The victims of the chemical weapons’ attacks in Syria have suffered immeasurably. Yet, many more have been killed and maimed by conventional weapons. Why are we so much more outraged when people are killed by chemical weapons than when they are killed in a more conventional way? Why should Assad be able to kill hundreds […]
Erik Voeten
Erik Voeten is the Peter F. Krogh associate professor of geopolitics and global justice at Georgetown University.
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
Sex and Networking at Academic Conferences
Large academic conferences are prone to create awkward social situations, especially for those who are not (yet) well integrated into a field. Imagine walking around the Chicago Palmer House lobby among 7,000 political scientists who have gathered for the American Political Science Association annual meetings. You know that many in attendance exercise gate keeping powers over […]
Posted inPolitics
Does Peacekeeping Reduce Violence Against Civilians?
Most of the recent news regarding UN peacekeepers has been bad, ranging from their responsibility for a cholera epidemic in Haiti to their failures to reduce violence against civilians in The Congo, Sudan, and elsewhere. Nevertheless, a forthcoming article in the American Journal of Political Science by Lisa Hultman, Jacob Kathman, and Megan Shannon shows evidence that increased numbers of […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
A Warning to College Professors from a High School Teacher
This is from a retired high school teacher of AP U.S. Government and Politics classes: If you, as a higher education professional, are concerned about the quality of students arriving at your institution, you have a responsibility to step up and speak out. You need to inform those creating the policies about the damage they […]
Posted inPolitics
Was There a Good Reason for the Iraq War?
The Duck of Minerva is hosting an interesting debate about explanations for the Iraq war based on two recently published articles in International Organization and International Security that the publishers have agreed to make freely available. You should go read the whole thing here and here. Alexandre Debs and Nuno P. Monteiro make the controversial claim that: Contrary to […]
Posted inPolitics
Too Much Human Rights Work?
Over at Foreign Affairs, Jacob Mchangama and Guglielmo Verdirame argue that international human rights institutions have proliferated to the extent that they have become counter-productive: If human rights were a currency, its value would be in free fall, thanks to a gross inflation in the number of human rights treaties and nonbinding international instruments adopted by international organizations over […]
Posted inPolitics
Did Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law Increase Firearm Homicides?
Probably. At least two empirical papers have found that Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws like the one in Florida are associated with an average increase rather than a decrease in firearm homicides. This plausibly occurs because the deterrent effects of such laws are outweighed by the increase in the range of legal defenses for the […]
Posted inPolitics
How Often Do Coups Lead to Elections?
As a commentator on Jeremy Pressman’s excellent blog post noted, Hein Goemans and Nikolay Marinov’s research on the rise of the guardian coup is highly relevant for interpreting what is likely to transpire in Egypt (see here our earlier blog). Below is the abstract of their article (ungated), now forthcoming in the British Journal of […]
Posted inPolitics
The Political Economy of Edward Snowden
It seems like Edward Snowden has offered his citizenship to at least 21 countries via auction from Moscow’s airport transit area. It is not yet clear if anyone will bid but it is interesting nonetheless to analyze what Mr. Snowden is trying to sell and why anyone would buy. Snowden essentially has two assets: sensitive […]
Posted inPolitics
How the Supreme Court Responds to Public Opinion
It has been rather challenging for legal scholars to portray the Supreme Court opinions of the past few days as somehow following logically from precedent or even from the past judgments of individual justices. As University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner puts it on Slate: [..] trying to find a jurisprudential explanation for this opinion, […]
