The End of Hypocrisy with Martha Finnemore

The U.S. government seems outraged that people are leaking classified materials about its less attractive behavior. It certainly acts that way: three years ago, after Chelsea Manning, an army private then known as Bradley Manning, turned over hundreds of thousands of classified cables to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, U.S. authorities imprisoned the soldier under conditions that the UN special rapporteur on torture deemed cruel and inhumane. The Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, appearing on Meet the Press shortly thereafter, called WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, “a high-tech terrorist.”

More recently, following the disclosures about U.S. spying programs

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Other Writing:

Chapter in an Edited Volume

“Cognitive Democracy,” in Youth, New Media and Political Participation – with Cosma Shalizi – eds. Danielle Allen and Jennifer Light

In Parts I through III, we extended the definition of the political, acquired a richer view of participation, explored how to model and analyze partic-ipation broadly defined, and ascertained what sort of mechanisms to look for to understand public spheres in this context. As those chapters explored the specific experiences of individuals partic-ipating in hip ...
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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 world wars. It rescues the League of Nations from the enormous condescension of posterity, arguing that the league was neither ridiculous nor doomed. However, it also demonstrates that the league’s ...
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