Barnett, Michael N. 1960-
BARNETT, Michael N. 1960-
PERSONAL: Born 1960. Education: University of Illinois, B.A., 1982; University of Minnesota, Ph.D., 1989.
ADDRESSES: Offıce—Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin, 100 North Hall, 1050 Bascom Mall, Madison, WI 53706. E-mail— [email protected].
CAREER: Macalester College, St. Paul, MN, instructor, 1989; Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, assistant professor of political science, 1989-90; University of Wisconsin, Madison, assistant professor, 1990-94, associate professor, 1994-98, professor of political science and international relations, 1998—, director of international studies program, 1996—. Visiting assistant professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1992; visiting scholar, Center for Studies of Social Change, 1994-95; visiting researcher, Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Tel-Aviv University, 1995. Member of U.S. Mission to the United Nations, 1993-94. Visiting lecturer at numerous universities and meetings.
MEMBER: American Political Science Association, Middle East Studies Association, Academic Council on the United Nations System, International Studies Association.
AWARDS, HONORS: Gabriel Almond Award, American Political Science Association, 1991; Quincy Wright Book Award, 1993, for Confronting the Costs of War: Military Power, State, and Society in Egypt and Israel; United States Institute of Peace fellowship, 1993; Council on Foreign Relations fellowship, 1993; McArthur Foundation International Peace and Security fellowship, 1994; McArthur Research and Writing Program fellowship, Smith Richardson Foundation fellowship, and United States Institute of Peace fellowship, all 1998; Vilas Associate, University of Wisconsin, 1999.
WRITINGS:
Confronting the Costs of War: Military Power, State, and Society in Egypt and Israel, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1992.
(Editor) Israel in Comparative Politics: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 1996.
(Editor, with Emanuel Adler) Security Communities, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1998.
Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in RegionalOrder, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1998.
(Editor, with Shibley Telhami) National Identity andForeign Policy in the Middle East, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 2002.
Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations andRwanda, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 2002.
(With Martha Finnemore) The Power and Pathologies of International Organizations, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), in press.
Contributor to books, including Brian Job, editor, The Insecurity Dilemma: National Security in the Third World, Lynne Reinner (Boulder, CO), 1992; D. Davis and F. Murphy, editors, Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 8, JAI Press (Greenwood, CT), 1995; Thomas Biersteker and Cindy Weber, editors, Sovereignty as a Social Construct, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1995; Thomas Cushman and Stjepan Mestrovic, editors, This Time We Knew: Western Responses to Genocide in Bosnia, New York University Press (New York, NY), 1996; Peter Katzenstein, editor, Culture of National Security: Norms and identity in World Politics, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1996; Joe Lepgold and Thoms Weiss, editors, Collective Conflict Management and Changing World Politics, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 1998; J. Weldes, and others, editors, Cultures of Insecurity, University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis, MN), 1999; Tor Holm and Espen Eide, editors, Peacebuilding and Police Reform, Frank Cass (New York, NY), 2000; Lisa Martin and Beth Simmons, editors, International Institutions: An International Organization Reader, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 2001; Tom Callaghy, Robert Latham, and Robert Kassimer, editors, Authorities and Interventions in World Politics, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2002; J. Hobson and S. Hobden, editors, International Relations and Historical Sociology, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2002; and John Vasquez and Elin Elman, editors, Realism and the Balancing of Power: A New Debate?, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 2002. Contributor of articles and reviews to numerous periodicals, including International Studies Quarterly, Ethics and International Affairs, Political Science Quarterly, World Politics, Global Governance, Cultural Anthropology, and International Studies Review.
WORK IN PROGRESS: Editing, with Raymond Duvall, Who Governs in Global Governance?; editing, with Duvall, Power and Global Governance.
SIDELIGHTS: Michael N. Barnett is the director of the international relations program at the University of Wisconsin and a specialist in Middle Eastern politics and the concept of security communities. Barnett has done field research in Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and El Salvador, as well as upon African political situations at the United Nations.
In Confronting the Costs of War: Military Power, State and Society in Egypt and Israel, Barnett discusses the relationship between military might and state power, using Egypt and Israel as models. To quote Collins Dunn in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Barnett "sets out to offer, first, a theoretical model of how a government's mobilization of resources in defense of its international security relates to the growth and expansion of state power, and then seeks to look at modern Egyptian and Israeli history through this lens, providing an analytical comparison/contrast at the end." Dunn felt that Barnett had achieved his objectives in the work, noting: "The book is wide-ranging and thought-provoking, offering (sometimes almost as throw-away comments) interesting perspectives on the issues at hand."
Barnett's other books on the Middle East include Israel in Comparative Politics: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom, Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order, and National Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East. Dialogues in Arab Politics was particularly well received. In the Middle East Journal, Abdalla M. Battah called the work "a theoretically sophisticated and thought-provoking analysis of the interplay between 'Arabism' and state sovereignty" that "represents an important departure from conventional approaches to the study of Arab politics. [The book's] . . . narrative is imaginative, richly nuanced, and insightful. It provides a clear basis for appreciating regional 'order' and 'stability.' Moreover, it avoids the pitfalls of studies that treat the region as 'irrational' and sui generis. Theory-minded individuals will find it a valuable addition to the literature on the region." Arab Studies Quarterly reviewer Malak Ansour also deemed Dialogues in Arab Politics to be "a meticulously woven and scholarly alternative to the mass of literature on Arab politics, which is preoccupied with military conflict, by presenting an account grounded in the observation of the gradual construction of norms that shape the course of inter-Arab relations." Ansour concluded that the book is "well written and thoroughly referenced."
Security Communities, which Barnett edited with Emanuel Adler, discusses the means by which regional clusters of pacific communities arise. The collected pieces in the volume offer case studies from around the world, including Australia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and North America. According to David Capie in Contemporary Southeast Asia, the book advances "a novel and highly flexible analytical framework not only capable of considering the conditions under which pacific communities might emerge, but also providing 'an alternative look at regional interactions and their relationship to security practices.'" Capie further commented that Security Communities "lays down solid foundations for others to build upon."
More recently Barnett has tackled the subject of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the ineffectiveness of the United Nations in stemming the hostilities. Barnett was a member of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations from 1993 until 1994, and he was thus a firsthand observer of the U.N. debates on Rwanda as its ethnic civil war escalated. Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda offers insight into the seeming indifference of the United Nations as more than 800,000 people were slaughtered. According to Vernon Ford in Booklist, the author, by virtue of his presence at the U.N. "explores a cultural landscape few outsiders have viewed." A Publishers Weekly contributor found the work to be "a searching and nuanced moral analysis."
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:
PERIODICALS
American Political Science Review, June, 1997, Abdalla M. Battah, review of Israel in Comparative Politics: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom, p. 472.
Arab Studies Quarterly, winter, 2000, Malak Ansour, review of Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order, p. 103.
Booklist, March 1, 2002, Vernon Ford, review of Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda, p. 1079.
Contemporary Southeast Asia, April, 2000, David Capie, review of Security Communities, p. 225.
Economist (US), March 23, 2002, review of Eyewitness to Genocide.
Foreign Affairs, July-August, 1999, L. Carl Brown, review of Dialogues in Arab Politics, p. 126.
Journal of Palestine Studies, spring, 1994, Collins Dunn, review of Confronting the Costs of War: Military Power, State, and Society in Egypt and Israel, p. 111.
Middle East Journal, autumn, 2000, Abdalla M. Battah, review of Dialogues in Arab Politics, p. 664.
Political Science Quarterly, fall, 1997, Jerome Slater, review of Israel in Comparative Politics, p. 518.
Publishers Weekly, February 25, 2002, review of Eyewitness to Genocide, p. 50.
ONLINE
University of Wisconsin Department of Political Science Web site,http://polisci.wisc.edu/ (June 11, 2003), "Michael N. Barnett."*