Moynihan Institute News, Research and Commentary

Recent retiree Margaret ‘Peg’ Hermann greatly expanded the institute’s global reach and served as a mentor to countless students.

Timur Hammond, assistant professor of geography and the environment, has written “Placing Islam: Geographies of Connection in Twentieth-Century Istanbul” (University of California Press, 2023). 

“The U.S. has always been promoting and setting up this entire thing,” says Natalie Koch, professor of geography and the environment. “It’s not like the Americans are passive in this. We have absolutely helped sow the seeds for that Saudi agricultural industry that has come back to us now.”

Dimitar Gueorguiev, associate professor of political science, has contributed to and edited "New Threats to Academic Freedom in Asia" (Columbia University Press, 2023). 

"Putin has always known that NATO poses no credible security threat to Russia itself. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO’s force posture and the U.S. military presence in Europe have greatly declined, reducing any potential military threat to Russia. What really scares the Russian elite is the spread of democracy," argues Michael John Williams, associate professor of public administration and international affairs.

Ryan Griffiths, associate professor of political science, has contributed to and co-edited “The Routledge Handbook of Self-Determination and Secession” (Routledge, 2023). It investigates debates surrounding issues of self-determination and secession as well as the legal, political and normative implications they give rise to.

As we pass the one-year anniversary of Russia’s war in Ukraine, numerous factors such as the Russian military’s poor performance, Putin’s botched mobilization, mounting casualties, economic challenges resulting from sanctions and export controls, and increasingly visible elite fissures are raising questions about the political stability of the Russian regime. Brian Taylor, professor of political science, weighs in.

“They capture the attention of management in a much more dramatic way than other forms of action and negotiation,” says Gretchen Purser, associate professor of sociology. “They’re showing the capacity for the workers to take collective action.”

“Those processes, they’re hard to pull off. You need to have both sides in agreement. It just doesn’t happen that much,” says Ryan Griffiths, associate professor of political science. “The thresholds for success are just too high to make it work.”

For Brian Taylor, professor of political science, the biggest take from the one-year anniversary is Ukraine is still standing. "A year ago a lot of people might not have expected that, given Russia’s size, the size of the population, the size of its army, the size of its economy," Taylor says.

The concentration of troops in the east of the country shows that the Russian president has not given up on his goal of enslaving Ukraine despite multiple setbacks since the launch of the invasion, says Brian Taylor, professor of political science.

Natalie Koch, professor of geography and the environment, argues that state lawmakers need to update the state’s 43 year old water law and create more active management areas to regulate water use across Arizona. “There needs to be some way of monitoring and regulating who is drawing what from the aquifers,” says Koch.

"Offshoring barriers, regulatory burden and national welfare," co-authored by Professor of Economics Devashish Mitra, was published in Indian Economic Review.

"My impression is that his power and visibility have increased a lot since the start of the war in Ukraine," says Brian Taylor, professor of political science. "He's a much more public figure than a year ago, and I think that reflects his ambition. And, up to a certain point, the impression it has of its current usefulness."

"The decision of Germany to allow allies to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, as well as Berlin dispatching its own bilateral donation, is a significant symbol of allied commitment to Ukraine, but the implications of this move should not be exaggerated," says Michael Williams, associate professor of public administration and international affairs.

"A bizarre situation with this balloon, in particular, is best understood as an attempt to kind of clarify what the terms of engagement are," says Dimitar Gueorguiev, associate professor of political science. "And what you’ve seen over the past couple of days is that surveillance aircraft at a certain level of altitude are now probably more likely to happen and are more at risk of being shot dow," he says.

"Delta Democracy: Pathways to Incremental Civic Revolution in Egypt Beyond" (Oxford University Press, 2020), written by Associate Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs Catherine Herrold, was reviewed in Democratization.

With [Chinese President] Xi now signaling a shift to less rancorous bilateral ties, “I expect [Xie Feng, China's new ambassador to the U.S.] to be more kumbaya-ish,” says Dimitar Gueorguiev, associate professor of political science and expert on Chinese elite politics.

In her recently published book, “Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arizona and Arabia” (Verso, 2023), Maxwell School faculty member Natalie Koch explores the exchange of colonial technologies between the Arabian Peninsula and the United States over the last two centuries.