The Power of the Weak: How Informal Power-Sharing Shapes the Work of the United Nations Security Council

To what extent can minor states constrain great powers? Do institutional practices shape state behavior? This study presents the argument that great powers engage in informal power- sharing in international organizations to attain unanimity, which enhances the signaling e ect of these institutions. The pursuit of unanimity lends weight to additional votes beyond those needed for decision-making under the formal rules. In turn, informal power-sharing to attain unanimity enables minor powers to exert more influence than they could if only material power and formal rules were decisive.

Oxford Minds Panel Discussion: Interviews

The series

For Trinity Term we are focussing on research methods. The aim of these sessions is really to excite an interdisciplinary audience of graduates to understand how different methods are being used creatively across the social sciences. The panel discussions will be held during the first four weeks of term and will focus on 'interviews' in week 1, 'numbers' (quant methods) in week 2, 'archives' in week 3, and 'ethnogrpahy' in week 4.

Panellists:

Insuring Against Democracy: The Political Economy of Premodern Elites’ Asset Portfolio Diversification

Does land inequality undermine democratization and development? The dominant consensus is that land inequality provides incentives for landed elites to block democratization and undermines the provision of public goods. Two key assumptions underlie these theoretical accounts: that landowners identify uniquely with land-related activities and that asset mobility is exogenous. In this paper, I propose an alternative explanation on how land inequality affects landed elites' calculations on both democracy and the provision of public goods that breaks with these assumptions.

Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics

Long-term social and demographic changes – and the conflicts they create – continue to transform British politics. In their new book Sobolewska and Ford show how deep the roots of this polarisation and volatility run, drawing out decades of educational expansion and rising ethnic diversity as key drivers in the emergence of new divides within the British electorate over immigration, identity and diversity.

Oxford Spring School public lecture: Using Twitter for Social Science Research

This talk will give an overview on the use of Twitter data for social science research. The talk will focus on an applied example using data from participants in the 2017 US Women’s March protests. It will be followed by some hands-on exercises describing how to access the Twitter API, including the new Academic Research Product Track.

Journalism behind bars – the Belarusian crisis

In the span of three months in 2020, Belarusian and foreign journalists were arrested more than 310 times in the line of duty. As of April 2021, 12 journalists remain behind bars. Volha Siakhovich is a legal expert and human rights campaigner for the Belarusian Association of Journalists. She will tell us about the current climate, and what the international journalism community can do to bring attention to it.
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