Here’s my logic:
1) In a recession, we are likely to get more people applying to graduate school in political science. If we assume that the quality of these new applicants (in other words, the folks who wouldn’t normally have applied had the economy been performing better) is distributed in a roughly similar manner to the quality of regular applicants (in other words, those who would have applied regardless of the state of the economy), then it should be possible to fill Ph.D. programs with higher quality students (simply because there will be more of them in the applicant pool).
2) If we then assume that the quality of a given student leaving a Ph.D. program is a function of (i) the quality of the graduate training he or she has received (ii) his or her innate talent and (iii) the quality of the other people in his or her graduate cohort, then it stands to reason that as long as we have higher quality students entering Ph.D. programs, we should also see a higher quality of students leaving Ph.D. programs
3) If we then assume that the overall quality of political science research improves when we have higher quality scholars entering the profession, then taken together this suggests that the recession should lead to better political science down the road. Indeed, one could even argue that political science needs a recession every once in a while to reinvigorate the talent pool!
So assuming my logic is sound, the interesting questions seems to be how we could go about testing this proposition empirically. The first thing we’d need to do is check whether or not application rates to political science Ph.D. programs increase when the economy is in recession. I’d suggest that this fall would be the time to watch, but we could also go back and collect historical data on admissions rates in previous recessions.
The trickier question would be how we could go about measuring the “quality” of particular sets of graduate cohorts. I have some ideas in this regard (e.g., what proportions of major journal publications come from particular cohorts, patterns of lifetime achievement awards), but would be curious as to whether anyone is aware if any study of this type (identifying particularly successful graduate cohorts) has ever been attempted before.
In the meantime, keep an eye on your next couple cohorts of graduate students. If they seem exceptionally good, then perhaps you have the economy to thank!