In a world of multiple and overlapping crises, can norms and rules-based institution still create order amidst uncertainty? Do existing norms and frameworks for international cooperation enjoy sufficient legitimacy to help us navigate the interacting and concatenating effects of crises? A new symposium explores the question: “Whither norms (research) in times of uncertainty?”
This is a guest post from Courtney Burns and Leah Windsor. Burns is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bucknell University. Windsor is a Research Assistant Professor in...
In Marvel comics and movies, Ant-Man is a super-hero who can change his size using a special suit and "Pym particles." When giant, he's...giant. But when he's tiny he keeps the same density as a...
This is a guest post from Tana Johnson, an Associate Professor of Public Affairs and Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her publications include the book Organizational...
On the same day that the World Health Organization said that there were now only 889 new cases of the coronavirus in China (down from 1749 on Wednesday), there were also reports of new outbreaks in two Chinese prisons. We also witnessed the deaths of two people in Iran (apparently from COVID-19) and an outbreak in Korea--now up to more than 150 cases--fueled by a superspreader associated with a strange cult and no known connection to China. I’ve been having quiet conversations with colleagues recently wondering when we would start to see more aggressive transmission outside of China. Between...
In the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak, the stories on China's quarantine and population control measures seem downright crazy, with people needing hall passes to go out of their apartments, buildings turning away residents who had been out of town, periodic temperature checks on residents, drones being deployed to disinfect villages or to shame people to go indoors or put on a mask, and health workers deployed in train stations checking phone records of visitors to see where they have been. Walking around without a protective face mask? Well, you can't avoid these sharp-tongued drones!...
If you've been following the coronavirus outbreak, you've probably heard about the Princess Cruises ship, quarantined in Japan with thousands of passengers on board. It sounds like the veritable cruise ship from hell. Of the 1219 passengers screened for the virus, some 355 passengers tested positive for COVID-19, including some 44 Americans. The Americans were finally being evacuated today after having been quarantined on the ship since February 5th. The horror of confining thousands to a boat underscores the incredible measures governments have undertaken to try to contain the virus. The...
In my first post on the coronavirus outbreak, I reviewed the nature of the disease. Here, I want to ask and answer the first of four questions I posed about whether a global public health emergency should have been declared earlier. In the next post, I'll tackle the appropriateness of China's quarantine measures, the adequacy of its overall response, and what should be done going forward.The response to the COVID-19 coronavirus has been draconian. With the lunar year vacation looming at the end of January, China shut down travel out of the city of Wuhan on January 23rd (and severely...
Even if you don't study global health, you've probably been following the coronavirus outbreak in China with a mix of dread and fascination. Li Wenliang, the whistleblower Chinese doctor, who himself succumbed to the virus riveted the world. His death was mourned in China, even as the government initially censored conversations about his passing. The Chinese government's problematic response has created one of the most significant political challenges the Xi Jinping government has faced. Today, the heads of the Communist party in Hubei province and the city of Wuhan, the epicenter for the...
Having been invited to offer an ‘overall response’ to this special issue, I decided to take a look at how the contributors deal with the editors’ claim that we are witnessing the end of ‘IR Theory’. But let me preface this with an observation. The EJIR editors’ decision to compile this special issue, taken at the 2011 ISA conference in Montreal, occurred parallel to the creation of the ISA Theory Section (in which I was closely involved). While this was not a consciously coordinated effort, neither was it a coincidence. Both initiatives were motivated by a similar concern, namely a...
“In the Beginning” joins a growing literature – including my own Recovering International Relations – in which normative claims regarding the vocation of IR theory are tied to an historical account of its disciplinary emergence.* If these arguments vary in their details, they share a common logical-rhetorical tactic. An account of the discipline’s beginnings is mobilized to critique present-day scholarly practices: to spur “reflection on where one is, and where one is going.” On Williams’ account, a basic confusion regarding IR-realism’s relationship to liberalism characterizes “where...
From its very inception IR was a substantive normative and political project.