2023

On December 12-14, the QCA Paper Development Workshop and the QCA Expert Workshop took place in Antwerp at the Antwerp Management School (AMS), hosted by Bart Cambré (AMS) and Benoît Rihoux (UCLouvain) and the co-organizers of the Paper Development Workshop Julia Leib (Uni Leipzig), Christoph Niessen (Universiteit Leiden), and Christian Rupietta (Queen’s University Belfast). The workshops brought together a group… Continue reading →

Politics and Governance published the open access article “Zeitenwende: German Foreign Policy Change in the Wake of Russia’s War Against Ukraine” as an ahead-of-print. In the article, I examine the foreign and security policy of the German ‘traffic-light’ coalition under Chancellor Scholz to assess whether and to which extent the Russian aggression against Ukraine has marked an international orientation change… Continue reading →

Am 12./13. Oktober habe ich an der Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken einen QCA-Workshop für das CEUS-Nachwuchskolleg am Cluster für Europaforschung gehalten. In dem kompakten zweitägigen Format wurden die Grundlagen von QCA auf Basis von Qualitative Comparative Analysis: An Introduction to Research Design and Application erörtert, Anwendungsbeispiele besprochen und die Anwendung der Software anhand des kürzlich aktualisierten R Manual for… Continue reading →

This post refers to an earlier version of the R Manual for QCA. The current version, together with the R script and sample data, is available on the R Manual for QCA page. The R Manual for QCA has been updated to version 3.0. Among other changes and updates, the current version includes further guidance on forming different types of… Continue reading →

I reviewed Richard Ned Lebow’s The Quest for Knowledge in International Relations: How Do We Know? (Cambridge University Press, 2022) for the latest issue of Political Science Quarterly. The book review is available here. From the review: “In his book The Quest for Knowledge in International Relations, Richard Ned Lebow addresses foundational questions about the academic enterprise of international relations… Continue reading →

During the week of August 21-25, I returned to Lugano to teach the QCA workshop at the 27th Summer School in Social Science Methods at the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI). Since 2016, I have been teaching this workshop at USI. The intensive course covers the foundations and advanced uses of QCA and its application in R, based on my… Continue reading →

I contributed to an H-Diplo Roundtable Review in the Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum, reviewing the book African Interventions: State Militaries, Foreign Powers and Rebel Forces (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Emizet F. Kisangani and Jeffrey Pickering (both Kansas State University). The roundtable was organized by Frank Gerits (Utrecht University) and further included contributions from Seung-Whan Choi (University of… Continue reading →

On July 12-14, 2023, the 10th European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS) took place in Amsterdam. I participated in the Workshop on “Systemic Transformation and National Role Conceptions: The Domestic Politics of Deconstructing and Redefining ‘the West’”, convened by Angelos Chryssogelos (London Metropolitan University) and Toby Greene (Bar Ilan University). During the workshop, I presented a paper on “The Party… Continue reading →

On July 11, 2023, I took part in the kick-off workshop of Wolfgang Wagner’s project on the “Party-Political Contestation of the Liberal International Order”, funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and organized at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The workshop opened with a keynote address from Stephanie Hofmann (European University Institute) on “Global Politics, Democratic States, and Political Parties, Avenues for… Continue reading →

Im Rahmen der IB-Sektionstagung an der Zeppelin Universität in Friedrichshafen fand am 16. Juni 2023 die hybride Mitgliederversammlung der DVPW-Themengruppe Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik statt. Anschließend an den Bericht des bisherigen SprecherInnen-Teams über Aktivitäten und Publikationen der Themengruppe und Neuigkeiten aus dem Rat der DVPW wurde ein neues SprecherInnen-Team gewählt. Neben anderen Publikationen ist besonders auf das kürzlich erschienene Routledge Handbook… Continue reading →

Vom 14. bis 16. Juni 2023 fand die Tagung der DVPW-Sektion Internationale Beziehungen an der Zeppelin Universität in Friedrichshafen am Bodensee statt (Programm), organisiert durch das Team des Lehrstuhls für Internationale Sicherheitspolitik von Simon Koschut. Im Panel “die Krise des liberalen Interventionismus und die Rückkehr von Krieg in Europa” habe ich ein Paper zur Zeitenwende in der deutschen Sicherheitspolitik vorgestellt… Continue reading →

Between May 20-28, I was part of an interdisciplinary delegation of researchers and international office staff from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam to visit Japanese research institutions, to foster new collaborations, and to reconnect with local partners. Apart from many individual meetings, we collectively visited the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Keio… Continue reading →

On May 24, I was invited to give a guest lecture at the Faculty of Political Science and Economics of Waseda University in Atushi Tago‘s undergraduate course on International Relations. I presented findings from a working paper “Zeitenwende: German Security Policy in the Wake of the Afghanistan Withdrawal and Russia’s War against Ukraine”, and related these to current developments in… Continue reading →

The Japanese academic publisher Chikura Shobo has acquired the rights to translate Qualitative Comparative Analysis: An Introduction to Research Design and Application (Georgetown University Press, 2021) into Japanese. The Japanese edition will be published in late 2023/early 2024. The translator is Professor Nobukazu Azuma of Aoyama Gakuin University. On May 23, I met with him in the offices of Chikura… Continue reading →

On May 22, I gave a QCA workshop at Waseda University in Tokyo, hosted by and co-organized with Airo Hino at the Institute of Political Economy of the Faculty of Political Science and Economics, and Sho Niikawa of Kobe University. During the workshop, which was conducted in hybrid format, I gave a talk on “Recent Advances and Trends in Qualitative… Continue reading →

On March 28-29, I gave an applied workshop on Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) at the Center for Comparative Research on Democracy at the Department of Social Sciences of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The workshop was tailored for researchers of the project “Judicial Autonomy under Authoritarian Attack”, led by Prof. Dr. Silvia von Steinsdorff, and funded by the Einstein Foundation Berlin.… Continue reading →

On March 15-18, 2023, the 64th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association took place Montréal, Canada. I had four program appearances. First, I co-chaired a roundtable (with Falk Ostermann, Kiel University) on our recently published Routledge Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis Methods, with contributions from panelists (and contributors to our handbook) Marijke Breuning (University of North Texas), Simon Koschut… Continue reading →

This summer I’ll be offering a workshop on Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), as part of the Summer School in Social Science Methods at the Università della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano. This will be the 5th time that I’m holding a QCA workshop in Lugano (on previous courses, see here). The workshop runs for a full week and covers the entire… Continue reading →

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… Continue reading →