When I announced last week that I would delete my Twitter account shortly, I did it with the expectation that Twitter would – in the long run – devolve into an alt-right shadow of itself. Filled with FrEe SpEeCh advocates who are very concerned about their god-given right to shout racial slurs, literal neo-Nazis, as well as the remains of the more respectable and/or unpolitical Twitterati who haven’t noticed the change or don’t care about it. Basically, a Parler with a broader user base and an inherited veneer of respectability, however long it may last. Well, I am the first…
PD Dr. Daniel Lambach
Outer space is quickly losing its „niche“ reputation in political science and international relations. When talking to colleagues there seems to be a greater awareness and appreciation of the importance of outer space for terrestrial global politics. This is also reflected in publication trends, as the figure below indicates. It shows the number of publications containing the string „outer space“ from the Social Sciences Citation Index, specifically from the Political Sciences, International Relations, and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences categories. While 2019 was a bit of an outlier, there is still a clear increase in the number of publications over this 25-year…
The IR Section of the German Association for Political Science has organized a conference which will take place on 11-12 November 2022 – next week – in Hamburg. The theme of the conference is the so-called „Zeitenwende“, a turning point in international politics occasioned by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. How will/should German IR deal with the new realities of European and global insecurity? I will give a presentation how a focus on space can facilitate conversations among different theoretical approaches as well as between IR and other disciplines. This draws on previous work how we can theorize space in…
I seem to have an unstoppable logorrhea that this blog must satiate now that I’m off Twitter. Don’t get used to it, the posting frequency will certainly drop over time. But right now, I want to try a mixture of open science and personal note-taking. As indicated in yesterday’s post, I participated in a panel discussion on the governance of space debris. From the discussion, I have several thoughts stuck in my head that I want to write down here to get rid of them for the moment while preserving them in some fashion, so I can refer back to…
Space debris is a growing impediment to the sustainable use of low-earth orbit. From a political economy perspective, it is a straightforward problem of managing a common-pool resources in areas beyond national jurisdiction. However, while the problem is well-known, the current system of outer space governance is badly equipped to come up with workable solutions. In a working paper, Luca Wesel and I apply insights from Elinor Ostrom’s work on the commons and polycentric governance to the space debris problem. Being political scientists, we couldn’t help but focus on the political obstacles rather than the technical, economic, and legal ones…
I am getting off Twitter after eight years. This is not some noble act of resistance but being part of Elon Musk’s magical mystery agora of free speech just makes my skin crawl. Personally, the choice was easy. Professionally, it was more difficult. Twitter is currently the most important channel for communication among scientists and for public-facing work. I have „met“ many colleagues there for the first time and several opportunities have arisen from being visible and active on Twitter. Hence, my first thought was: „Where do I go then?“ I am already on LinkedIn, ResearchGate and YouTube. Visual social…