Why political science can drive political scientists to drink
Yesterday an amendment to the continuing resolution funding the U.S. government, sponsored by Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, was passed by a voice vote in the Senate. Its purpose? To prohibit the...
View ArticleBlogging political science has gotten complicated, man
Blogging will be light for the rest of the week, as I'll be attending the International Studies Association annual meeting in San Francisco. If you're also attending but new to these things and...
View ArticleFive things that international relations scholars should shut the hell up about
Your humble blogger has been knee-deep in chairing, discussing, and attending International Studies Association panels all of which seem to have the word "diffusion" in the title and SOMEONE PLEASE...
View ArticleSo you want to jump into social media....
With each passing day, senior scholars that I did not expect to bump into on Twitter... are now on Twitter. Christian Davenport joined recently, as did Jessica Stern. And there are others out there,...
View ArticleWhy political scientists are screwed, redux [UPDATED]
Six weeks ago I discussed -- as a dispassionate political scientist -- why the field of political science was good and truly f**ked when it came to Congress. Yesterday, Dave Weigel blogged about this...
View ArticleTwilight of the MOOCs?
Your humble blogger has been hearing about MOOCs -- massive open online courses -- for the past few years now. Among the foreign-policy community, Walter Russell Mead has been banging on about these...
View ArticleHow political scientists should tackle the Big Issues
There's some interesting stuff a brewin' in the world politics blogosphere. Over at Duck of Minerva, Daniel Nexon notes that world politics journals have done a pretty piss-poor job of addressing Big...
View ArticleTrying to make lemonade out of a bad lemon on conference networking
Ah, the American Political Science Association annual meetings are coming up. Which means that political scientists are feverishly emailing each other trying to set up times for coffee/alcohol/food...
View ArticleOn networking, privilege, and the People's Front of Judea
So after I wrote this post about the relatively modest importance of networking at APSA, there were some follow-up posts by Dan Nexon and Erik Voeten that made similar points about networking at APSA....
View ArticleYour late summer political science book club
Barring a last-minute hurricane, your humble blogger is off to the American Political Science Association annual meetings early tomorrow. Now, personal and professional networking aside, there are...
View ArticleSyria, Iran, and The Credibility Fairy
Your humble blogger continues to be interested in the divide between current/former policymakers and academics over the meaning and significance of "credibility" in international affairs. I have bent...
View ArticleWhat's Rank in Political Science?
There's an awful lot being written about the myriad ways in which political science and international relations scholarship skews this way and that way, but not the meritocratic way. To underscore...
View ArticleYou Can Find Political Science Research Topics Everywhere -- You Just Have to...
So this happened last night: Your browser does not support iframes. As a diehard Red Sox fan, this worst-to-first season was particularly sweet. However, not all political scientists have been...
View ArticleThanks for the Natural Experiment, Wikileaks!!
Way back in the Early Stone Age of the Internet -- i.e., the mid-1990s -- a group of developed countries started negotiating a Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). Negotiated in semi-secret,...
View ArticleWhy Foreign Affairs Policymakers are More Prejudiced than Economic Policymakers
Yesterday I was intermittently watching Janet Yellen's testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, and I was struck by how often she relied on the guidance of "studies" to explain her worldview on...
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