Remember, Remember, the 5th of November

Today is Guy Fawkes Day, which I’m ok with ignoring, since he was 1. British and 2. possibly a terrorist.  But it did remind me of an entry I wrote for a blog I had before this one, We Are Publius.  I started it back while I was still involved in Citizens for Global Solutions because I wanted to write, because I specifically wanted to read the Federalist Papers and chronicle them, and because I thought it would be interesting to discuss federalism from a more… liberal perspective than the Federalist Society.  It was a pretty successful blog, at least in terms of my commitment to it, but it ended up being too narrow for my purposes, and I eventually switched to the EI.  Still, the work I did there, and with CGS, helped push me towards the work I’m doing now at Georgetown, and with D&S.com.  Maybe someday I’ll get back to it.

In the meantime, here’s the Guy Fawkes post.

New Blog, CCT 754, and Paper Abstract

I’m continuing to work on this idea for my CCT 754 paper about R2P.  The original question was how does the existence (and complete failure) of the R2P doctrine stymie the international discussion on conflict intervention? I still think that’s a good question, but after a thoughtful conversation with my Methods prof (chief blogger at DemocracyandSociety.com), I’ve started to expand the idea a little to looking at the creation and enforcement of international norms.  Barak also encouraged me to submit an abstract for the paper to a “Democrats, Dictators, and Demonstrators” symposium, so Friday night I wrote this:

Why are some norms established and effectively enforced and not others?  There has been a long evolution of human rights as a system of international norms, beginning with the abolitionists in the 18th and 19th centuries and the Geneva Convention in the mid 1800s.   More recent targets of human rights activists have been female genital mutilation (FGM), torture, and genocide.  The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) began working to create a new international norm to prevent genocide with the release of their 2001 report, A Responsibility to Protect (R2P).  Yet, despite admirable principles, an unprecedented moment of international solidarity and goodwill in the wake of September 11, 2001, and the support of the UN Secretariat and a coalition of dozens of international nongovernmental organizations, R2P has yet to be seriously invoked or acted upon.

Reasons for R2P’s failure include the lack of political will, lack of resources, inefficient or ineffective networks, and the well-established norms of national sovereignty and self-interest.  Yet obstructive  norms, and the lack of resources and access to power, etc, are not new problems, and were effectively overcome by the Abolitionists and supporters of the Geneva Convention.  Successful norms frame the issue in a way that actualizes state self-interest, and mobilize international support.    Using these case studies, this paper will examine the process of issue framing, actor mobilization and network utilization to answer the question: Given the domestic and international networks in which actors are embedded, how do we create effective norms and institutions?

The blog post for CCT 754 (that will follow) is an attempt to start thinking about this topic, and maybe build up an outline, since if accepted, my final paper will be due by Nov. 27, and I already have 35 pages about Uganda’s sector investment to write in the next two weeks.

Govt 541: Research Methods

Another class I really love is my Research Methods class. It is, more or less, a class on how to apply the scientific method to political research.  I’ve ready plenty of such research, but I’ve never actually attempted to present my own work in such a manner, so it’s actually an enlightening, and challenging, class.  Our assignment is to design a research proposal that could be submitted as a grant proposal, should we find such an opportunity.  Luckily, it is just the proposal, and we are not actually responsible for doing the required research or data analysis, because that would probably take up far more time than I will have while in grad school (or at least w out the income of a grant).  My proposal is to study government intervention into 4 sectors of the Ugandan economy, as outlined below:

Research Question:
What explains the variation in success of four products/sectors of the Ugandan economy?

Hypotheses:
Infrastructure and government investments favored one industry over the other.

Alternative Hypotheses:
•    Collapse or growth of world markets
•    Environmental conditions in Uganda
•    Political or conflict situations in Uganda and/or surrounding countries
•    Economy and infrastucture of neighbors

Dependent Variable:
Economic success within industry (possible measures include sustained growth, profitability, share of market, share of employment)

Explanatory Variables:
•    Transportation systems
•    Communications systems
•    Government or donor subsidies, tariffs and other protectionist measures
•    Relationships with neighbors (diplomatic or trade)

Cases: oil, coffee, cut flowers, tourism industries in Uganda

Research Method: Analysis of sectors, variation between and over time

Potential Problems:
•    Data availability – some sectors are only just now being rebuilt or built up
•    Identifying and controlling for alternative variables or hypotheses (culture, geography, history) – some control comes from limiting study to one country
•    Impact of regional development, infrastructure

This one pager and the accompanying presentation 2 weeks ago went very well and I got a lot of good suggestions and generally very positive feedback.  I’m considering actually doing some of the research for this (but only on one sector) as the paper for my African Development class, but I’m not sure yet.  I’ll continue to post the work I do here as it develops.

CCT 754 Paper Topic

It’s getting the time of the semester that profs start requesting paper topics be chosen.  For CCT 754, I have to actually post a brief intro/outline of my paper topic, and do so tonight, which means that I should probably actually chose a paper topic.  My current top contenders are:

1. A continuation of my previous post on R2P: how does the existence (and complete failure) of the R2P doctrine stymie the international discussion on conflict intervention?
2. Under which circumstances does technology democratize international relations, especially activism, but also diplomacy?

#1 seems like a fairly straightforward (and possibly easier topic), but since it is a networks class, I’ll probably have to look at the networks of military action and international diplomacy at a bilateral and also regional/international level (NATO, UN) and then of course historical/colonial ties and how those influence current events.

#2 is a more recent, and probably farther reaching question, and one that I definitely intend to pursue, but I’m thinking that I’ll write about #1 for this semester.  R2P is a subject I’ve been struggling w for a while, and it feels good to be motivated enough by the assignment to finally begin work on it again.

So there’s my paper topic.  Now to write an actual summary of it for class….

CCTP 754

One of my favorite classes this semester is CCTP 754, Networks of International Development.  It’s not the only class I have that’s outside the government department (so is my African Development class), but it is the class furthest outside my area of expertise.  All of the other students are Comm, Culture and Tech (CCT) students so most of the time, we don’t even have the same vocabulary or frames of reference.  I think this serves to make the learning much more obvious and immediate (they might know about network theory, but I’ve actually already read two of the books on the syllabus).

The prof requires that we write a weekly blog post on a topic she’s chosen.  These topics are inspired by the reading or class discussion, but I enjoy them because she gives us sufficient freedom to explore subjects outside the class material (and topics I would likely never think to write of here).  Of the 3 posts I’ve written so far, 2 have been on IR topics (East African Custom Market and R2P) but one was about human evolution.

I’m still settling into my new schedule as a student so blogging more than once a week is probably still beyond my abilities at the moment, altho I hope that changes.  In the meantime, the CCTP blog is hidden behind Blackboard, so I promised a few people I would post my entries.  Here is the first one, with the rest to follow.

August and September and Beyond

I’ve spent July, August and September 1. moving, 2. leaving my job and going on vacation and 3. starting grad school at Georgetown University where I 4. and building this blog for my program.  Needless to say, this has kept me pretty busy, especially since it’s been forever since I’ve be on a student schedule, which requires a completely different level of discipline than work and 1-2 nonprofits do.  I’m not settling in as quickly as I’d like, and my classes (I’m taking 4) are overall somewhat more difficult than I expected (again, being disciplined (or not being, rather)) but I’m getting there. I also haven’t had reliable internet (we just upgraded our router, so hopefully) and we’re still doing Ikea runs every weekend in an attempt to put this place together before our October housewarming party.  But I will start blogging again, mostly because I have to.

I have the option to post to DemocracyandSociety.com as I’d like, and I probably will once I get more confident in world affairs again, but in the meantime, my Networks and International Development class (easily my favorite class, but that’s another post), requires a blog post every week on a topic related to that week’s reading.  That blog is protected, but my better posts will find their way over here.  I’ll also get back into reading AllAfrica.com as part of my weekly reading for my African Development class.  In other words, my almost complete avoidance of the news and blogging begun last year in August is finally coming to a (slightly forced) end.  I’m glad this is the case, because I really did miss it, but couldn’t quite find the time or motivation to get back into the habit.  Blogging, even on a weekly, rather than daily, schedule, is a time-consuming process that doesn’t have nearly the same immediate appeal as the pub or napping or Project Runway, even as the longer-term benefits can (hopefully) be more substantive.

That’s probably all I’m going to say for now since I still also need to overcome my reversion to extreme introversion and also need to stop procrastinating on my class blog post by doing everything else.

Thursday Cartoons Have an Itch to Scratch

In honor of the proposal I’m working on. 

Not at all political, except that many people would not be amused to find out how I feel about their writing (in)abilities. 

“We believe that in a former life she was an editor.”