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Big Idea of the Day
This relatively easy-to-understand paragraph is from that article I mentioned below:
Civil wars are military contests where each side's military capacity shapes the type of military interaction and, therefore, the nature of the conflict. Both insurgent and counterinsurgent strategies vary accordingly, and yet their "lessons" are conditional on the prevailing technology of rebellion. For example, the combined experience of Iraq and Afghanistan has led the U.S. military to focus single mindedly on irregular war. However, the lessons of Afghanistan are not necessarily transferable to [a symmetric nonconventional] conflict such as the Somali one. Our analysis also implies that, as they consider peacekeeping and peace building operations, policy makers must be aware of the variation in technologies of rebellion, as well as the transformation of internal conflict after the end of the Cold War. For instance, neither conventional nor [symmetric nonconventional] civil wars correspond to the popular image of a quagmire associated with irregular wars, which have deterred international intervention in the past.
The question I would have for Kalyvas and Balcells would be the following: Yeah, this is all fine and good, but speaking in plain English, if the United States were to intervene in a conflict, might that external intervention change the conflict in unpredictable ways? Maybe it boosts the capacity of one party, and maybe a rival party (say, Iran) jumps in and boosts the capacity of another party. Maybe, before we know it, the conflict has morphed into a robust insurgency in which one actor is employing irregular means. And maybe policy-makers should internalize the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan lest they lead the U.S. military into another, ahem, quagmire. Because the war in Afghanistan, to use one example, is not one conflict that you can code just once in some database but rather a series of conflicts that has been fought using a variety of "technologies" from 1979 to 2010. I myself saw a very different war in 2002 than the one I saw in 2004. And I saw an altogether new war in 2009 in large part because an external actor (Pakistan, in this case) jumped into the conflict in the five years between my second and third stints to Afghanistan and boosted the heck out of the capacity of the insurgent actors.
Another thing: if you really think something is important for policy makers to understand, why the hell write about it using highly specialized vernacular in a journal no actual policy maker reads? Please tell me this APSR article will be followed up by an article in International Security or, even better, in a paper for a humble policy-oriented think tank.
None of these questions, by the way, should detract from a really excellent article with potentially important implications.
You have taken a very
You have taken a very anti-intellectual turn lately that I find off-putting and disappointing. Why is it the job of academics to put things in terms that policy makers will understand? Why is it not similarly the job of policy makers to read the cutting edge research? It seems that you are shifting the burden unnecessarily to one side and your increasingly frequent anti-quantitative, anti-"jargon" (please read Dan Drezner on your appeals to "plain English") cheap shots don't create a particularly enlightened image of a man that wants some honest dialogue.
Abu M: A few thoughts. 1)
Abu M:
A few thoughts.
1) You seem to be very interventionist-oriented with respect to the article's content, when I don't think that's the crux of the article. I don't think anyone would debate that intervention by one state fails (or at least, *might* fail) to change the nature of a conflict, be the participants low-capacity or high-capacity states. Transnational rebels - or alliances in high-intensity conflict - would seem to alter, if not the "technology" (and I don't think the common usage of the term is really what Kalyvas and Balcells mean, is it), the quantity if not the quality of material resources.
2) To me, the first takeaway from the article were the empirical findings regarding the nature of conflicts over time (e.g., pre- versus post-Cold War) and the way they contradicted (IIRC) previously accepted wisdom (e.g., Fearon and Laitin). The second, and in my opinion more interesting takeaway was the absolutely phenomenal Table 1, which I think introduced a very heuristically useful taxonomy.
3) What seemed strange to me was the terminology employed in the article. Again, they don't seem to be using the term as it is used in everyday usage. I have not seen "technology" used in this literature. I have seen "state capacity" (ibid, I think) and state strategy (IIRC) by Paul Staniland, in an article in Comparative Political Studies that is the first substantive (as opposed to review) article I've seen to challenge Kalyvas (and others).
4) Regarding a humble policy-oriented think tank (I'll leave IS alone for the moment), aren't you making a self-negating argument? You're aware of the article and you're bringing it to your readership. Aren't blogs a tool of information dissemination? And perhaps the quick bullet-point format that a blog perhaps imposes serves to discipline the type and amount of knowledge imparted. As for IS, obviously scholars have incentives to publish in the best journal they can, even though Kalyvas is tenured (I didn't check Balcells). But your mention of IS does imply you think there's a diffusion mechanism from the APSR to the IS (and from there to humble think tanks), does it not?
ADTS
From one Visitor to
From one Visitor to another.....7:13pm.
If a person spoke German, you would not try to converse in Russian. When I try to communicate with a person, I try to speak in their tongue. When you speak to a person from Tennessee, you speak Tennessean.
If you want to convince a policy maker that you have something meaningful to say, speak their language.
The person that can morph from one person to he next will be the most understood. It is a skill that some Politicians cannot seem to grasp and come across as being self-absorbed or condescending. Then their party gets booted out of the majority.
The trick is to take the time to understand and respect a person's point of view. You cannot communicate until that happens; it is the point of synchronization.
I have met some intellectual academics, which just cannot function outside a University.
If you took two people, one a pure academic the other a hillbilly and let them loose out in the middle of nowhere who do think would be able to function the best? Nature is the earth and Universities not occur naturally. We cannot live without nature, but Universities we can do without.
I took the time to understand, Andrew is communicating to me.
Buy the American Label.
Hey Mr. Exum, I couldn't
Hey Mr. Exum, I couldn't find your email address so I'm posting here. Hope this isn't a problem.
I just read this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/10/the-last-patrol/8266/
I (a computer nerd) thought it was really, really good. What are your thoughts, both on the writing and the situation as presented in article?
Visitor 7:13: (1) "You have
Visitor 7:13: (1) "You have taken a very anti-intellectual turn lately that I find off-putting and disappointing." Indeed, I am a very anti-intellectual reader of the APSR -- and the six or so other scholarly journals I regularly read. If there is one thing that I get regularly accused of as I renew my MESA/APSA/ISA/IISS memberships, it's my refusal to engage with the latest literature. (2) "Why is it the job of academics to put things in terms that policy makers will understand? Why is it not similarly the job of policy makers to read the cutting edge research?" Are you freaking serious? What planet do you live on? Is it reasonable to expect a policy maker, who might come to his job from a background in business or law or the military (and know a lot more than your average political scientist about all of those other relevant fields of study and practice), to be able to decipher the kind of research you need a graduate degree in political science or two semesters of statistics to understand? Similarly, do you think serious scholars turned policy makers like Anne-Marie Slaughter or Colin Kahl have the time to engage with the relevant literature in their fields while working 80 hours a week in the Pentagon or the Dept. of State?Chris M., I thought that was
Chris M., I thought that was a simply amazing piece of journalism. Great article.I think a relevant quote, by
I think a relevant quote, by Henry Kissinger, is that while working in policy (obviously, in his case, at rather high echelons), one is too busy consuming intellectual capital to produce any.
ADTS
In my line of work, I run
In my line of work, I run into this problem all the time. Academics chase money for research, and fault the industry to which their research ought to be relevant for not listening to them speak in their highly specialized language about issues they have not studied directly.
It's the same phenonenon, really, except there isn't much actual bloodshed involved in what I do.
Zathras (and others?): A
Zathras (and others?):
A sociologist, Mike Reay (currently at Swarthmore?), wrote a few working papers a *relatively* long time ago. (Google can't seem to find them per se, but he appears to have published formally, and I assume the content of the published articles is similar if not identical to the working papers.). The papers argued that non-academic economists don't use or need to use the work published in the discipline's leading journals. The work published in the journals is too abstract; what the economists learn in graduate school is enough for them to perform their jobs; they don't perceive a need to keep up with the state of the discipline.
ADTS
Before I commented on
Before I commented on 7:13
Now I comment on Mr. Resistance at 11:19
Is it reasonable to expect a policy maker, who might come to his job from a background in business or law or the military (and know a lot more than your average political scientist about all of those other relevant fields of study and practice), to be able to decipher the kind of research you need a graduate degree in political science or two semesters of statistics to understand?
If the policy maker is successful, then they are political scientists by application. If you can apply a trade, you understand the concepts. Book learning gets you a Unversity job, application gets you outside the womb.
I mean the Kalyvas piece
I mean the Kalyvas piece really isn't too recondite. I *do* expect a policy maker from whatever background, *IF* they are working in national security, to be able to understand this piece, and argue with it. This is not a grad seminar. But I mean, its just reading. I don't really care if they can take it down on stats (well bc, they cant). But reading research that is directly applicable to policy making, i mean, if *this* isnt what they should be doing, i mean?..... cmon.
what they should be able to do is try and ask questions where they dont get it. maybe learn something that they pretend to know.... i dont understand why people treat APSR etc as some sort of foreign language. i mean print it off and pick up a pencil and take notes.
Zathras.....there is hope
Zathras.....there is hope yet. Think we just agreed on something.
Industry just wants a solution, academics wants to explain it to them. All has to do with the time span given for communication to occur.
Here is the dilemma industry showers the academic with attention (research funds) and the academic starts to think they are meaningful. In reality, industry only wants the fruit of the relationship, not the chatter.
Put in common words, a friend of mine was debating with himself. He was adding up the cost of what it took to date and get a girl to bed. Then he exclaimed it is cheaper to just visit the house down the street with the red light on. To borrow from a cheap hotel, "My University leaves the light on".
Industry is not paying the academic's visits to the doctor, the taxpayer is. Benefits and the reoccuring costs of R&D were taken off the corporate spread sheet in the '90's.
One way to think about the
One way to think about the point of the article is that they do their thing, and others then take their work and bring it to the policy community. Which is what you are doing in some ways by promoting it. Both are good things, but I'm not sure it is always necessary for everyone to do everything. That being said, I would love to see them do something more policy-accessible.
Hey I'm not sure this is
Hey I'm not sure this is quite that complicated. You have some political scientists and some think tank people with political science training or interests who consume this stuff and then translate it into stuff potentially useful for policy folks if it is of use. Sure I'd like to see more political scientists interested in doing it themselves instead of relying on those political scientists with links to the policy community to do it for them, but as I have posted many times before on this blog, I think things are getting better in this regard.
Additionally, obviously someone in a serious policy job doesn't have time to fully consume the APSR - or IS or Foreign Affairs for that matter. I think the truth is that IS isn't any more useful to real world policy making than the APSR.
Finally, economics actually seems to function way more efficiently at all of this than political science. There are a variety of reasons I have discussed before, but crucial here is that the economists in government have all the training, knowledge, etc., that economists in academia have. They are more often top academics themselves. And while it is true they are probably not avidly consuming the AER while in government, they are a lot more likely to have written articles published in the AER or other top econ journals. They have all the stats knowledge, modeling knowledge, etc.
Now as I said, there are a variety of reasons why this is the case - my only point is that the field of economics is not a good one for trying to make the case, as someone did above, that academic knowledge/skills are irrelevant.
Good point about the
Good point about the escalation paradox, I share your concern on that measure, and with the notion that something as complicated as warfare can be so easily coded.
Another question I have is about the political/social goals of the participants and their relationship with the population. While I would agree that we are in a post-Maoist phase, and insurgencies are no longer conditioned on the support of the rural populace, I don't think that entirely removing the population from the equation is methodologically sound.
Finally, I was hoping you could comment on a question I have about the coding they used for different conflicts. The coding is based on the weapons used (i.e. heavy weapons and armor as opposed to light weapons). But is the presence of that weaponry enough, or should there be a further investigation of that variable, to incorporate the amount of that weapon present, how frequently it is used, and the amount of training/proficiency each force has? In other words, if a rebel group purchased 2 decrepit Soviet tanks, has no fuel or spare parts for them, and nobody who actually knows how to operate them, should they be categorized as possessing armor?
Despite those concerns, I agree with your overall assessment - fascinating paper, with lots of implications for the near future.
And while we're at it... It
And while we're at it...
It would be nice if, during the runup to the next imperialist invasion, that any language at all be used to actually convey truth to those who fund and man said invasion.
I find it absolutely stunning that massive lies, mistruths, and obfuscation can still be foisted on the American public by people such as David Broder at Wapo with minimum outrage by policy think tanks.
We know WaPo is the voice of America's wife - Israel - and what the wife says to do, we're supposed to do, but to advocate for war on Iran as a means to boost the economy should merit some sack-saving response from those experts who know better.
I know if Broder were to write an article tomorrow telling us that cancer, car accidents, and plane crashes are fantastic for the medical and morgue business, there would be a hell of a racket.
Scott Wedman: I'm largely in
Scott Wedman:
I'm largely in agreement with you, but...
"I think the truth is that IS isn't any more useful to real world policy making than the APSR. "
I *sort of* agree, but also think that since a lot of the articles "conclude with policy recommendations," those parts of the article could be skimmed quickly and easily.
ADTS
I think Andrew has a valid
I think Andrew has a valid point about clarity and simplicity in writing even in academic pieces. I will read the piece over the next few days but the abstract drove me bonkers; why use the term "system polarity" when they could have just as easily said "super power confrontation between the Soviets and US," at least i think that is what they meant.
Also, agree on the Atlantic piece. I thought it was superb, and sadly depressing as well. It presents the case that we are drifting in a tactical nightmare there. Reading it made me think of the tactical futility of trench warfare in world war I.
gian
COL Gentile: I think the use
COL Gentile:
I think the use of system polarity might be justified or, at least, explicable. What the authors are trying to do, I think, is bridge two subfields in political science. To give a lecture that may not be necessary, political science has four subfields. Civil war tends to fall within the comparative politics subfield, rather than the international relations subfield. I think what the authors are trying to do is bridge the subfields by incorporating the jargon and concepts of one - polarity as used in IR - and saying it applies to and impacts another - the civil wars analyzed in the article.
...But, of course, I could be wrong...
ADTS
Riffing off of Drezner
Riffing off of Drezner (http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/10/22/why_do_academics_sound...), I think one reason you see jargon like system polarity in journals such as IS or the APSR is that, especially in the case of the APSR, there are really, really strict word/page limits. And since 99% of the people who will read it know exactly what it means and it saves you space, people use the jargon.
Now when people either fail to write more accessible versions of policy-relevant stuff OR write that stuff in a jargon-filled way, that's obviously not a good thing.
However, it's arguably a good thing that there are places where academics can debate with each other and then take the best of those arguments to a more popular forum (of course, that presumes the system works well, but that's a story for another day).
So, when writing for a broader audience, jargon = bad. But when writing for a political science audience and when facing journal editors telling you to cut 2000 words and add additional analytical work to your article, jargon = helpful.
My point is just that while there is a lot of stuff one could criticize about the APSR and the writing certainly could be better/clearer, I think the use of phrases such as system polarity isn't part of the problem - or at least not a big part of the problem.
@ADTS Sure, a bunch of IS
@ADTS
Sure, a bunch of IS articles conclude with policy recommendations, but most are unworkable (e.g. the range of pro-isolationism articles) or not related to current policy debates. So I'm sure they are any more useful to policy makers trying to make a decision right. . . now.
@Gian: True.
@Gian: True.
(Breaking my self-imposed
(Breaking my self-imposed ban on writing on Abu M today)
Derrida: I had a great writing tutor in college who contributed a lot to my learning how to write. (The other biggest influence on my writing was a high school teacher who made us read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language," which should be required reading for all). The first person (the tutor) singled out Derrida who was deliberately and intentionally hard to read. I, fortunately, have never had to read him.
A tank company commander at Stanford? I'm no screenwriter, and I'm sure in all seriousness it was a great experience, but I could see that as a fish-out-of-water comedy just waiting to be produced.
I couldn't agree more that jargon should be avoided, along with unnecessary words, big words and long sentences (even if I violate these rules, including below). A thought, though: jargon to you isn't jargon to someone like Kalyvas; it is instead his lingua franca, and the most efficient way of communicating to his intended audiences. That might be especially so, in this case, since he is trying to appeal to the IR folks in *their* lingua franca.
Two notes of possible irony. First, the best exposition (did I just break my own rule(s)?) of multipolarity versus bipolarity is probably Mearsheimer's "Back to the Future" (I never made it all the way through his "Tragedy of Great Power Politics"). He is a USMA graduate! Second, the best, or perhaps most influential exposition of the last 40 years that established system polarity as the defining feature of international politics, Kenneth Waltz's "Theory of International Politics," is one of the most elegantly and superbly written books on a complicated topic (to say the least). He defines difficult topics like "structure" and "system" with one-clause sentences with small words and good analogies. It rightfully is a tour de force.
Best
ADTS
The Kalyvas and Balcells
The Kalyvas and Balcells article is a very solid piece of scholarship, but I'll admit that I'm at a loss as to what lessons policymakers should take from it.
1) That changes in the international system shape the dynamics of civil war? You would be hard-pressed to find a serious policy analyst that didn't already believe that,. The IC has been focusing on it for years (not just at the level of the Cold War, moreover, but at the level of the regional balances of power too).
2) That the relative balance of power between combatants affects warfighting styles? Has anyone ever seriously argued otherwise?
The article also highlights some interesting empirical characteristics of the three patterns of warfare that they identify. However, identification of these sorts of broad statistical trends is much less useful that many political scientists realize. Typically, a policy makers doesn't want to know "on average, globally, over the past X years, how long do SNC wars like Somalia last?" but rather "what are the immediate and medium-term consequences of backstopping increased AU military assistance to the TFG?"
Big idea day.. Very nice :)
Big idea day.. Very nice :)
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