Two recent interviews in the New Yorker have received substantial attention in recent weeks. Unfortunately, taken together, they make the IR discipline look terrible. How can IR theorists demonstrate their discipline’s relevance in the face of rapidly changing historical events?
This is a guest post by Jeffrey C. Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. You can follow him at his blog at Democracy in Dark Times. The coronavirus...
Like so much else in international relations, the answer to this question seems "obvious." But, like so much else, it gets trickier when we really investigate the situation, and it reveals nuances...
This is a guest post from Paul Johnson, who is an operations research analyst with the US Army. His personal research ranges on topics from political violence and militias to security force loyalty...
This is the sixth contribution in our forum on securitization theory in the U.S. Monika Barthwal-Datta is Senior Lecturer in International Security at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Australia. Her research focuses on critical approaches to security, food security, and the international politics of South Asia. It’s quite simple, I’m told. Securitization Theory doesn’t sell in North America. Why? Because it’s not a ‘central’ IR theory. I know this is not an earth-shattering revelation, and that it is actually widely accepted within the discipline that in the US, most people who...
This is the fifth contribution in our forum on securitization theory in the U.S. Sirin Duygulu recently got her PhD in political science from UMass, Amherst and currently teaches at Okan University, Istanbul. Her research focuses on the use of security language by transnational advocacy campaigns. I believe when questioning the reasons behind the limited traction that securitization literature has so far had in American IR, three set of factors worth consideration. These factors are: the historical development of IR scholarship; the relatively close ties between the policy world and the...
This is the fourth contribution in our forum on securitization theory in the U.S. Ido Oren is associate professor and chair of the department of political science at the University of Florida and can be reached at oren@ufl.edu. Ty Solomon is Lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow and can be reached at ty.solomon@glasgow.ac.uk. Eric Van Rythoven and Jarrod Hayes ask the timely question of why securitization theory has gained so little traction in American IR. They suggest that we should be puzzled by the absence of securitization theory from...
This is the third contribution in our forum on securitization theory in the U.S. Amir Lupovici is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University. His book The Power of Deterrence is forthcoming in Cambridge University Press. His previous publications appeared in International Studies Quarterly, Review of International Studies, International Studies Review, International Studies, Perspectives and Foreign Policy Analysis. His research interests include constructivism, cyberspace, securitization, and deterrence. In their preamble, Hayes and Van Rythoven clearly...
This is the second contribution in our forum on securitization theory in the U.S. Stacie E. Goddard is the Jane Bishop '51 Associate Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College.  Her book, Indivisible Territory and the Politics of Legitimacy: Jerusalem and Northern Ireland, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2010. Ronald R. Krebs is Beverly and Richard Fink Professor in the Liberal Arts and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. He is the author most recently of Narrative and the Making of US National Security. We want to thank the...
[Note: This is a guest post by Peter Gourevitch, Founding Dean and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California San Diego. He is currently Visiting Professor at the Watson Institute, Brown University.] Stanley Hoffmann influenced the study of international relations greatly. From the 1960s on, generations of professors in training read his work. All were affected by doing so. Some reacted negatively, some positively, some indirectly, but all were affected because of its clarity and utility. He laid out argumentation in the...
The following is a lead piece for a forum discussing why securitization theory has had so little traction in American IR. Drawing on established and emerging scholars from around the world, the forum will run from September 16th - 30th and feature guest posts every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Two years ago Dan Nexon approached Eric, a petulant graduate student, about organizing such a forum with the support of Patrick T. Jackson. Dan and Patrick soon had to leave Duck of Minerva for International Studies Quarterly. The project was put on hold until Eric met Jarrod at ISA in New...
It was with a distinct sinking feeling yesterday that I learnt that conference rooms for the EISA's upcoming 9th Pan-European Conference on International Relations have been renamed after eminent theorists of European origin and that there is not a single woman amongst those selected to be honored. A close reading of the conference program brought together the following list of names, which was posted on the Congrats, you have an all-male panel Tumblr: To add insult to injury, some conference rooms have retained their usual Italian names, so it's not even as though there wasn't space to...