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

Will Moore: A Student’s Perspective

by Steve Saideman | 19 April, 2017 |

This is a guest post by Joseph K. Young, Associate Professor, School of Public Affairs and School of International Service, American University. The one piece of advice that my dad, an academic, gave me when I was applying to PhD programs was simple: choose based on who you will work with. With this in mind, I screened potential advisors like I was a TSA agent. I interviewed them. I asked them about their future plans, how old their kids were (thinking anyone with teenagers wouldn’t move while I was still working on my PhD), how they trained their students, and most importantly where their...

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Will Moore: A Fierce Friend

by Steve Saideman | 19 April, 2017 | ,

Will Moore decided to punch out, as he put it.  He left behind devastated friends, co-authors and students as well as family. I have been trying to put into words how I feel today. Will was upstaged by his suit I have known Will since I was a visiting assistant professor long ago.  He and I were part of several workshops aimed at producing an edited volume--the finest one of my career.  His feedback on my work then and his intense desire to produce excellent work were both very helpful as I was just getting going.  Since then, we would chat at most conferences, and recently we started a...

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Perhaps Our Incentives Are Not as Perverse as Believed: Are Citation Counts the Devil?

by Steve Saideman | 17 March, 2017 | ,

I have regularly seen stuff online or in academic publications complaining about professionalization and what it has meant for Political Science.  The basic idea is that things were great before people became focused on stuff like citation counts, which has led to all kinds of perverse incentives.  The main complaint, it seems, is that scholars will try to game citations and this will force them into bad habits and away from good work, like thinking big thoughts (grand theory). To be sure, as John Regehr illustrated so well, academics are smart at gaming systems: While the first one listed...

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Trump Reminded Me Why I Am An Academic

Trump Reminded Me Why I Am An Academic

by Steve Saideman | 28 February, 2017 | , ,

This is a guest post by Idean Salehyan. Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Texas at Dallas “Why did you become an academic?” is a question that I’m frequently asked.  For me, my path into this profession is pretty clear.  I was about fourteen and a freshman in high school in the early 1990s.  A few of my friends joined the school chapter of Amnesty International, and I figured I’d go along.  My world was changed.   I learned of people being slaughtered because their ethnicity; political activists imprisoned for their beliefs; widespread torture and sexual assault; and...

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Fighting, Dancing and Thumb-Biting: Developing a typology of citations

by Steve Saideman | 20 February, 2017 | ,

This is a guest post by Paul Beaumont, PhD Candidate at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). Previously, he worked as an academic writing advisor at NMBU and as a Junior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). Some time ago, back when Duckpods still happened, Nicholas Onuf talked to Dan Nexon about the impact of World of Our Making (WOOM). Onuf’s masterpiece is rightly credited with founding Constructivism in International Relations. Yet as the two reflected upon the course 1990s constructivism embarked upon, Onuf acknowledged that his...

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A Drinking Person’s Guide to the Resistance

A Drinking Person’s Guide to the Resistance

by Steve Saideman | 2 February, 2017 |

A guest post by Layna Mosley,* Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  (*with contributions from Jeff Colgan, Beth Copelovitch, Mark Copelovitch, Artie G, Anna Grzymala-Busse, Roger Halchin, Andrew Herring , Steph Jeffries, Julia Lynch, Jon Pevehouse, Milada Vachudova, Erik Voeten and Christopher Zorn)   President Trump’s proposed economic policies may be bad news for some businesses, like US firms with international supply chains, but if my behavior is any indication of broader trends, Trump has generated a boom for the beverage industry....

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Tempo, Protest, and Emergency Ethnography in the Trump Moment

by Steve Saideman | 31 January, 2017 |

This is a guest post by Dr. Sherrill Stroschein, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Politics, Department of Political Science, University College London We have all been driven to understand what is going on over the past few days. Some of these discussions would be improved with lesser-used tools to think more systematically about events. There are three approaches that can help to do this that have had less exposure than they should. The first is more attention to time, pace, and tempo. In coming on strong and quickly with his orders, Trump is using a pace that is unusual for...

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Party Trumped Policy in 2016

by Steve Saideman | 30 January, 2017 | ,

This is a guest post by Christopher Gelpi and Elias Assaf.  Christopher Gelpi is Chair of Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies and Professor of Political Science and Elias Assaf is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at The Ohio State University, both at The Ohio State University President Donald Trump adopted a variety of controversial and unorthodox foreign policy stances during the 2016 presidential campaign.  Since taking office, Mr. Trump has moved quickly to begin implementing many of these policies – including a border wall...

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Trump and IR Theory: Did We Forget Great Men?

by Steve Saideman | 15 January, 2017 | ,

I was reminded on twitter that international relations professors have trained students for generations to focus on the third and second levels of analysis and dismiss the first--that individuals and their characteristics matter much less than the constraining impact of institutions and the incentives provided by the international system. So, should we just apologize as Trump sells out the postWWII order and ends American hegemony by whim or fiat?  No, we need to drink heavily.  Seriously, there are a few real responses to this question of agency and structure. First, realists will say, and...

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