Iraq, "particularly in Baghdad," has reversed the political gains that were reflected in the 2005 elections. By stabilizing the situation in and around the capital, they assert, the U.S. can help the current government control Iraq -- and then presumably prepare to bring American troops home.Here's what I wrote about the prospects for that strategy: In my view, it means...

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More than 2 Americas

by Rodger Payne | 9 December, 2007 |

Peter has a great post about the meaning of wealth in America -- and the diverse problem that voters making upwards of $97,000 annually pose to the Democratic candidates in the 2008 election campaign.After all, Democrats have long been said to represent the interests of the downtrodden. Think about FDR's "New Deal" or LBJ's "Great Society." Yet, Democratic members now hold many House seats in districts that are viewed as affluent by income measures. Though Peter framed this debate around the positions of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, it arguably reflects the "two Americas" theme that...

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Terrorism, the shopping mall, and global gun norms

by Rodger Payne | 6 December, 2007 |

Remember the threat terrorism was supposed to pose to shopping malls? Actually, some of these warnings are quite recent.For years, some have feared that terrorists might go into shopping malls and start killing innocent shoppers or service employees. Often, the warnings are associated with popular holidays like Halloween or Christmas.Here's how Michelle Malkin might handle the latest developments in Omaha -- if she worried about the ready availability of handguns, assault rifles and other terrifying weapons in the US:Reports are, of course, quick to stress that accused jihadi Shareef [killer...

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2008 Grawemeyer winner

by Rodger Payne | 6 December, 2007 |

University of California, Berkeley, professor Philip Tetlock has won the 2008 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. The prize is worth $200,000.The December 3 Chronicle of Higher Education has a brief piece that explains the rationale for the prize:Predictions on political issues are frequently wrong, says Mr. Tetlock, which is unfortunate because lawmakers frequently rely on such analyses to shape policy. In a 20-year study of 27,000 predictions made by 284 “experts” cited in the news media, he found that, very often, the professionals were no more accurate in their crystal-ball...

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