The Duck of Minerva

Steve Saideman

Steve Saideman is Professor and the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. He has written The Ties That Divide: Ethnic Politics, Foreign Policy and International Conflict; For Kin or Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism and War (with R. William Ayres); and NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone (with David Auerswald), and elsewhere on nationalism, ethnic conflict, civil war, and civil-military relations.

Recent Posts

Doing PhD Research While Staying in Place

Doing PhD Research While Staying in Place

by Steve Saideman | 2 April, 2020 | ,

Last night, I taught another session of our Dissertation Proposal Workshop class, and the topic was the methodology section of one's proposal.  That is, how am I going to research this question and how do I justify the choices I made?  This is after going through the other pieces--the question, the proposed answer, what other folks have said about this or have said about other stuff that you want to bring to this project, the theory, and the hypotheses.  How does one test the hypotheses was the question du jour (or nuit).  Before I start, to be clear, no one should expect...

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Why Have Mainstream IR Journals Largely Ignored Pandemics*

Why Have Mainstream IR Journals Largely Ignored Pandemics*

by Steve Saideman | 28 March, 2020 | , ,

* I have changed the title as I got plenty of pushback on twitter--that there is plenty of IR on Pandemics, not just in the major journals. And I will add an update at the bottom later to address the criticisms later. People are wondering why there has not been much scholarship on the international relations of pandemics in the mainstream journals. out of curiosity, looked at how many times the term “pandemic” has appeared in top IR journalsIO: 0APSR: 0JCR: 0WP: 0AJPS: 3EJIR: 6JPR: 8JOP: 8IS: 13ISQ: 17— Seva (@SevaUT) March 15, 2020 Not a scientific survey of the literature, but it gives you...

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Why Have Mainstream IR Journals Largely Ignored Pandemics*

Trump’s Coronavirus Response Shows How Much Leaders Matter

by Steve Saideman | 24 March, 2020 | , ,

This is a guest post by Richard W. Maass, an Associate Professor at the University of Evansville. His research focuses on international security, US foreign policy, terrorism, and diplomatic history. He has a forthcoming book on how democracy and xenophobia limited US territorial expansion (Cornell UP, May 2020). The international experience of COVID-19 will have many implications for international relations. Scholars have already begun discussing its implications for IR theories, hegemonic stability theory, and measures of state capacity. When all is said and done, I think the central...

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Why Have Mainstream IR Journals Largely Ignored Pandemics*

COVID-19 Breathes Life into Hegemonic Stability Theory

by Steve Saideman | 22 March, 2020 | ,

This crisis has us all having a lot of feelings.  I am feeling a bit nostalgic for Hegemonic Stability Theory. While Comparative Politics will have much to say about why countries varied in their responses (also see Max Brooks's World War Z [the book, NOT the movie] to get a taste of the comparative politics of pandemics), it is the job of IR (and epidemiologists) to discuss why the disease spread as it did and why the international community largely failed. While there are many theories that may apply, I think that HST applies quite well. Others have had great stuff on this--Paul Poast...

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Why Have Mainstream IR Journals Largely Ignored Pandemics*

Thinking about Corona and Academia

by Steve Saideman | 13 March, 2020 | , ,

The Duck has been covering Corona in a variety of ways over the past several weeks with posts including Josh's coverage of the early outbreak, the early international dynamics, past and present epidemics, the role of money and of international cooperation, how different types of political systems are handling the crisis, and so on. But thus far, we Ducksters haven't considered here what it means for us. As the resident narcissist, my time has come. While it might seem narcissistic to consider the impact on the academic world while people are dying around the world, well, ok, it is...

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Ranking Tenure Candidates? No Thanks

by Steve Saideman | 8 September, 2019 | ,

Sunday mornings are for tenure reviews.  Huh?  I am reading stuff to evaluate a scholar for whether he/she is worthy of tenure.  This is a standard part of the tenure process--to have outside scholars read a bunch of a candidate's work and then indicate whether they have made a significant contribution and whether they are likely to continue to do so.  As I have written elsewhere, this is a fair amount of work, almost always unpaid.  So, I have gotten a bit cranky when I do it these days. Sunday mornings are for tenure reviews.  Huh?  I am reading stuff to...

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Using Pop Culture in the Classroom: Footloose FTW!

by Steve Saideman | 2 August, 2019 | , ,

I love this tweet as it puts the usual dynamics on their head: Tip for students going off to college: study 80s/90s pop culture. Particularly Ferris Beuller, Princess Bride, Simpsons seasons 2-5. Your gen x/early millennial profs will try to connect with you through these, and will be confused/sad when you stare blankly at them. Not joking. — David Mimno (@dmimno) August 2, 2019 Each summer, profs are reminded how much younger the students are and then the onus is on them to update their references.  This tweet nicely makes fun of profs by suggesting the reverse. As always, I have two...

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We Are a Bad Guild: Tenure Letter Writing Edition

by Steve Saideman | 29 July, 2019 |

A key part of the tenure process is for outside experts to evaluate the candidate's research (hard to evaluate their teaching and service from outside).  These letters can be quite handy for getting a less biased perspective that a department might have (in either direction).  It is especially useful for providing insights in cases where the candidate's subfield is under or unrepresented among the senior faculty evaluating tenure (a real life example:  no tenured political theorists and the candidate is a theorist).  The basic idea makes sense.  That in order to evaluate...

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Embargo My Eggo!

by Steve Saideman | 24 July, 2019 | ,

Today, I learned that I am out of touch. Ok, that is old news. I got into a twitter conversation about embargoed dissertations. A friend was trying to access and then cite a dissertation that has been out for a few years, and she could not because the dissertation was embargoed. I then raised this on twitter, and got a whole lot of push back. So, let's take a look at this. My basic take is that a dissertation is a contribution to knowledge, and our job is to not only create such knowledge but to share it. I also argued that it is counter-productive to one's career as it makes it hard for...

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