Archive
Essay
American Influence: Ireland Must Focus on Economic Security as Arena of Vulnerability
After decades of neglect, Ireland is finally debating national security. Unfortunately, we don’t just need to catch up with the rest of the world, but ...
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Essay
Behold the AI shoggoth – with Cosma Shalizi
Artificial intelligence is a familiar-looking monster The academics argue that large language models have much older cousins in markets and bureaucracies An internet meme keeps on ...
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Academic Article
Analytical Democracy: A Microfoundational Approach – with Hugo Mercier and Melissa Schwartzberg
Henry Farrell, Hugo Mercier and Melissa Schwartzberg (2023), “Analytical Democracy: A Microfoundational Approach,” American Political Science Review. 117,2:767-772. A prominent and publicly influential literature challenges ...
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Essay
How Artificial Intelligence Can Aid Democracy – with Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders
There’s good reason to fear that A.I. systems like ChatGPT and GPT4 will harm democracy. Public debate may be overwhelmed by industrial quantities of autogenerated ...
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Essay
The New Libertarian Elitists – with Hugo Mercier and Melissa Schwartzberg
What’s behind the dangerous new notion that democracy should be left to the well-educated. It’s been a rough ten years for democracy. It isn’t just ...
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Academic Article
Reducing the Transactional Value of Identity & Race – with Margaret Levi
Grieve Chelwa, Darrick Hamilton, and Avi Green explain how existing accounts of capitalism systematically neglect racial identity group stratification. Their approach points to an important ...
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Essay
El Comercio como Arma: Europa entre Estados Unidos y China
Estados Unidos ha bloqueado la exportación de semiconductores sofisticados a China. Esto demuestra cómo ha cambiado fundamentalmente su actitud hacia el comercio. Hace una década, ...
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Essay
Tornado Cash Is Not Free Speech. It’s a Golem – with Bruce Schneier
In August, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned the cryptocurrency platform Tornado Cash, a virtual currency “mixer” designed to make it ...
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Essay
Spirals of Delusion: How AI Distorts Decision-Making and Makes Dictators More Dangerous – with Abraham Newman and Jeremy Wallace
In policy circles, discussions about artificial intelligence invariably pit China against the United States in a race for technological supremacy. If the key resource is ...
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Academic ArticleEssay
Weak Links in Finance and Supply Chains are Easily Weaponized – with Abraham Newman
Russian sanctions highlight how network analysis is urgently needed to find and protect vulnerable parts of the global economy. When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 ...
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Essay
The U.S. Is the Only Sanctions Superpower. It Must Use That Power Wisely. – with Abraham Newman
For years, many believed that a world of global economic networks and interdependence — countries intimately connected via supply chains and finances — made war ...
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Essay
The Modern History of Economic Sanctions
Nicholas Mulder’s new book, “The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War,” remakes debates over European history between the two ...
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Essay
Joe Biden’s Foreign Foray is All About Shoring Up Democracy – In the US
During his first trip abroad as US president last week, Joe Biden kept telling Europe that “the US is back”. Before the G7 meeting, Biden ...
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Interview
Interview with Sean Carroll on “Democracy as a Problem-Solving Mechanism”, Mindscape
Sean Carroll’s Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas, Episode 148 | Henry Farrell on Democracy as a Problem-Solving Mechanism Democracy posits the radical ...
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Essay
Rechanneling Beliefs: How Information Flows Help or Hinder Democracy with Bruce Schneier
This year, we need to start fixing American democracy. On the technical level, 2020 saw exceptionally successful elections under exceptionally difficult circumstances. People voted in ...
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Essay
Grassroots’ Bot Campaigns are Coming. Governments Don’t Have a Plan to Stop Them with Bruce Schneier
This month, the New York state attorney general issued a report on a scheme by “U.S. Companies and Partisans [to] Hack Democracy.” This wasn’t another ...
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Academic Article
Useful for What and Useful to Whom? IR and Its Public – with Jack Knight
Henry Farrell and Jack Knight (2021), “Useful for What and Useful to Whom? IR and Its Public,” International Studies Review, 23,4:1933-1958. The contributors to this ...
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Chapter in an Edited Volume
“Great Britain: Falling Through the Holes in the Network Concept,” in Local Production Systems in Europe: Rise or Demise? – with Colin Crouch – ed. Colin Crouch et al.
British economic development has long exhibited strong regional patterns and contrasts. The UK shares with France a characteristic not possessed by Germany or Italy: the ...
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Essay
The New Age of Protectionism – with Abraham Newman
Last week, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned of an impending “coronavirus vaccine war” that pits the United Kingdom against Europe. Days earlier, the EU ...
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Chapter in an Edited Volume
Weaponized Interdependence and Networked Coercion: A Research Agenda – with Abraham Newman
Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, “Weaponized Interdependence and Networked Coercion: A Research Agenda,” The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence, eds. Daniel Drezner, Henry Farrell ...
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Chapter in an Edited Volume
“Weaponized Interdependence and Networked Coercion: A Research Agenda,” in The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence – with Abraham Newman – eds. Daniel Drezner, Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman
When we initially wrote our article on weaponized interdependence, we hoped that it would help people think more clearly about how economic coercion was changing. ...
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Academic Article
The Janus Face of the Liberal International Information Order: When Global Institutions are Self-Undermining – with Abraham Newman
Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman (2021), “The Janus Face of the Liberal International Information Order: When Global Institutions are Self-Undermining,” International Organization Vol 75, No.2:333-58 ...
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Essay
A Cynical Election Ploy Like Hawley and Cruz’s Looks Harmless. Until It Isn’t with Elizabeth Saunders
Washington generally shrugs at cynical theatrical gestures like the GOP Senate effort, led by Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Ted Cruz (Tex.), to object to the ...
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Essay
What Makes Trump’s Subversion Efforts So Alarming? His Collaborators – with Bruce Schneier
Last Thursday, Rudy Giuliani, a Trump campaign lawyer, alleged a widespread voting conspiracy involving Venezuela, Cuba and China. Another lawyer, Sidney Powell, argued that Mr. ...
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Chapter in an Edited Volume
Public Governance and Global Politics after COVID-19, COVID-19 and World Order: The Future of Conflict, Competition, and Cooperation – with Hahrie Han – eds. Hal Brand and Francis J. Gavin
The COVID-19 crisis is a major shock to the existing complex of global rules sometimes described as the “liberal international order.” This order heavily emphasized ...
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