Newsletters
Current newsletter:
What’s Inside?
> IHAP at APSA Montreal 2022 & Roundtable – Telling It Like It Is: Descriptive Research in Social Science – In this issue, we have our final message from outgoing IHAP president, Stacie Goddard, and an introduction to the new council members and governing board. We highlight the IHAP sponsored and co-sponsored panels at APSA with easy links to the conference pages so you can be sure to check out all the IHAP happenings in Montreal. Our roundtable in this issue focuses on a Spring 2022 workshop run by Mary Anne Mendoza, Meg K. Guliford, Carolyn E. Holmes, and Michelle Jurkovich on descriptive research methods in political science. This workshop brought together scholars a diverse set of political science scholars to strengthen descriptive research toolkits and to utilize description to understand the world as it is, in all its messiness and gray areas. From this workshop, Rosella Capella Zielinski and Ryan Grauer examine the need in political science to build qualitative datasets. They unveil their Belligerents in Battle dataset and discuss the process, methodological choices, and the value that dataset construction can bring to all of our qualitative research. Finally, we highlight some of the amazing work that has been done by our IHAP members this past year, with a bibliography of work that we know you will want to read and integrate into your syllabi. Have a great APSA meeting everyone and we will see you at the IHAP panels, reception, and business meeting.
Past newsletters:
IHAP Newsletter 8.1 Summer 2022
What’s Inside?
> Roundtable: The Biological Weapons Convention at 50 – On 10 April 2022, the international community celebrated the 50th anniversary of the opening for signature of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC). It commits parties to refrain from developing, producing, stockpiling, acquiring, or retaining biological weapons. With 184 signatories, the BWC is considered among the most successful arms control treaties, on par with the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Later this year, parties to the treaty will gather at the Ninth Review Conference of the Convention in order to evaluate the treaty’s past successes and failures and lay out the future of the BTWC. The authors of this newsletter take an historical and contemporary look at the importance of this convention and the necessity of maintaining its relevance today, rather than viewing it as a Cold War relic. Also in this issue, the announcement of the 2022 Outstanding Article in International History and Politics Award and the Robert L. Jervis and Paul W Schroeder Best Book Award. > Contributors: Dr. Jean Pascal Zanders of The Trench; Vivienne Zhang, Maria Garzon Macenda, and James Revill of the WMD Programme at UNIDIR; Dr. Malcolm Dando of the University of Bradford; Rachel Rogers of the University of Oklahoma; Dr. Brian Balmer of University College London, Dr. Caitriona McLeish of University of Sussex, and Dr. Alex Spelling of University College London; Dr. Brett Edwards of the University of Bath and Host of the Poisons and Pestilence Podcast. Enjoy!
What’s Inside?
> IHAP at APSA 2021 Annual Meeting Preview and Panels – Interviews with the 2021 IHAP award winners featuring contributions from the Robert L. Jervis and Paul W. Schroeder Best Book Award co-winners Dov Levin’s Meddling at the Ballot Box: The Causes and Effects of Partisan Electoral Interventions and Kyle Lascurettes’s Orders of Exclusion: Great Powers and the Strategic Sources of Foundational Rules in International Relations. Also the honorable mention for Lora Viola’s The Closure of the International System: How Institutions Create Political Equalities and Hierarchies. Finally, an interview with the best article award winner Yasuhiro Izumikawa’s “Network Connections and the Emergence of the Hub-and-Spokes Alliance System in East Asia,” International Security, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Fall 2020), pp. 7-50. This newsletter will be your guide to the APSA annual meeting either in-person or virtually. We look forward to seeing you!
IHAP Newsletter 7.1 Summer 2021
What’s Inside?
> Roundtable: The Theory and Practice of Archival Research in International History and Politics – Political Scientists and scholars of International Relations that engage in historical research often have received little or no training on the methods of archival research. In this newsletter, the authors offer a how-to guide of the practice of archival research. Reflections on best practices, of competing methodologies for conducting archival research and the importance of the limitations of the archives. The authors highlight in detail the strategies, methods, and reflexivity that is necessary to conduct rigorous archival research in the field of political science. The archives can both bring to light new evidence that overturns common knowledge, or it can perpetuate the marginalization of silenced voices from colonial archives. These contributions ultimately offer a useful guide for scholars and advanced qualitative methods courses from a variety of epistemological standpoints on the theory and practice of archival research.
> Contributors: Laia Balcells, Georgetown University; Jacqueline L. Hazelton, U.S. Naval War College; Mary Anne Mendoza, Cal Poly Pomona; Kevin Olson, University of California, Irvine; and Joshua Shifrinson, Boston University
What’s Inside?
> Roundtable: Race, Indigeneity, and the Global South – Missed Opportunities and Possible Futures – International Relations has long neglected and erased the voices of black, indigenous, and people from the global south. How can we as scholars of international history and politics rethink the way we have perpetuated Eurocentric narratives in the discipline? What are the paths forward for imagining a both world and a discipline that centers to diversity of perspectives in the world for a truly international field of inquiry? The contributors of this roundtable come together to both reflect on the past injustices in a variety of contexts, and look toward the future of “Promoting Pluralism” at APSA and beyond.
> Contributors: Krista M. Johnson, Howard University & Owen Brown, Northwestern University; Alexandra Raleigh, Case Western Reserve University; Liam Midzain-Gobin, Brock University; Naosuke Mukoyama, University of Oxford; Gustavo Alvim de Góes Bezerra, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro; Siddharth Mallavarapu, Shiv Nadar University; Garrett FitzGerald, University of Notre Dame & Justin de Leon, University of Notre Dame; and Desirée Poets, Virginia Tech.
> Interviews: Eric Hundman, NYU Shanghai & Sarah E. Parkinson, Johns Hopkins University; Ahmed T. Kuru, San Diego State University; and Jelena Subotić, Georgia State University
IHAP Newsletter 6.1 Summer 2020
What’s Inside?
> Roundtable: Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki at 75 – How has the legacy of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki taken on diverse meanings in different contexts over time? What is the role of the narratives of the Hibakusha – the Japanese word for the survivors of the two nuclear attacks – in re-framing a predominant “ends justify the means” rationale for the bombings? The contributors of this roundtable come together to both reflect on the humanitarian toll of the bombs, and look to how meaning of them was contested over time both in the U.S. and internationally.
> Contributors: Toshihiro Higuchi, Georgetown University; Lisa Langdon Koch, Claremont McKenna College; Sidra Hamidi, Stetson University; Rebecca Davis Gibbons, University of Southern Maine
IHAP Newsletter 5.1 Summer 2019
What’s Inside?
> Roundtable: On the Centenary of Versailles — What are the primary historical legacies of the Paris Peace Conference? What lessons do the construction, successes, and failures of the Versailles Treaty framework hold for contemporary international politics? The contributors to this roundtable cast a critical eye on the attempt to erect a postwar international settlement at Versailles, 1919.
> Contributors: Molly Cochran, Oxford Brookes University; Laura Robson, Portland State University; Sandra Fahy, Sophia University and Harvard Law School; Peter Harris, Colorado State University; Tuomas Forsberg, University of Helsinki; Jeremy Smith, University of Eastern Finland; and Jane Cowan, University of Sussex.
IHAP Newsletter 4.2 Spring 2019
What’s Inside?
> Review Roundtable of The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World by Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017). — Six experts on international law, politics, and organization review Hathaway and Shapiro’s argument about the pivot role of international law as a cause of peace among states.
> Contributors: Karen J. Alter, Northwestern University; Michelle Allendoerfer, George Washington University; Ghadeer Awwad, Georgetown University; Hyeyoon Park, Colorado State University; John G. Oates, Florida International University; James D. Morrow, University of Michigan.
IHAP Newsletter 4.1 Summer 2018
What’s Inside?
> Roundtable: The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at 50 — How successful has the international nuclear non-proliferation regime been over the past five decades? What is the future of the norms on non-proliferation and non-use? What can international history tell us about the current international politics concerning North Korea and Iran? This roundtable brings together International Relations scholars, policy experts, and anti-nuclear weapons activists to discuss these questions and more.
> Contributors: Tomoko Watanabe, ANT-Hiroshima; Lisa Langdon Koch, Claremont McKenna College; Naoko Aoki, University of Maryland-College Park; Wilfred Wan, UN Institute for Disarmament Research; Etel Solingen, University of California-Irvine.
> Interviews: Catherine Lu, McGill University; Brendan Green, University of Cincinnati.
IHAP Newsletter 3.2 Spring 2018
What’s Inside?
> Roundtable: IR Theory Across Time and Space — Do IR theories suffer from “Eurocentric” biases and, if so, what should be done? What does it mean to “globalize” the discipline? This roundtable discussion brings together an international group of scholars to discuss the applicability of the discipline’s main theoretical paradigms across time and space.
> Contributors: Pinar Bilgin, Bilkent University; May Darwich, Durham University; Graham F. Odell, Chapman University; David C. Kang, University of Southern California.
> Interviews: Rosella Cappella Zielinski, Boston University; Lisa Blaydes, Stanford University; Christopher Paik, NYU-Abu Dhabi.
IHAP Newsletter 3.1 Summer 2017
What’s Inside?
> Roundtable: Leaders in International Politics, Past and Present — How should scholars of international politics go about the study of leaders and leadership? What are the various theoretical approaches on offer, and what are the cutting-edge methodological approaches? In this roundtable, contributors draw upon their own scholarship to offer useful techniques for uncovering how individual agents “make politics” and “make history.”
> Contributors: Robert Jervis, Columbia University; Juliet Kaarbo, University of Edinburgh; Adriana Boersner, University of Missouri; Cali Mortenson Ellis, The Evergreen State College; Mark Ledwidge, Canterbury Christ Church University.
IHAP Newsletter 2.2 Winter 2017
What’s Inside?
> Roundtable: Historical Parallels: 2016 — This roundtable asks to what extent the most dramatic political developments of 2016 (the “Brexit” referendum and the political rise of Donald Trump, for example) can be said to mirror past events. Contributors analyze the growing salience of “populist” movements and candidates; the apparent “crisis” of political legitimacy in Western societies; anti-immigration sentiment; and the mass politics of disintegration.
> Contributors: Deborah Boucoyannis, University of Virginia; Thomas Pepinsky, Cornell University; Margaret E. Peters, UCLA; Stefanie Walter, University of Zurich.
> Interviews: Andrew Phillips, University of Queensland; Jason Sharman University of Cambridge; Ronald R. Krebs, University of Minnesota.
IHAP Newsletter 2.1 Summer 2016
What’s Inside?
> Roundtable: Women in International History and Politics — Why are women silenced in international history and politics? What methodological tools and theoretical approaches can be used to amplify women’s voices and shed light on women’s experiences and political agency? This roundtable provides new insights into the extent of the gender imbalance affecting the study of international history and offers practical guidance for improving future research.
> Contributors: Karen Alter, Northwestern University; Swati Srivastava, Northwestern University; Glenda Sluga, University of Sydney; Anwar Mhajne, University of Cincinnati; Catia C. Confortini, Wellesley College.
>Interviews: Eric Grynaviski, George Washington University; Nicholas L. Miller, Brown University.
IHAP Newsletter 1.2 Winter 2016
What’s Inside?
> Roundtable: Debating DA-RT: This roundtable addresses the idea of Data Access-Research Transparency in political science, with contributors evaluating the relative merits and pitfalls of DA-RT policies for the discipline’s journals. Will greater transparency about data and methods make political science scholarship more reliable, accessible, and robust? Or do DA-RT policies place an inordinate and misplaced burden on researchers? Participants in this forum discuss these and other questions.
> Contributors: Jelena Subotic, Georgia State University; Eric Grynaviski, George Washington University; Giovanni Capoccia, University of Oxford; Karen Alter, Northwestern University; James Ashley Morrison, LSE)
> Friendly Fire: DA-RT: In this “friendly fire” scholarly exchange, a leading proponent of DA-RT policies debates a scholar and editor skeptical about the implementation of DA-RT.
> Contributors: Andrew Moravcsik, Princeton University; Jeffrey C. Isaac, Indiana University.
IHAP Newsletter 1.1 Summer 2015
What’s Inside?
> Roundtable: International History and Reconceptualizing Empire — How should scholars of international history and politics conceptualize empire, both in its historical forms and its contemporary manifestations? The contributions to this roundtable analyze the political development and historical legacies of the Ottoman Empire; the political economy of decolonization; and the wider need for serious a reconceptualization of “empire” as an analytical category.
> Contributors: Burak Kadercan, United States Naval War College; Jeff D. Colgan, Brown University; Ayşe Zarakol, University of Cambridge.