Merging Theory and Practice...
The Institute is dedicated to the proposition that the scholarly study of international relations can contribute to the actual practice of international relations. Too often, however, it does not. A joint venture by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Wendy and Emery Reves Center for International Studies, the Institute has spawned a range of collaborative research projects and interdisciplinary seminars that engage students and faculty at William & Mary with other leading scholars and practitioners in the field. More about the Institute »
Institute News and Events
Homecoming 2009 Reception
Friday, Oct. 23, 2008 4:00-5:30 p.m. | Reves Room/Patio, Wendy and Emory Reves Center for International Studies, College of W&M
All internationally-oriented alumni, students, and faculty are cordially invited to a reception during the 2009 Homecoming weekend co-hosted by the The Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations, the Reves Center, and the International Relations and Global Studies programs. The reception will provide a great opportunity to see old friends and professors and to meet current students who are interested in international careers. We hope to see you all on October 23rd!
For more information on Homecoming weekend check out the Alumni Homecoming Website.
Institute Welcomes Professor G. John Ikenberry
October 4, 2009 | The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA
Last week John Ikenberry, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, visited William and Mary to deliver several talks to William and Mary faculty and students and the Williamsburg community. Ikenberry is a renowned scholar of international relations and an author of many influential books in the field of international relations including After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars which won the 2002 Schroeder-Jervis Award presented by the American Political Science Association for the best book in international history and politics each year. Ikenberry also has extensive experience in the policy world holding posts at the State Department (Policy Planning staff) from 1991-92 and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Senior Associate) from 1992-93. Ikenberry has also been a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution (1997-2002). He drew from both his policy and academic experience to deliver a public talk Thursday night at the Williamsburg Public Library entitled "Is the global system in crisis?" On Friday, Ikenberry had breakfast with a group of William and Mary students to answer their questions on careers in academia and share his own experience. Later Ikenberry had lunch with a group at the Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations to review a chapter in his upcoming book, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American System.
PLAID Holds Data-Vetting Workshop
September 17-18, 2009 | Stimson Center, Washington, DC
Last week, the PLAID project hosted a successful data-vetting workshop at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, DC. Researchers and development practitioners from the U.S., Europe, and Africa provided the PLAID team with feedback on data quality in a beta version of the PLAID database. Further, the PLAID team demonstrated a preview version of what will soon be the public interface of the PLAID database. Several prominent scholars presented research based on the PLAID dataset. UVA’s David Leblang presented a paper entitled, “Knockin' on Heaven's Door: International Aid Flows and the Demand for Asylum,” Georgetown’s James Vreeland presented a paper entitled, “Buying influence at the IMF,” and Duke’s Sarah Bermeo presented a paper entitled, “The Curse of Aid? Re-Examining the Impact of Aid on Regime Change.” Stu Hamilton, of William and Mary’s Center for Geospatial Analysis, provided workshop participants with a taste of the sort of data visualizations that PLAID data can be used to produce (his presentation is available for download here). Hamilton compiled a number of these visuals into a time-lapse video:
Also during the conference, PLAID announced that the PLAID database will soon merge with Development Gateway's AiDA database to form a new database and website called the AidData portal. The Development Gateway website has more details on the merger. PLAID researchers at William and Mary, Brigham Young University, and Development Gateway are now working to address the issues raised by workshop participants and are eagerly anticipating the public launch of the database in March 2010.
Iraq Moving Forward: Threats to its Sovereignty, Prospects for its Future Role in the Middle East
By Charles W. Dunne; Edited by Meghan L. O'Sullivan; Series Editor Mitchell B. Reiss
Tenuous internal conditions—complicated by difficult relationships with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Syria—pose the greatest challenges to Iraq's future. So found a new report authored by Charles W. Dunne, former adviser to the Director for Strategic Plans and Policy at the Joint Staff in the Pentagon, and Director for Iraq at the National Security Council from 2005-2007, and edited by Meghan L. O'Sullivan, former Special Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan under President George W. Bush. Download
One Discipline or Many? 2008 TRIP Survey of International Relations Faculty in Ten Countries
By Richard Jordan, Daniel Maliniak, Amy Oakes, Susan Peterson, and Michael Tierney
To what extent is there national variation in how scholars teach IR, think about the discipline, view their role in the policy process, and approach critical contemporary foreign policy debates? Conversely, to what extent is there a single-perhaps American-driven-IR discipline? To begin to answer these questions, the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) project has conducted the first cross-national survey of IR faculty in ten countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States. This report provides descriptive statistics and top line results for all 90 questions asked on the 2008 survey. Download | Marc Lynch Blog | Daniel Drezner's Blog | Duck of Minerva Blog | Think Progress
Foreign Policy: Inside the Ivory Tower 2009
By Daniel Maliniak, Amy Oakes, Susan Peterson, and Michael Tierney
To what extent is there national variation in how scholars teach IR, think about the discipline,view their role in the policy process, and approach critical contemporary foreign policy debates? Conversely, to what extent is there a single-perhaps American-driven-IR discipline? To begin to answer these questions, the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) project has conducted the first cross-national survey of IR faculty in ten countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States. This report provides descriptive statistics and top line results for all 90 questions asked on the 2008 survey. Read More.
Institute Welcomes Peter Gourevitch
Thursday, Frebruary 26, 2009 | "The Great Economic Meltdown of 2008: Implications for the U.S. and the World"
Peter Gourevitch, Professor of Political Science at the University of California San Diego, visited the Institute Thursday to meet with students before giving a campus wide talk on the implications of the current economic crisis. Gourevitch is a specialist in political economy with a particular focus on international trade and economic globalization, trade disputes, regulatory systems, and corporate governance.
In his campus wide talk, Gourevitch gave his answer to the question: How does the current global crisis in the economy resemble earlier economic shocks, and what can we learn from those other episodes about issues that face U.S. and world policy makers? To Gourevitch, several themes appear striking: the interaction of "private bonding" arrangements and government regulation in shaping the trust that underlies economic life; the pattern of cycles vs. sequences in explaining how countries converge or diverge in what they do; the relationship between economic shock and political choices; the autonomy of the state; the role of ideology in shaping economic policy outcomes; the interaction of globalization and domestic politics.
The Virginia Gazette, "Enviro-activists"
February 21, 2009 | Opinion by Frank Shatz
“There was a time when the United States led the way on international environmental cooperation,” writes Maria Ivanova in the prestigious academic journal SAIS Review, published by John Hopkins University Press. (...) In the article, co-authored with Daniel C. Esty, an environmental law professor, Ivanova describes the U.S. effort that was instrumental in launching the U.N. Environmental Program in 1972. President Richard Nixon pledged to contribute 40% of the $100 million that initially capitalized the environment fund." Read More.
PLAID on the Cover of Environment Magazine
January/February 2009 | "Has Foreign Aid Been Greened" By J. Timmons Roberts, Bradley Parks, Michael Tierney, and Robert Hicks
Since the first major international conference on environment and development in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972, environmentalists, voters, and policymakers in the developed world have faced a vexing dilemma: with some of the richest stores of biodiversity, natural resources, and carbon located in developing countries, the greatest potential for damage to the global environment resides in places outside the sovereign control of the countries most able, financially speaking, to prevent it...
Read More | PLAID Project | PDF Version
Task Force Issues Report on Iraqi Interior Ministry
Friday, November 14, 2008 | Report Assesses Reform Efforts in Iraqi Government 
A task force of U.S. security experts, working with the full cooperation of the Ministry of Interior (MOI) in Iraq, has released its report assessing reform efforts to reduce sectarianism and corruption in the Ministry. Its final report is posted below in both English and Arabic. The task force was led by Matt Sherman, who lectured at William and Mary last year and recently concluded two years of U.S. government service in Iraq. The report was co-authored by Roger Carstens, a retired Army Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel who served as an advisor to the Iraqi National Counter Terror Force in Baghdad, Iraq. Carstens is now a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, DC. The report was edited by Ambassador Mitchell Reiss, Diplomat in Residence at the College of William and Mary. Reiss previously served as Director of Policy Planning in the U.S. State Department and U.S. Special Envoy to Northern Ireland.
Read the Report in English | Read the Report in Arabic | Read Related Article in the New York Times
PLAID 2.0 Beta to Launch Early 2010
Friday, October 2, 2008 | Updated Version of the Development Finance Data Available to Select Users in Spring 2010
The PLAID team is pleased to announce that the latest version of their development finance dataset should be ready for preliminary launch early next year. Following strategy meetings in the UK with their aidinfo partners at Development Initiatives and the Henry L. Stimson Center, as well as input from international and non-governmental organizations and think tanks like the World Bank, OECD, IIED, Oxfam, ODI, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, PLAID returned to the US to continue developing the next generation of development finance information sharing. The updated dataset will include data through 2007, a more refined project coding scheme, and vast increase in the number of included aid donors. Following the release of the beta, a revised version of PLAID 2.0 will be launched following a data quality conference in Oxford in 2010.
Previous Institute News and Events
Michael Woolcock Visits the Institute
Monday, October 20, 2008 | Development Scholar Shares His Experience with Students
Students and faculty at the Institute had the opportunity to meet with
Michael Woolcock on Monday to discuss both his work and the
development world more broadly. Woolcock, who works for both the
University of Manchester and the World Bank's poverty alleviation
team, was visiting the College to give a public lecture on poverty
elimination and development fads of the past 40 years. During his
informal lunch at the Institute's offices, he spoke of his efforts to
bring a social perspective to the typically economics-focused field of
development aid. He then opened the floor to questions from students,
which ranged from his work on specific projects to applying to
graduate school programs and jobs with a development aid focus.
PLAID Receives Nearly $2 Million in Funding
Friday, September 19, 2008 | PLAID Receives Grants from Gates and Hewlett Foundations
An interdisciplinary program dedicated to offering detailed, accessible information on the flow of international aid will receive some aid of its own in the form of nearly $2 million in grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Oversees Development Institute Hosts PLAID Project for Discussion of Greening Aid?
Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2008 1:00-2:15 p.m. | 111 Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7JD
The Oversees Development Institute and the Oxford University Press hosted a discussion of the PLAID project's new book Greening Aid? Understanding Environmental Assistance to Developing Countries . The discussion featured co-authors J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks. Other discussants included Camilla Toulmin, Director of the International Institute for Environment and Development, and Seán Doolan, Environmental Advisor for the Africa Division of the Department for International Development in the United Kingdom. The discussion was chaired by Neil Bird, a Research Fellow at the Forests, Environment, and Climate Change Program at ODI.
Tor read about and listen to audio from the event click here. View the event slides here.
Tim Kaine Meets PLAID Faculty and Students
Thursday, August 21, 2008 | VA Governor Receives Briefing During Tour of William and Mary
Virginia governor Tim Kaine was briefed by four members of the PLAID project as part of a visit to the College of William and Mary. Economics professor and PLAID researcher Rob Hicks, accompanied by students Dina Abdel-Fattah, Tommy Jones, and Christian Peratsakis, were one of three college endeavors presented to the governor during his tour of the Integrated Science Center on Wednesday.
Governor Kaine, who has previous experience with development work in Central America, was reportedly very interested in the project and asked a number of questions before being briefed on other topics.
Wilson Center Hosts PLAID Project for Discussion of Greening Aid?
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The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Environmental Change and Security Program and the World Resources Institute hosted a discussion of the PLAID project's new book, Greening Aid. The discussion featured co-authors J. Timmons Roberts, Michael J. Tierney, and Bradley C. Parks. The event also featured comments from Robert Goodland, former Environmental Advisor at the World Bank and opening remarks were provided by Manish Bapna, Executive Vice President and Managing Director, World Resources Institute.
Watch the video of this event or view the power point slides.
Institute-Sponsored Speaker Professor John Mearsheimer Draws Record Audience
Monday, April 7, 2008 | Eminent Scholar Speaks to Hundreds on U.S. Middle East Policy
Named one of the most influential international relations scholars of the last 20 years by the TRIP survey, John J. Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, gave a public lecture at the Institute on Monday, April 7th. The talk, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Middle East Policy" drew a crowd of over 600 students, faculty, and community members. The public talk followed smaller lectures to William and Mary students and faculty targeted at a diverse array of current issues in international politics.
Professor Mearsheimer, one of the premier international relations scholars in the United States today, has published widely on security issues, international relations theory, and contemporary international affairs in both academic journals and popular magazines. The most recent of his four books, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (with Stephen M. Walt, 2007), sparked heated debate within both the academy and the popular press about the complex relationship between the United States and Israel during the post-911 era.
Inside the Ivory Tower in Foreign Policy
By Daniel Maliniak, Amy Oakes, Susan Peterson, and Michael J. Tierney
Professors of international relations shape future policy debates and mold the next generation of leaders. So who are these dons of diplomacy, and what do they believe? In the most comprehensive survey of its kind, we unlock the door to the academy, examining what these scholars write and think about international politics, and what they are teaching tomorrow’s leaders. The view from the academy allows scholars to reflect dispassionately on vexing foreign-policy problems, discern underlying patterns in state behavior, anticipate future threats, and forecast the consequences of different policy options. Read More | TRIP Project
New Book: Greening Aid? Understanding the Environmental Impact of Development Assistance
By Robert L. Hicks, Bradley C. Parks, J. Timmons Roberts, Michael J. Tierney
Every year, billions of dollars of environmental aid flow from the rich governments of the North to the poor governments of the South. Why do donors provide this aid? What do they seek to achieve? How effective is the aid given? And does it always go to the places of greatest environmental need?
All of these questions and many more are addressed in this groundbreaking text, which is based on the authors' work compiling the most comprehensive dataset of foreign aid ever assembled. Order Now | PLAID Project
Coming Soon From the Institute...
Nuclear Rhetoric Project, headed by Amy Oakes.
Last Updated: November 2, 2009