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

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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Never Too Early for a Crisis in Civil-Military Relations

by Steve Saideman | 6 January, 2017 | ,

To be clear, the latest news is "intra-civilian" but is likely to cross over given the stakes. Remember the old days where the "smart" Bolsheviks left the personnel and other boring issues to Stalin?  Yeah, so Stalin staffed the new Soviet government with his guys, and the theorists, well, they did not end up this way.  That might be too bloody of an example, but I am not at all surprised that General (retired) Mattis is having tensions with Michael Flynn and the other Trump folks over who to staff the Pentagon. If Mattis can't pick his own staff, it will mean not only that he will not have...

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ISA Conferences in Trump’s America

by Steve Saideman | 3 January, 2017 | ,

In conversations with friends, I quickly realized that the International Studies Association faces some significant problems ahead.  The advent of the Trump administration is likely to lead to two kinds of complications: it may be hard for foreign scholars to get visas to attend the conference that scholars may want to boycott conferences that take place in the US if Trump follows through on a variety of things he promised/threatened/tweeted during the campaign. I have not yet gotten numbers from the ISA about the composition of the membership, although it is largely a North American...

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Explaining the Obvious in the Age of Trump

by Steve Saideman | 23 December, 2016 | , ,

The President-Elect has called for expanding the US nuclear arsenal, not just modernizing it (old warheads may not be good warheads).  And when asked about whether this might lead to an arms race, he said woot! Who wins arms races? Arms manufacturers and their stockholders Maybe Ken Waltz (who is already dead) Yeah, that's about it.  How about who loses? Each country that is involved The taxpayers  Pretty much everyone else. Really?  Is it that bad? Yes, it is.  Why? There are two possibilities when it comes to a nuclear arms race: either the competition among nuclear powers to build more...

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Trump and the Fall of Númenor—a comment from a sad political scientist

by Steve Saideman | 14 November, 2016 | , ,

This is a guest post by Eric Grynaviski, an Associate Professor of Political Science at International Affairs at George Washington University. He is the author of Constructive Illusions (Cornell, 2014) .He studies sociological approaches to cooperation and conflict, and international ethics. Over the last few days, protestors have taken to the streets to combat what they believe is an evil power that will soon occupy the White House. The problem of evil has featured in rhetoric about this election, in fact, for months, as featured in the Washington Post commentary on the election. The tropes...

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The Death of Political Science is Greatly Exaggerated

by Steve Saideman | 12 November, 2016 | ,

There is a lot to think about in the aftermath of Trump's win.  Lots of early hot talks will be wrong.  One of the first reactions has been to wonder about the value of political science (which is not the most important thing to think about but we have plenty of time and bandwidth to cover this and everything else): "Should we just bury political science as a discipline?" Some of this week's best reactions to Trump's win: https://t.co/OD707adPkR — OpenCanada (@OpenCanada) November 11, 2016 To be clear, folks in the discipline will be thinking about this election for some time to come, trying...

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Why Would Legislators Want to Know Less Rather than More About Military Stuff?

by Steve Saideman | 2 November, 2016 |

The joy of blogging is that one can come up with whatever title one wants.  An agony of academic publishing is that one cannot do the same for articles published in academic journals.  However, getting published is the thing, so I am mighty pleased that the first piece of the Phil/Dave/Steve project on legislatures and oversight over the armed forces of the world's democracies is now published: "Public critic or secretive monitor: party objectives and legislative oversight of the military in Canada."*  The big question, of course, is how did a paper on Canada get into West European...

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Big Theory? The Past Is Not What You Think It Is

by Steve Saideman | 14 September, 2016 | ,

Today, Dan Drezner pulled on my chain more effectively than damn near any other scholar I respect.  I should keep quiet (not my strength) as I have an article* I am revising for resubmission that addresses this very argument--that big IR theory has gone away somehow.  But I cannot help but respond, partly because this article may not make it past the next stage and partly because by the time it does, people will have moved on (or not, as this argument keeps coming up). * The rejected draft is here. The revised version is, um, being revised.  I have some better graphs in the new version that...

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Unsolicited Job Talk Advice

by Steve Saideman | 9 September, 2016 | ,

Seems to be the time of year when folks post their advice for aspiring professors on how to succeed at the job talk.   While there are other parts of the process--being interviewed one on one by various members of the department or getting grilled by a committee (something that happens far more in Canada than in the US), the most important (and probably not deservedly so)* part of the "fly-out" is giving a talk based on one's research and responding in the Q&A. I tend not to be very humble here and offer all kinds of unsolicited advice, but I hesitate on this particular question because...

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APSA Tweetup

by Steve Saideman | 29 August, 2016 | ,

As has become a tradition, political scientists who are active on twitter are meeting up at the APSA: Thursday, 7pm at Pennsylvania 6, a nearby bar.  The idea is to get a chance to chat with people you may "know" online but have not met in person.   I hope to see you there.    

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