Patrick A. Mello

International Politics, Security, and Methods

  • Routledge Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis Methods Published

    Edited by Patrick A. Mello and Falk Ostermann

    On December 26, the Routledge Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis Methods was published (co-edited with Falk Ostermann, Kiel University). The handbook contains 34 chapters and a foreword from 46 international contributors, covering a diverse range of new and established methods of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). Embracing methodological pluralism and a belief in the value of an open discussion about methods’ assumptions and diverging positions, it provides new, state-of-the-art research approaches, as well as introductions to a range of established methods. Each chapter follows the same structured approach, introducing the method and its development, discussing strengths, requirements, limitations, and potential pitfalls while illustrating the method’s application using examples from empirical research. For more information on the book, including an excerpt from the foreword by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and book endorsements from Charles F. Hermann, Margaret G. Hermann, Stéphanie Hofmann, Juliet Kaarbo, and Atsushi Tago, please see this page.

  • 10th International QCA Expert Workshop at ETH Zurich and Online

    On December 13-15, I participated virtually in the 10th International QCA Expert Workshop and the 6th International QCA Paper Development Workshop at ETH Zurich and online. As in previous years, the event was organized by Manuel Fischer, Julia Leib, Johannes Meuer, Sofia Pagliarin, Ryan Michael Rumble, and Christian Rupietta. The QCA Expert Workshop brought together a group of 36 QCA experts and practitioners from around the globe, many of whom participated online to discuss methodological innovations and new empirical applications. One highlight was Charles Ragin’s presentation on his forthcoming book Analytic Induction (to be published in 2023). The preceding QCA Paper Development Workshop was the 6th event of this kind, which included more than a dozen roundtables and breakout rooms where 36 applied QCA papers were presented and discussed. I co-chaired a Q&A session with Seweryn Krupnik (Jagiellonian University) and Martin Schneider (Paderborn University), and Seweryn and I also co-chaired a roundtable at the Paper Development Workshop.

  • Unintended Consequences of UN Sanctions On the Shortlist for the 2023 Bernard Brodie Prize

    Since 2009, Contemporary Security Policy (CSP) annually awards the Bernard Brodie Prize to recognize “an outstanding article published in the journal in the previous year”. The award is named after the American military strategist Bernard Brodie (1910-1978), author of influential books such as The Absolute Weapon (1946), Strategy in the Missile Age (1959), Escalation and the Nuclear Option (1966), War and Politics (1973), and From Crossbow to H-Bomb (1973, with Fawn M. Brodie). As CSP acknowledges on its website, Brodie established “ideas that remain at the centre of security debates to this day”. Moreover, he was “one of the first analysts to cross between official and academic environments” and, importantly, Brodie “pioneered the model of civilian influence that CSP represents”. As Brodie underlined, for instance in War and Politics (1973): “the civil hand must never relax, and it must without one hint of apology hold the control that has always belonged to it by right.” On November 29, the journal announced its shortlist for the 2023 Bernard Brodie Prize and our open access article “Unintended Consequences of UN Sanctions: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis” (co-authored with Katharina L. Meissner, University of Vienna) was among those selected. The complete shortlist and a collection all previous prize winners can be found on the CSP website.

  • Mitglied der Ethik-Kommission der DVPW, 2022-2027

    Vom 17. bis 30. Oktober 2022 fand die Online-Wahl zur Neubesetzung der Ethik-Kommission der Deutschen Vereinigung für Politikwissenschaft (DVPW) statt. Gemeinsam mit Sebastian Huhnholz, Ursula Münch, Susanne Pickel, Ingo Rohlfing und Gabi Schlag wurde ich für die Amtszeit von 2022 bis 2027 gewählt. In ihrer konstituierenden Sitzung einigte sich die Kommission auf Ingo Rohlfing als Vorsitzenden und Susanne Pickel als stellvertretende Vorsitzende. Neben Mitgliederversammlung, Vorstand und Rat ist die Ethik-Kommission eines der vier satzungsgemäßen Organe der DVPW. Die Arbeit der Ethik-Kommission beruht auf Grundlagen, die im Ethik-Kodex der DVPW ausgeführt werden. Die Kommission wird tätig, wenn sie aufgrund eines Verstoßes gegen den Ethik-Kodex angerufen wird. Weitere Informationen zur Ethik-Kommission und zur Kontaktaufnahme finden sich auf der Webseite der DVPW.

  • New Position at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

    As of September 1, 2022, I am Assistant Professor of International Security at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands, where I’m joining the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the Faculty of Social Sciences. Thanks to everyone at the department for making this happen! I’m thrilled about what lies ahead and look forward to working with my new colleagues in Amsterdam!

  • 26th Summer School in Social Science Methods, Lugano 2022

    From August 22-28, 2022 I taught at the 26th Summer School in Social Science Methods, organized by the Swiss Foundation for Social Science (FORS) and the Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI). The summer school is hosted at USI in beautiful Lugano, Switzerland. This was the fourth time I offered a one-week intensive course on Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) at the Summer School in Lugano (after 2016, 2019, and 2021). This year, the course was offered as full-day in-presence workshop, with 18 participants hailing from 11 countries. The course was based on my QCA textbook Qualitative Comparative Analysis: An Introduction to Research Design and Application, published with Georgetown University Press (2021, Publisher’s Website). Many thanks to all course participants for an intensive and fun week with QCA! And thanks to School Coordinator Janice Casarella and the School Directors Benedetto Lepori, Eugène Horber, and Patrick Gagliardini for the excellent and smooth organization!

  • Open Access Article Published in Global Studies Quarterly

    The July 2022 edition of ISA’s new open access journal Global Studies Quarterly features our article “When Do International Organizations Engage in Agency Slack? A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of United Nations Institutions” (with Eugénia Heldt, Anna Novoselova, and Omar Ramon Serrano Oswald). The article is based on research from our German Research Foundation project on “International Bureaucracies and Agency Slack” under DFG project number 370183851. Our study examines 16 UN organizations and the organizational characteristics under which agency slack occurs at these IOs, based on a qualitative coding of primary documents from the UN Joint Inspection Unit.

    Abstract: The extensive delegation of power to international organizations (IOs) has been accompanied by occasional agency slack. While prior studies suggest that IOs’ propensity for agency slack may be rooted in their organizational characteristics, this has rarely been explored empirically. To address this lacuna, in this article we propose a conceptualization and measurement of agency slack and develop a framework of organizational characteristics. Our empirical analysis applies qualitative comparative analysis to assess the conditions under which agency slack occurs across sixteen United Nations institutions. We complement the cross-case analysis with two case illustrations. Our results document the empirical existence of two paths to agency slack, providing confirmatory evidence for our theoretical expectations. Path 1 combines staffing rules that are favorable for the agent with wide access to third parties. Path 2 entails the combination of favorable staffing rules with extensive delegation of authority and a vague organizational mandate.

  • Incentives and Constraints – Corrigendum

    The European Political Science Review issued a correction for the article “Incentives and Constraints: A Configurational Explanation of European Involvement in the Anti-Daesh Coalition“, originally published on February 24, 2022. The original publication contained erroneous illustrations. The correct versions of Table 1, Table 3, Table 4, and Table 5 are entailed in the corrigendum.

  • Podcast: Security Cooperation in the Global North and Russia’s War against Ukraine

    For the latest edition of The Bulletin Podcast I was invited to talk about Russia’s war against Ukraine and its implications for security cooperation in the global north. Thanks to Smriti Rai and Jesus Renzullo for their probing questions and the constructive conversation! The Bulletin Podcast is a blog and podcast series run by the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy at the University of Erfurt. In 2018, I already had the pleasure to contribute to its inaugural session, when I was Interim Franz Haniel Professor of Public Policy at the University of Erfurt (the 2018 session can be accessed here).

  • Guest Talk at West Point

    On April 13, 2022 I gave a virtual guest talk on “QCA in International Security” at the Social Science Research Lab, Department of Social Sciences of the United States Military Academy at West Point. In recent years, QCA has seen an increasing number of empirical applications on security-related topics, and IR research at large. In my talk, I gave a concise introduction to the method and its application in the field, outlined the structure of my QCA textbook, and provided an illustration of how QCA has been used to analyze coalition defection in the Iraq War. Thanks to Jordan Becker, Director of the Social Science Research Lab, and his colleagues for the invitation and the fruitful discussion after the talk!