Search

Begin New Search Topic Academia Political Geography Global Focus

1. International Relations in Search of an Antidote

Author:
Ali L. Karaosmanoğlu
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
This essay is based on the author’s long-time observation of the International Relations discipline and the repeated crises it has experienced. The piece identifies ‘event-drivenness’ as the structural reason behind these crises, in other words, the course of the discipline naturally follows global IR events and, depending on how transformative these events are, when responding to them, is more likely to fall into an existential crisis—with the most recent one being potentially fatal. By discussing in detail the a) science-statecraft relationship; b) scholar-practitioner disconnect; c) distortion of theories by scholars and practitioners; d) paradoxical relationship between rationality and irrationality; and e) theory-practice disconnect, the essay seeks to operationalize these crisisgenerated processes when responding to major events. In order to show these crisis generation processes in detail, it uses the theories of political realism and, to a lesser degree, classical liberalism, as case reflections. As a possible solution to the reciprocal condescension between scholarship (theory-making) and statecraft (practice), the essay proposes a “Clausewitzian” modus vivendi that aims at creating a culture of synthesis between the presumed producers and consumers of IR knowledge.
Topic:
International Relations, Academia, and Knowledge Production
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Getting Statelessness Published: Pathways to Publication for Early Career Researchers in the Field of Statelessness Studies

Author:
Barbara von Rütte
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, Melbourne Law School
Abstract:
The field of statelessness studies is coming of age.1 Over the last decade, a growing number of young scholars have been working on questions relating to statelessness and citizenship in different disciplines, from diverse perspectives and in various parts of the world, as this Special Issue demonstrates.2 Many of these young statelessness scholars have recently completed their doctoral research and are aboutto publish their work. At the same time, quite a number of significant contributions to the field are based on the doctoral research of statelessness scholars.3 Nevertheless, publishing can be difficult in a field like statelessness or citizenship which is so broad and interdisciplinary in character but, at the same time, highly specialised. Access to publication is even more difficult for early career researchers and, as the study by Jozefien Boone has shown, for scholars with lived experience of statelessness and scholars from the Global South.4Hence, the question of how research on statelessness and citizenship can be published has been raised within the Global PhDs on Statelessness (‘GPS’) network. This commentary discusses the pathway to publication for research on statelessness and citizenship by doctoral and early career scholars based on a 2021 seminar on academic publishing organised by the GPS network,5 as well as on my own experience with publishing my first monograph.6 It is directed at early career researchers in the field of statelessness studies with the aim of providing them with pathways for publishing their doctoral research.7This commentaryfocuseson the procedure for publishing a bookin the form of a traditional monograph, which is clearly distinguishable from the publishing of an academic article.
Topic:
Citizenship, Research, Global South, Academia, Statelessness, Publication, Monograph, and Article
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Why Diagnostic Expectations Cannot Replace REH

Author:
Roman Frydman and Halina Frydman
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
Gennaioli and Shleifer (GS) have proposed diagnostic expectations (DE) as an empirically-based approach to specifying participants’ expectations, which, like REH, can be applied in every model. Beyond its supposedly general applicability, GS’s formalization of DE implies that participants systematically and predictably overreact to news. Here, we present a formal argument that Kahneman and Tversky’s compelling empirical findings, and those of other behavioral economists, do not provide a basis for a general approach to specifying participants’ “predictable errors.” We also show that the overreaction of participants’ expectations is not a regularity, but rather an artifact of GS’s particular specification of DE.
Topic:
Economics, Academia, and Models
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. Socioeconomic diversity of economics PhDs

Author:
Robert Schultz and Anna Stansbury
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
Abstract:
It is well documented that women and racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in the economics profession, relative to both the general population and many other academic disciplines. Less is known about the socioeconomic diversity of the profession. In this paper, we use data from the National Science Foundation’s Survey of Earned Doctorates to examine the socioeconomic background of US economics PhD recipients as compared with US PhD recipients in other disciplines, proxying for socioeconomic background using PhD recipients’ parents’ educational attainment. We find that economics PhD recipients are substantially more likely to have highly educated parents, and less likely to have parents without a college degree, than PhD recipients in other disciplines. This is true both for US-born and non-US-born PhD recipients, but the gap between economics and other disciplines is starker for those born in the United States. The gap in socioeconomic diversity between economics and other PhD disciplines has increased over the last two decades.
Topic:
Economics, Women, Diversity, and Academia
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. Professing Literature: The Example of Austin Warren

Author:
Aaron Urbanczyk
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Humanitas
Institution:
The Center for the Study of Statesmanship, Catholic University
Abstract:
Literary studies in America are in a late stage of decay. For nearly a century English departments have been a revolving door of influences, most of which have not been salutary. In rapid succession historical and philological scholarship of the early twentieth century gave way to the New Criticism, the critical influences of Marx and Freud, postmodernism (deconstruction), New Historicism, and the currently dominant hermeneutics of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. University English departments today are divided along these various ideological lines, with the result that literary studies have morphed into a heterogeneous set of subdisciplines with the word “studies” appended. Here I intend no polemic against or diagnosis of the chaotic state of literature as a discipline; rather, I propose considering this state of affairs from the point of view of its practitioners. The professoriate is defined by those who profess. Borrowing Gerald Graff’s phrase, one might ask who stands out as a model of “professing literature” amidst this disciplinary chaos?
Topic:
Education, Literature, Academia, and Discipline
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. Methodological Nationalism in International Relations: A Quantitative Assessment of Academia in Turkey (2015-2019)

Author:
Mustafa Onur Tetik
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
This article seeks to expand the discussion on Methodological Nationalism (MN)within the discipline of International Relations (IR), to contribute to MN literature from the perspective of IR studies and to evaluate the prevalence of MN in the field by the quantification of selected works. To achieve these goals, the article, firstly, recapitulates the general MN literature and critically evaluates this discussion in IR. Later, it identifies the forms of MN as they appear in IR with two faces: Level of analysis (nation-as-arena) and unit of analysis (nation-as-actor). Secondly, the article proposes a method to assess the prevalence of MN through quantification. Finally, the article applies its method to IR works to address the question of how widespread MN is in academia in Turkey. The findings demonstrate the proportional pervasiveness of MN within the IR community of Turkey, which is part of the “periphery” in the discipline. The findings also let us draw some hypothetical conclusions.
Topic:
International Relations, Nationalism, Quantitative, Academia, and Methodology
Political Geography:
Turkey and Global Focus

7. How Human Subjects Research Rules Mislead You and Your University, and What to Do About it

Author:
Gary King and Melissa Sands
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Universities require faculty and students planning research involving human subjects to pass formal certification tests and then submit research plans for prior approval. Those who diligently take the tests may better understand certain important legal requirements but, at the same time, are often misled into thinking they can apply these rules to their own work which, in fact, they are not permitted to do. They will also be missing many other legal requirements not mentioned in their training but which govern their behaviors. Finally, the training leaves them likely to completely misunderstand the essentially political situation they find themselves in. The resulting risks to their universities, collaborators, and careers may be catastrophic, in addition to contributing to the more common ordinary frustrations of researchers with the system. To avoid these problems, faculty and students conducting research about and for the public need to understand that they are public figures, to whom different rules apply, ones that political scientists have long studied. University administrators (and faculty in their part­time roles as administrators) need to reorient their perspectives as well. University research compliance bureaucracies have grown, in well­meaning but sometimes unproductive ways that are not required by federal laws or guidelines. We offer advice to faculty and students for how to deal with the system as it exists now, and suggestions for changes in university research compliance bureaucracies, that should benefit faculty, students, staff, university budgets, and our research subjects.
Topic:
Education, Science and Technology, Labor Issues, Bureaucracy, and Academia
Political Geography:
Global Focus

8. Social Cohesion After Armed Conflict: A Literature Review

Author:
Charlotte Fiedler and Christopher Rohles
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)
Abstract:
This paper brings together 39 academic studies on how armed conflict affects social cohesion. Reviewing the literature shows that conflict mostly harms social cohesion. However, this review also points toward several important caveats as well as blind-spots of the current literature.
Topic:
Academia, Literature Review, Social Cohesion, and Armed Conflict
Political Geography:
Global Focus

9. Developments in the Field of Transitional Justice

Author:
Valerie Arnould
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
Abstract:
For a long time, transitional justice has been described as a ‘nascent’ or ‘emerging’ field. While it is true that transitional justice is a youngish concept and praxis (emerging in the late 1980s), today it has definitely grown out of its infancy and moved into an age of consolidation. It is undeniable that transitional justice has developed into a dynamic field of research and practice. At the same time, it remains a highly contested field that is subject to heated debates about the precise nature, scope, legitimacy and effectiveness of the ‘transitional justice project’. Here, I reflect on five notable developments that have marked the transitional justice field over the past decade.
Topic:
Transitional Justice, Legitimacy, Academia, and Transition
Political Geography:
Global Focus

10. To Rescue Scholars is to Rescue the Future

Author:
IIE Scholar Rescue Fund
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute of International Education (IIE)
Abstract:
In 2002, IIE’s trustees launched the Scholar Rescue Fund (IIE-SRF) as the only global program that arranges and funds academic fellowships for threatened and displaced scholars worldwide. Nearly twenty years later, we are delighted to release a new study – made possible through the generous support of IIE Chairman Emeritus and IIE-SRF co-founder Dr. Henry Kaufman – that documents the far-reaching impacts and achievements of over 200 IIE-SRF alumni from 38 countries on their host and home communities and academic disciplines.
Topic:
Education, Higher Education, and Academia
Political Geography:
Global Focus