Monday, October 15, 2012

Announcements

As anyone who was paying attention will have noticed, I've stopped recording my lectures.  I don't think they were coming out very well, and they take a lot of time to record.  Maybe I'll try again someday.

In other news, I've joined the Duck of Minerva as a guest contributor.  I'll be posting there once a week or so.  My plan is to post anything of broader interest to the Duck, leaving this site for more technical material.  I have a few new "breaking down [x]" posts planned that will go here, for example.  Suggestions or requests welcome.
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10 comments:

  1. Good to see you over at the DofMinerva - a well, well, well deserved recognition.... Do you mind if I ask you something completly unrelated to, well, pretty much anything you've written about recently?
    It's IR related, just specifically on the Israeli/US relationship? (I'm interested on how you would approach an analysis of it, as your methodological proclivities are quite differen't than mine)

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    1. Thank you for the kind words, Ronan.

      I'd be happy to share my thoughts. Did you have a specific question in mind? Or did you just mean how do I think about the relationship in general?

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    2. Thanks for the response!

      Just to give some context, it’s a potential PhD proposal (in England) that I’m trying to think through, but since I’m writing it up myself etc I’m struggling for coherence at the moment, and trying to canvas a broad range of opinions. I like the idea of approaching it as a story of entrepreneurs and institutions, (were policy making institutions ‘captured’ by specific actors and ideas in the last few decades that can explain the pro-Israel bias of US policy – I know that’s a controversial premise so feel free to disagree with it) but I’m looking for other ways that I might approach analysing the alliance.

      I’d be interested in your take as I remembered you writing this short post a year ago

      http://fparena.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/gentiles-behind-israel-lobby.html

      Have I given you enough info to riff of? I know this is very basic so far, but I think it’s worth keeping it simple at first so my own misconceptions/simplifications don’t influence your response : )

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    3. I think the "entrepreneurs and institutions" frame makes sense.

      FWIW, I don't know that it's particularly controversial to say that the US is biased in favor of Israel -- I think what's controversial is whether that's a distortion that can only be explained by domestic political influences, and whether there is such a thing as the "Israel Lobby" of the form envisioned by Walt and Mearsheimer. That is, my sense is that most of the negative reaction to their book concerned the way they went about explaining the bias, not the fact that they claimed that there is a bias.

      I think some the big questions here are:

      Who exactly are the entrepreneurs? How has the structure of support for Israel changed in the last few decades?

      (Why) is the Israel Lobby so much more successful than other ethnic/foreign lobbies? Can we expect similar lobbies to appear in the future on behalf of India or other countries?

      Here are some articles you might find useful:

      http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-8594.2008.00084.x/full

      http://ijpor.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/01/27/ijpor.edr053.short

      http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-8594.2008.00070.x/full

      I don't know if any of that is helpful or not, but that's my initial reaction.

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    4. That's very helpful, thanks. I'm glad the "entrepreneurs and institutions" framing makes some sort of sense.
      Those links are great aswell!

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    5. My pleasure. Glad to help out.

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  2. 1) Phil, you'll make a good addition to DofM. (I'm anticipating some exchanges betw you and ... oh, PTJ maybe? ;) or some others there.)

    2) To R. Fitzgerald -- my unasked-for and rather obvious 2 cents on US/Israel: look at the history of the alliance in some detail as you are formulating yr theoretical apparatus re entrepreneurs/institutions (or whatever).

    Terms like 'policy capture', 'distortion', 'bias' may sometimes obscure as much as they reveal...

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    1. Thanks, LFC. I'm looking forward to it, and I hope it does lead to some interesting exchanges.

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    2. Hi LFC, I'm a regular reader of your blog do your advice is always welcome. Yeah that seems to be where I am at the moment,developing a more sophisticated perspective on the alliance so I can see exactly how relevant my proposition is..I'm still a bit of, but have time, which is handy

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  3. Phil: Am glad to know you'll be posting on DoM and looking forward to it. They sorely need methodological diversity. ;)

    Mosied over to DoM briefly and what do you know? A butter-for-bombs argument.

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