Steven Pinker recently offered a lengthy explanation of “Why Academics Stink At Writing.” First, it is important to note that the title of Pinker’s post is misleading. Indeed, as he points out early on, he is actually arguing about why academic writing is “turgid, soggy, wooden, bloated, clumsy, obscure, unpleasant to read, and impossible to understand?” This is different … Read more
Yesterday, while actively following the events in Ferguson, I was asked the following by @GenXMedia: White Suburban America seems riddled with apathy, excuses and disconnect about #Ferguson. Any ideas why? Upon further prompting, it became clear that @GenXMedia wanted a response to each of the three things that White Suburban America is riddled with: apathy, excuses, and disconnect. It is important … Read more
Like many people, especially here in St. Louis, the ongoing events in Ferguson have consumed my attention and, frankly, really shaken me. After much thought, I have possibly come up with a manageable take on one angle of “the math of” the situation. It is important to distinguish protest from rebellion. Protest is distinguished from rebellion on the basis … Read more
We now live in a world of seemingly never-ending “data” and, relatedly, one of ever-cheaper computational resources. This has led to lots of really cool topics being (re)discovered. Text analysis, genetics, fMRI brain scans, (social and anti-social) networks, campaign finance data… these are all areas of analysis that, practically speaking were “doubly impossible” ten years ago: neither … Read more
The “academic job market season” in political science starts in the fall and continues through the early spring.[0] If you aren’t familiar with how the academic job market works, it’s basically still old school: schools post ads looking to hire for a more or less specialized position, applicants (“candidates”) send in “packets” containing a curriculum … Read more
In this post on Mischiefs of Faction, Seth Masket discusses the recent debate about whether (super-)rich are overly influential in American politics. I’ve already said a bit about the recent Gilens and Page piece that provides evidence that rich interests might have more pull than those of the average American. In a nutshell, I don’t believe that … Read more
This post by Ezra Klein discusses this study, entitled “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government,” by Dan M. Kahan, Erica Cantrell Dawson, Ellen Peters, and Paul Slovic. The gist of the post and the study is that people are less mathematically sophisticated when considering statistical evidence regarding a political issue. The study presented people with “data” from a (fake) experiment about the effect of a hand cream … Read more
Thinking more about transparency (which I just wrote about), it occurred to me that I neglected two pieces (of many) that are relevant for the point about transparency of decision-making in bodies like the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in which expertise plays an important role in justifying the body’s authority. David Stasavage and Ellen … Read more
Today’s post by Maria Popova and Vincent Post, “What is lustration and is it a good idea for Ukraine to adopt it?” made me think about the difference between what I will call policy and discretionary purges. It is not easy for a nation to fix itself after a period of authoritarian rule. There are many … Read more
Sarah Binder, as usual, provides excellent insights into a difficult political problem in this post discussing the potential political and economic pitfalls of imposing greater transparency on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which essentially directs the Federal Reserve’s active participation in the economy, thereby having the most direct control over short-term interest rates and, accordingly, day-to-day … Read more