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1. Here is a thread on research projects that don& #39;t go as we might have hoped.
2. In a candid survey of his career in ANNUAL REVIEWS, Bob Keohane briefly describes a book-length project on reputation and compliance that he ultimately chose not to publish, in part because the evidence didn& #39;t fit his initial conjectures. #_i7">https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-polisci-050918-042625 #_i7">https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/...
3. This anecdote is a useful reminder that not every promising idea pans out. I wish more scholars--and especially senior figures--would describe projects they undertook that they eventually discarded. In that spirit, here& #39;s a list of some of the blind alleys I& #39;ve walked down.
4. As post-docs way back in 1983, Charlie Glaser and I wrote a paper on the actual use of nuclear weapons in war. We eventually produced a complete draft, but neither of us was very happy with it. We wisely put it aside and turned to other topics.
5. When I began working on REVOLUTION AND WAR in 1988, I had lots of clever ideas about how the backgrounds & biographies of revolutionary leaders might explain their behavior once in power. This approach led precisely nowhere and I dropped the idea from the book.
6. In the late 1990s, I started to write a theoretical article on the nature of unipolarity. Bill Wohlforth& #39;s 1999 INTERNATIONAL SECURITY article on this topic scooped me completely, and it was clearly better than anything I& #39;d have written. Oh well. But then....
7. . . .one door closed, another opened: Wohlforth& #39;s article helped get me thinking about how other states were reacting to unipolarity, which eventually led me to write TAMING AMERICAN POWER.
8. In 2008, I began a project on the reasons why states find it hard to "cut losses" and collected a lot of material for it. I eventually published a chapter on the subject in an edited volume, but decided I didn& #39;t have anything more to say on that topic. So I didn& #39;t.
9. A few years ago, I began researching the phenomenon of political "insiders" who at some point have a dramatic change of heart and then go public (e.g., Ellsberg). I was hoping to find a common thread in their experiences but came up empty. It& #39;s on the shelf for now.
10. Three years ago, a journal editor invited me to write an essay on what he called the "death of IR theory." I spent a summer writing several drafts. Reactions from a diverse set of colleagues were polite but strongly negative. I decided they were right and hit the shredder.
