Since 2014 the international community has considered the issue of autonomy in weapons systems under the framework of the United Nations (UN) Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). Despite hopes that 2022 would see some kind of breakthrough, the 2019 eleven...
Grad students who weren’t schooled at elite universities face real challenges in a squeezed academic job market. But many talented grad students do reach tenure when they receive the same support and guidance offered in elite universities.
Mostly, I muddled through grad school, but with the support of my cohort and guidance from a few choice people, I was able to navigate my way through the uncertainty of graduate school.
When thinking about what things I most wish someone had told me in graduate school… I found it difficult to not write about work-life balance, particularly today.
As the world rushes to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, international relations scholars have a lot to say. We are not public health experts, or pathologists. But we can speak to the way states respond to common threats and the political process needed to formulate an effective response. One common reference is the realist idea of self-interest driving state behavior and undermining collective action. Yet, while realism as an inclination can explain what's going on, Realism as a scholarly theory cannot. Many scholars and general observers of international relations have reacted with...
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...
Catherine Sanger talks about the challenges and opportunities of moving teaching online.
This is a guest post from Yongjin Choi, a PhD Candidate in the Department of Public Administration at Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany. His research focusses on evidence-based policy, Medicaid, and citizen participation. Before entering the doctoral program, he worked as a researcher at the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST) for several years. He is currently working as a research assistant at the Center for Technology in Government (CTG). Follow him at @TheYongjinChoi While the COVID-19 outbreak in Korea, which as of March 16th...
This is a guest post from Heeun Kim, a PhD Candidate in the Department of Public Administration at Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany. Her research focusses on access to healthcare, disparities in health, and universal health coverage. Her current research projects include sexually transmitted diseases prevention in New York State, disparities in access to care under the Affordable Care Act in the US. As the US struggles to ramp up its COVID-19 response amid what appears to be widespread community transmission, countries that appear to have turned the...
This is a guest post from Brendan Skip Mark, an assistant professor in the political science department at the University of Rhode Island (URI). His work focuses on International Organizations and human rights. He is a co-director of the CIRIGHTS human rights dataproject. The official definition of a "recession" is a fall in real GDP for two consecutive quarters. It usually takes a while for the data to show this, yet it is already clear that production is falling globally and will continue to fall. We are in a global recession. It is still too early to tell how bad this crisis will be, and...
This is a guest post from Sofia Fenner, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bryn Mawr College. Her research explores co-optation under authoritarianism, with a regional focus on the Middle East and North Africa. Much like the fall of the Soviet Union or the onset of the Arab Spring, the global coronavirus pandemic offers us intriguing variation: as diverse polities confront similar shocks, we see striking differences in how (and how well) different countries respond. Though we are only a few months into the outbreak, we have already seen success stories in some countries—mitigated...
This is a guest post Jonathan Powell, an Associate Professor in the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs at the University of Central Florida (Twitter: @prof_powell) and Christopher Faulkner, a Visiting Assistant Professor in the International Studies program at Centre College (Twitter: @C_Faulkner_UCF) The general narrative is that preventative measures such as hand-washing and social distancing can slow the transmission rate of COVID-19. The importance of such efforts cannot be understated, but the reasons are often poorly understood. For example, USA Today reports that...