Poliheuristic Theory And Performativity: More Interesting Than They Sound (Liveblogging ISA)

I heard about two concepts for the first time at a panel at the now complete ISA convention: Poliheuristic Theory and Performativity. I thought that both ideas were worth exploring further.

Poliheuristic Theory is apparently a "theory of foreign policy decision making posits a two-stage process wherein the decision maker first employs a noncompensatory decision rule to eliminate politically unacceptable alternatives and then employs a (perhaps) traditional decision procedure to select from the remaining set of acceptable alternatives. (Note: See link above for source)" Everyone at the panel I attended insisted that the theory was descriptive rather than prescriptive which means that it is not very useful for intel analysis. Listening to the speakers, though, I thought that maybe there was something there. Anyway, worth further exploration.

Performativity (as I understand it and my understanding may well be flawed...) is the idea that people can begin to act in accordance with a theory, whether or not the facts and research that underlie the theory are correct or not.

Both concepts were used by Uri Shwed in his paper on the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon. I found the presentation about the paper interesting (very intel-like) but the panel's discussant seemed to think the evidence was too circumstantial. If you are interested in that conflict or either of the two concepts above, you will have to contact Dr. Shwed as the paper is not in the Convention's archive.

Interesting Resource: Keesing's World News Archive (Liveblogging ISA)

I stopped by the Keesing's booth at ISA yesterday and was fascinated by the potential of their service. I was not familiar with it previously but it seems to be pretty well represented here. Apparently they have been authenticating and summarizing news since 1931. They offer their service, which includes current news summaries and their archive, to institutions at what appeared to me, at least, to be a reasonable price.

I have just glanced at the website and am already impressed with the free timeline service (you can see an example here). I have also signed up for a free trial (only offered here at the conference, apparently) and will post a note about it later. Has anyone out there had any previous experience with the service?

Good Resource: International Center On Nonviolent Conflict (Liveblogging ISA)

With John McCain's recent speech on foreign policy recognizing the importance of allies and non-military strategies, it is virtually certain that the next president of the US (Clinton and Obama are already on the record with similar statements) will focus less on military strategies for protecting and advancing US national interests and more on diplomatic and other nonviolent strategies. With this thought in mind, it was more than serendipitous -- almost "way cool" -- to bump into the International Center On Nonviolent Conflict booth at ISA (See picture below).

The ICNC "is an independent, non-profit, educational foundation that develops and encourages the study and use of civilian-based, nonmilitary strategies to establish and defend human rights, democracy and justice worldwide." Good stuff, that, and we could use a bit more of it.

What is even better is that they have a number of films and resources that they are happy to send people who request them (Note: I was told by the booth attendant that they were free for the asking but I noted that there are prices -- very reasonable prices, but prices nonetheless -- on the ordering website. I may have gotten confused. Maybe they are only free to attendees of the conference. I certainly got my copies free. I will go back and double check this tomorrow or maybe the ICNC guys can post a comment to clarify).

I picked up two of the movies, Bringing Down a Dictator and A Force More Powerful. I have seen bits of Bringing Down A Dictator about the last days of the Milosevic regime and, having lived through some of that myself, can say that it is pretty good. I intend to watch A Force More Powerful when I get back to Mercyhurst and will blog about it later but my expectation is that it is equally good.

After I watch the movie, I am looking forward to playing the game! That's right, they have even developed a video game based on the movie and book, A Force More Powerful. They were down to their last copy and they told me they would have to send me one. In the meantime I will have to make do with reading the great reviews the game has earned.

International Relations A Growth Discipline In Brazil (Liveblogging ISA)

I attended an interesting panel this morning on the using simulations in the classroom (more on that in the next post) but heard something about the growth of International Relations (IR) programs in Brazil that I thought was very interesting.

Apparently IR is a booming industry in Brazil. In Rio alone the number of colleges and universities offering programs has grown from 1 in the 90's to 7 today. My first instinct was that this was due to Brazil's growing sense of importance on the world stage and that the increased interest in IR by its young people was a manifestation of this self-awareness.

Wrong.

According to the two Brazilian professors (from the Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio De Janeiro) who spoke, Marcelo Valenca and Manoela Souza, the main reason for the increased interest was 9/11! Marcelo spoke of standing in front of a tiny TV with, as he described it, several thousand young students watching the attack on the twin towers and then, two years later, an explosion of programs in International Relations. Both professors also explained that there was a semantics issue as well and that "International Relations" sounds better in Portuguese than some of the alternatives. Finally, and most interesting to me, was the point (made by Manoela, I think) that even though the students were drawn to IR by 9/11, they stayed because of the world of ideas that the curriculum opened up to them.

Made It To San Francisco! (Liveblogging ISA)

I made it in this morning to the ISA Convention in San Francisco. Like last year (and every year, I suppose), it is huge. With 1100 panels and 5000 individuals on the program, the conference guide is like a telephone book (376 pages long. See the picture below).


Josh Peterson and Rachel Kesselman from Mercyhurst gave outstanding presentations this afternoon. While clearly not everyone agreed with their conclusions, I think everyone respected the research and the genuine contributions Josh and Rachel have made to the discipline. For details about the content see yesterday's post.

Off To The International Studies Association Meeting!

I am eagerly awaiting my flight to the ISA Conference out in San Francisco (nothing like a 0500 departure followed by a long layover in Detroit before taking a 5 hour flight to the west coast...). My students get time off for good behavior and I get to present my paper on "A Wiki Is Like A Room..." (Saturday, 1545 if you are attending).

Two of my former students (and thesis advisees) will also be presenting. Both have done some excellent research that is well worth hearing about. Josh Peterson did a good bit of research to determine what were the appropriate elements of analytic confidence for intelligence and then ran an experiment to test his hypotheses. Rachel Kesselman did a multi-decade content analysis of the Key Judgments from dozens of NIEs to determine if there were significant changes in the ways the NIC has been articulating its intelligence judgments over time. Both papers are available in the paper archive at the ISA Conference but they really don't do the theses (or the research) justice. If you are interested in what you see in the papers or in their presentations (Thursday, 1545 for both), do not hesitate to contact them directly.

I will be blogging again once I get to the conference. Until then I will leave you with this Jonathan Coulton song that just barely begins to capture the unspeakable horror that is modern air travel, Skymall:

Live Blogging The ISA Conference...

I will be out at the International Studies Association Convention in San Francisco most of next week. Many readers of this blog will be there as well but for those of you who can't make it, I intend to blog from the conference and I am looking for your input on what I should be blogging about.

There are a gazillion presentations at the ISA conference each year (You can download the full program here) but I will be focusing first on the panels in the Intelligence Studies Section (click on the document embedded below for a complete list of the ISS panels -- Thanks to Steve Marrin for forwarding!).

I don't get out to San Francisco until late Thursday of next week and I want to sit in on the 1545 presentations by my grad students, Josh Peterson and Rachel Kesselman (Josh has done some absolutely outstanding empirical research on the legitimate elements of analytic confidence and Rachel has done some first-rate work on identifying and understanding changes in the way words of estimative probability have been used in National Intelligence Estimates from the 1950's to the present).

All day Friday and most of Saturday, though, I am free to sit in on whatever you, dear readers, want me to sit in on (Saturday at 1545 I am presenting the final version of "A Wiki Is Like A Room...". That presentation is clearly going to be dwarfed, though, by the all-star panel of experts on global disease and analysis. If you have an early flight out, you might want to re-think it).

So, let me know (either in an e-mail or in a comment to this post) what you want me to go see. I will be happy to summarize what I hear about intelligence studies or in other panels and ask what questions you want me to ask. Just let me know!