‘Trust Us’: Open Data and Preregistration in Political Science and International Relations

The scientific method is predicated on transparency -- yet the pace at which transparent research practices are being adopted by the scientific community is slow. The replication crisis in psychology showed that published findings employing statistical inference are threatened by undetected errors, data manipulation, and data falsification. To mitigate these problems and bolster research credibility, open data and preregistration have increasingly been adopted in the natural and social sciences. While many political science and international relations journals have committed to implementing these reforms, the extent of open science practices is unknown. We bring large-scale text analysis and machine learning classifiers to bear on the question. Using population-level data -- 93,931 articles across the top 160 political science and IR journals between 2010 and 2021 -- we find that approximately 21% of all statistical inference papers have open data, and 5% of all experiments are preregistered. Despite this shortfall, the example of leading journals in the field shows that change is feasible and can be effected quickly.

Social and Cognitive Psychology Theories in Understanding COVID-19 as the Pandemic of Blame

When faced with adverse circumstances, there may be a tendency for individuals, agencies, and governments to search for a target to assign blame. Our focus will be on the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, where racial groups, political parties, countries, and minorities have been blamed for spreading, producing or creating the virus. Blame—here defined as attributing causality, responsibility, intent, or foresight to someone/something for a fault or wrong—has already begun to damage modern society and medical practice in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak. Evidence from past and current pandemics suggest that this tendency to seek blame affects international relations, promotes unwarranted devaluation of health professionals, and prompts a spike of racism and discrimination. By drawing on social and cognitive psychology theories, we provide a framework that helps to understand (1) the effect of blame in pandemics, (2) when people blame, whom they blame, and (3) how blame detrimentally affects the COVID-19 response. Ultimately, we provide a path to inform health messaging to reduce blaming tendencies, based on social psychological principles for health communication.

USA in Modern Times: society, State and law. Part 2. 1800-1877 years

The textbook examines the processes of development of American civilization in the XIX century, assesses various aspects of the life and activities of the American state. Special attention is paid to the most important periods, such as "Jeffersonian democracy", "the era of good consent", "Jacksonian democracy", "the brewing of inevitable conflict", the Civil War and Reconstruction. The political activities of American presidents, various parties and movements are analyzed. A separate chapter is devoted to the development of law in the XIX century . It is intended for students of historical faculties studying the academic discipline "History of regions (on the example of the USA)", students of historical and law faculties studying the history of the USA in Modern times, the history of international relations, the development of the state and law of this country, the constitutional law of foreign countries, as well as for students of cultural studies, students of foreign language faculties and anyone interested in the history of the USA.

Crucial Strategies to Solve Communicative Breakdown

English has increasingly become international language for business and commerce, science and technology, international relations and diplomacy. Due to this fact, the purpose of learning a foreign language is communication. Through communication, people send and receive messages and negotiate meaning. Communication has different forms and takes place in different situations. People communicate to satisfy their needs. Heterogeneous interaction is carried out by a native speaker and a non-native one in the purpose of exchanging of ideas, information between two or more individuals. There is usually, at least one speaker or sender, a message which transmitted, and an individual or individuals for whom this message is intended. Communication breakdowns may happen to anybody communicating in a language other than their dominating language. This problem, surely, can be solved but how? The primary aim of this article is to investigate the heterogeneous communication process in the terms of possible breakdown which happens to all people while communicating, so that they are unable to get their messages across express what they mean and what they understand. The author highlights crucial strategies toward solving these disruptions.

Contributions and Blind Spots of Constructivist Norms Research in International Relations, 1980–2018: A Systematic Evidence and Gap Analysis

The study of international norms from a social constructivist perspective has been one of the major conceptual innovations to the discipline of international relations (IR) over the past forty years. However, despite the concept's ubiquity, there is only a limited understanding of the large-scale trends in research associated with its rise. This analytic essay interrogates conventional wisdom, using a dataset of 7,795 mainstream, English-language journal articles from the Teaching, Research and International Policy Journal Article Database, supplemented with data from Web of Science. How have international norms been studied substantively and methodologically, what are major contributions and blind spots, and which opportunities for future innovation might exist? Although norms research has historically helped expand the scope of issues covered in IR (e.g., gender issues and public health), others have evidence gaps relative to the broader discipline of IR (e.g., terrorism and public opinion). Over the years, the proportion of empirical studies has increased, while purely theoretical, epistemological, and methodological work and innovation have decreased. Despite calls for methodological pluralism, norms research is significantly more qualitative and conceptual than mainstream IR in general and far less multi-method. While more international and less US-based than IR in general, norms research in mainstream journals seems to be no closer to a “Global IR,” measured by regional focus and author affiliation. This suggests three promising avenues for future innovation: greater attention to specific substantive blind spots, more multi-method research, and increased attention to the agenda of Global IR. Beyond these individual insights, this review illustrates the general utility of complementing narrative literature reviews with ones based on quantitative data. It also provides a case study on conceptual proliferation and innovation in IR.

he Shanghai Cooperation Organization and its role in the contemporary system of international relations (On the 20th anniversary of the SCO)

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). This is a good opportunity to assess its performance over the past two decades, to draw some conclusions, and to discuss possible future developments of the SCO. The author examines milestones in the formation of the SCO, its institutional structure, as well as its key activities which encompass four focal areas: politics, security, economy, and humanitarian cooperation. The paper focuses on the decisions of the 21st SCO Summit in Dushanbe, especially those aimed at strengthening cooperation in combating the eff ects of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and addressing security challenges, arising from the latest developments in Afghanistan. The latter particularly imply an increasing threat of terrorism, extremism, and drug traffi cking from Afghanistan to neighboring countries in Central Asia. The author emphasizes the crucial role of the SCO Regional Antiterrorist Structure (RATS) in countering these threats. Finally, the paper addresses both the circumstances and possible implications of Iran’s ascension to a full SCO member, which was approved during the summit in Dushanbe. The author concludes that over the past two decades the SCO has successfully transitioned from an important, yet regional in scope and framework, organization to an infl uential global actor, which plays a major role in the maintenance of peace and security in Central Asia and could serve as a model for the establishment of a new non-confrontational approach to the interstate relations.

Questioning the quest for Pluralism: How Decolonial is Non-Western IR?

Since early 2000s, scholars of international relations have been questioning the Western-centrism of their home discipline and, in a quest for pluralism, have been envisioning ways of conceptualizing the world beyond the West. At the same time, an intellectual movement known as modernity/coloniality research collective has been critically reflecting about modernity and its often-neglected counterpart, coloniality, to resist universalism and to decolonize knowledge. Engaging with the attempts to procure pluralism in the discourse of international relations, the purpose of this article is to question the different perspectives of non-Western international relations from a decolonial angle to identify intellectual projects that could lead to decolonizing the discipline. In its discussion of how decolonial non-Western IR theory is, the article argues that while some perspectives within the subfield openly reject or simply ignore the concerns raised by decolonial thought, others put forward intellectual projects where decolonial arguments resonate. Hence, rather than characterizing the subfield in general terms, the article distinguishes those perspectives that are attentive to the need of generating a true dialog among knowledges and, by so doing, it contributes to critical scholarship within international relations.