For decades, public health experts and journalists worldwide warned about a viral pandemic capable of causing illness and loss of life. Previous outbreaks of SARS, Ebola, and MERS highlighted this... Show moreFor decades, public health experts and journalists worldwide warned about a viral pandemic capable of causing illness and loss of life. Previous outbreaks of SARS, Ebola, and MERS highlighted this threat, which occupied top positions in risk assessments globally. Yet even with knowledge and precedent, the COVID-19 pandemic caught the world off guard. It revealed a world inadequately prepared and plunged societies into a state of disruption, with over 7 million deaths reported to the World Health Organization by April 2024. How did this tragedy foretold take the world by such surprise? In The COVID-19 Intelligence Failure: Why Warning Was Not Enough, Erik J. Dahl explores this question from the vantage point of the United States.In his book, Dahl, who is highly regarded for his expertise on intelligence failures, analyzes past and present intelligence efforts to underline the shortcomings and successes of the U.S. intelligence community's anticipation of the pandemic, comparing the anticipation and response to COVID-19 with historical failed warnings, such as those preceding 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. Show less
We all had papers and research proposals rejected invoking standards that, at least to the qualitative researcher, were clearly not applicable: no external validity; difficult to replicate; mere... Show moreWe all had papers and research proposals rejected invoking standards that, at least to the qualitative researcher, were clearly not applicable: no external validity; difficult to replicate; mere description; selection on the dependent variable(!). We know the list. As Small and Calarco point out, qualitative research’s purview is growing but “qualitative literacy” is not keeping pace. That is, the competency of “others” to assess the quality of qualitative research is often insufficient. Show less
When I spotted this new book, I just had to go read it, right away. It is one of those books that you know will make a splash. ‘This is not a book I planned to write,’ the author says in the... Show moreWhen I spotted this new book, I just had to go read it, right away. It is one of those books that you know will make a splash. ‘This is not a book I planned to write,’ the author says in the preface. It is a book he had to write. Researching intellectual histories in International Political Economy (IPE), Helleiner discovered that a book on the intellectual history of neomercantilism was lacking – so he wrote it. Prominent scholars of IPE have characterised it as having three leading ideologies: economic liberalism, Marxism and mercantilism, but the latter has been given less attention than its competitors. One may have been forgiven for being less well-read in that tradition when empirical trends were moving increasingly in a more liberal direction. However, in light of changes to the international liberal world order, and with the rise of nations whose leaders advance more protectionist policies (indeed with the US having had a president who was openly flirting with a reorientation away from liberalism towards more protectionism), students of IPE really need to go back to basics and study some of the origins of ideologies that are resurfacing today. Show less
The ten pieces gathered in Susana Narotzky’s edited volume Grassroots Economies: Living with Austerity in Southern Europe explore, through ethnographic accounts and analyses, the contemporary socio... Show moreThe ten pieces gathered in Susana Narotzky’s edited volume Grassroots Economies: Living with Austerity in Southern Europe explore, through ethnographic accounts and analyses, the contemporary socio-economic crisis as experienced by ordinary people in Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Show less
