(“Redux” because of “this post”:https://themonkeycage.org/2010/03/on_the_irrelevance_of_politica.html from a while back.) I’m almost done writing these meta-posts on the discipline and will get back just to discussing political science. But I’ve got just a few thoughts about Steven Hayward’s “article”:http://www.american.com/archive/2010/september/the-irrelevance-of-modern-political-science at _The American_, which is in part a response to Ezra’s “piece”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/10/AR2010091002671.html.
Hayward writes in response to Klein’s point that politicians could learn from political science:
bq. Well, maybe, but then the ratio of useful political insight to sheer nonsense or turgid number-torturing is pretty poor at the APSA. Who can resist panels or paper topics such as these…
And then he goes on to cherry-pick papers on topics related to political theory and cultural studies and then, oddly, a paper on gender and political candidates, which hardly seems to lack relevance in this age of “Mama Grizzlies.” I could probably try to defend all of these papers in more detail, but there’s no point. Anyone who looks at a large amount of academic research will always find stuff that sounds weird and then make the usual tired jokes. “To wit”:https://themonkeycage.org/2010/08/more_hating_on_political_scien.html.
Hayward goes on:
bq. The real problem with academic political science is its insistence on attempting to emulate the empiricism of economics and other social sciences, such that the multiple regression analysis is considered about the only legitimate tool of the trade. Some regressions surely illuminate, or more often confound, a popular perception of the political world, and it is these findings Klein rightly points out. But, on the other hand, I have often taken a random article from the American Political Science Review, which resembles a mathematical journal on most of its pages, and asked students if they can envision this method providing the mathematical formula that will deliver peace in the Middle East. Even the dullest students usually grasp the point without difficulty.
This is sort of bizarre. Let’s leave aside the notion that “multiple regression analysis” is the “only legitimate tool.” That’s the impression of someone who doesn’t read much political science. I’m more interested in Middle East peace. Here’s my question: if Hayward picks up the American Economic Review, does he envision that their mathematical formulas will produce global prosperity? That’s the standard to which he seems to hold academic research. If so, he should be disappointed by virtually the entire corpus of social science, and perhaps by a decent bit of the hard sciences as well. After all, there’s still that cancer thing.
And, finally, this:
bq. Ask yourself this question: Among policy makers in Washington, are you more likely to find academic economic journals in their offices, or academic political science journals? Why do economists not face the same kind of worry about their “relevance,” even though their mathematical approaches to the subject matter can be even more esoteric and forbidding?
bq. …As my late friend Tom Silver once wrote: “Imagine yourself marooned on a desert island with only ten books to read, but in this case ten books not of your choosing. Suppose them all to be books written by behavior [sic] political scientists during the past twenty years. Question: Do you think that you would die first of boredom, or of self-inflicted wounds?” This is why political practitioners in Washington avoid the APSA.
Here’s the “link”:http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1166/article_detail.asp re Silver, as an fyi. I’ll ignore the snark, and focus instead on the perfectly legitimate question of why economics and economists appear more relevant. I think it has less to do with the failings of political science and more to do with governmental priorities and apparatus it has created to achieve those priorities. These priorities and apparatus revolve around managing the economy (e.g., the CBO, CEA, etc., etc.) Economists appear more relevant not because they are savvy pitchmen or because political scientists write about cultural studies and use regression models, but because government prioritizes the field that economists study. If you look at other areas of the government that prioritize policies closer to political science — such as in the President’s foreign policy team or at the State Dept — you will see a decent contingent of professional political scientists running around. I can think of three at relatively high levels these days: Michael McFaul, Colin Kahl, and Jeremy Weinstein. I can think of others — friends, mostly — who work anonymously in the bureaucratic substrates. I am sure there are more.
The point is that when people criticize a field for its lack of relevance, they are quick to blame the field. I don’t think such criticisms are without merit — and indeed in recent “posts”:https://themonkeycage.org/2010/09/things_political_science_can_d.html I have been advocating for new strategies of promoting political science research. But these criticisms tend to downplay how much the “relevance” of a field depends on ex ante demand, something that is not entirely dependent on the quality of the field itself.