This Is Bad

At first, I thought that this was pretty funny.  You would have to know Gary, to see why it is funny.  But he would absolutely not see why taking a grenade onto a plane would be a problem.


A political science professor at Stanford University who attempted to bring a World War II-era grenade Tuesday afternoon through security at Los Angeles International Airport — forcing police to evacuate a portion of the airport — was being questioned by police Tuesday evening, three law enforcement sources told the Los Angeles News Group. 

Gary Walter Cox, 58, told authorities the grenade had belonged to his father, who had recently died, the sources said. He thought it was inert but a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation said police determined that it might actually have been live. 

The grenade was spotted by Transportation Security Administration workers during routine screening, a federal law enforcement official said. The Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad was called out to the airport, and Terminal 1 was evacuated at about 3:45 p.m. Police transported the item and later blew it up, the three sources said. The terminal was reopened about 4:20 p.m. 

The reasons it is not funny:

1.  He was returning from his dad's funeral.  Dad has been sick for a while, dad's an old military man.  You can see why Gary wasn't really thinking straight, even by Gary standards.

2.  More importantly, they are going to charge him with a felony.  And he had to stay in jail overnight.

So, in short, my tendency to see things as ironic and amusing is just wrong here.  This is terrible.  You'd have to know Gary to understand this, and the judge won't know that.  The facts are not good.

Is Political Science Crumbling?

There's a great word you likely know, but don't use very often.  It's metonymy.  Synechdoche is similar, but it literally means a part for the whole, or the whole for a part.  So "boots on the ground" is synedoche (boots meaning an infantryman, the part standing for the whole), and "US beats China in the finals!" is synedoche (two teams were playing, not the countries, so the whole is standing for the parts).

Anyway, metonymy is a little different, where a symbol or feature stands for something else.  "The Oval Office said today...."  means that the President issued a statement.  The Oval Office is not part of the President, but rather is associated with the President, and can be used to symbolize him.

This picture suggests the metonymy we find in the title for this post:

 APSA headquarters at Dupont Circle:  The apocalypse?  No!  Not now, not if my main man John Aldrich is the new President!  It's morning again in APSA.

With a nod to Anonyman...

You Can Get the Computer to Write Political Science For You

I asked the computer for a randomly generated gibberish sentence in political science. I got this.

The emergence of praxis functions as the conceptual frame for the legitimation of the nation-state.

That's more than a little scary. I'm pretty sure that that was the main argument of Ari Kohen's PhD thesis. Now.... we know.

Madcap Electoral College Hi-Jinks: Remember the Colorado

Them wascawwy Wepubwicans! Gonna take Penn proportional in the Electoral College! And the "fair and balanced" folks at NY Mag had this to say:

Pennsylvania, like every other state, is free to dole out its electoral votes however it wants. Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature as well as the governorship, so if the GOP wants to switch over to a congressional-district apportionment system, all the Democrats can really do is whine. As Nick Baumann points out in Mother Jones today, the same thing could be repeated in other blue states across the country.

Democrats, meanwhile, don't have the ability to retaliate by splitting up the electoral votes of traditionally red states.

Democrats, Democrats, whatchagoando, whatchagoando when Cantor comes for you? Poor defenseless little things!

Except that our brave reporters didn't mention that the Dems have tried this same crap several times, most recently in Colorado. That paragon of virtue Kos was all excited, back then, in 2004. It was GREAT news, a brilliant strategy.

How come it's cheating if the Repubs do it? I agree it's a bad idea, but this seems like pretty selective reporting.

Two Party System

The Daily Show Correspondents explain the two party system.

The Daily Show - The Correspondents Explain - Political Parties - The Two-Party System
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

(Nod to Neanderbill)

Dick Cheney's Erdos number

Yes, he has one, and it's probably lower than yours my friend:

"Cheney's Erdos number is no more than seven. He wrote his American Political Science Review article with Aage Clausen, who has coauthored with Greg Caldeira, who has co-authored with me, who has co-authored with Keith Krebiel, who has co-authored with John Ferejohn, who has co-authored with Peter Fishburn, who has co-authored with Erdos."

The "me" in the above quote is Tim Groseclose, one of the greatest Okies ever, and the quote comes from his awesome new book: "Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind" which drops tomorrow from St. Martin's press. The book is, as Tyler likes to say, self-recommending.

I could have had an Erdos of five, but I was such a crappy co-author that Tim kicked me off the project.

Update: Tim informs me that I'm not kicked off the project, it's just "indefinitely on hold".

The great compromiser explained

"Goofy possible Republican Presidential candidates makes it unnecessary for Obama to satisfy his liberal supporters."

--Rafael Yglesias

Rafael writes one of my absolute favorite Twitter feeds.

Persuasion and Spatial Theory

How Large and Long-lasting Are the Persuasive Effects of Televised Campaign
Ads? Results from a Randomized Field Experiment

Alan Gerber et al.
American Political Science Review, February 2011, Pages 135-150

Abstract: We report the results of the first large-scale experiment involving paid
political advertising. During the opening months of a 2006 gubernatorial campaign, approximately $2 million of television and radio advertising on behalf of the incumbent candidate was deployed experimentally. In each experimental media market, the launch date and volume of television advertising were randomly assigned. In order to gauge movement in public opinion, a tracking poll conducted brief telephone interviews with approximately 1,000 registered voters each day and a brief follow-up one month after the conclusion of the television campaign. Results indicate that televised ads have strong but short-lived effects on voting preferences. The ephemeral nature of these effects is more consistent with psychological models of priming than with models of on-line processing.
----------------------

A Spatial Theory of Media Slant and Voter Choice

J. Duggan & C. Martinelli
Review of Economic Studies, April 2011, Pages 640-666

Abstract: We develop a theory of media slant as a systematic filtering of political
news that reduces multidimensional politics to the one-dimensional space perceived by voters. Economic and political choices are interdependent in our theory: expected electoral results influence economic choices, and economic choices in turn influence voting behaviour. In a two-candidate election, we show that media favouring the front-runner will focus on issues unlikely to deliver a surprise, while media favoring the underdog will gamble for resurrection. We characterize the socially optimal slant and show that it coincides with the one favoured by the underdog under a variety of circumstances. Balanced media, giving each issue equal coverage, may be worse for voters than partisan media.

Nod to Kevin Lewis

Women Do More Work Around the House...and the Senate!

The Jackie (and Jill) Robinson Effect: Why Do Congresswomen Outperform
Congressmen?

Sarah Anzia & Christopher Berry
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming

Abstract: If voters are biased against female candidates, only the most talented,
hardest working female candidates will succeed in the electoral process. Furthermore, if women perceive there to be sex discrimination in the electoral process, or if they underestimate their qualifications for office, then only the most qualified, politically ambitious females will emerge as candidates. We argue that when either or both forms of sex-based selection are present, the women who are elected to office will perform better, on average, than their male counterparts. We test this central implication of our theory by studying the relative success of men and women in delivering federal spending to their districts and in sponsoring legislation. Analyzing changes within districts over time, we find that congresswomen secure roughly 9 percent more spending from federal discretionary programs than congressmen. Women also sponsor and cosponsor significantly more bills than their male colleagues.

*******************************

Who Does More Housework: Rich or Poor? A Comparison of 33 Countries

Jan Paul Heisig
American Sociological Review, February 2011, Pages 74-99

Abstract: This article studies the relationship between household income and housework time across 33 countries. In most countries, low-income individuals do more housework than their high-income counterparts; the differences are even greater for women’s domestic work time. The analysis shows that the difference between rich and poor women’s housework time falls with economic development and rises with overall economic inequality. I use a cross-national reinterpretation of arguments from the historical time-use literature to show that this is attributable to the association between economic development and the diffusion of household technologies and to the association between economic inequality and the prevalence of service consumption among high-income households. Results for a direct measure of technology diffusion provide striking evidence for the first interpretation. The findings question the widespread notion that domestic technologies have had little or no impact on women’s housework time. On a general level, I find that gender inequalities are fundamentally conditioned by economic inequalities. A full understanding of the division of housework requires social scientists to go beyond couple-level dynamics and situate households and individuals within the broader social and economic structure.

(Nod to Kevin Lewis)

They are who we thought they were

In a fascinating new NBER working paper (ungated version here), Bertrand, Bombardini, & Trebbi try to sort out whether it's expertise or connections that make lobbyists valuable. Here's the bottom line (the extra emphasis is mine, not theirs):

"A pure issue expertise view of lobbying does not fit the data well. Instead, maintaining connections to politicians appears central to what lobbyists do. In particular, we find that whom lobbyists are connected to (through political campaign donations) directly affects what they work on. More importantly, lobbyists appear to systematically switch issues as the politicians they were previously connected to switch committee assignments, hence following people they know rather than sticking to issues. We also find evidence that lobbyists that have issue expertise earn a premium, but we uncover that such a premium for lobbyists that have connections to many politicians and Members of Congress is considerably larger."

Somehow, those results reminded me of this:

Tonight's the Night

Bruce Berry and Mungowitz were/are both working men, and while Bruce is gone, you can see Mungo tonight at 7:00 at OU (181 Hester Hall)!

Be sure to introduce yourself to he or I as a KPC reader!

Here's the ad one more time, just because it's so cool:

So You Want to Be a Political Scientist?

So You Want to Be a Political Scientist?

Video

nod to @kohenari

The Capitalist Peace

You hear a lot of crap about "democratic peace." "Capitalist peace" is more like it, as others have said.

"Trade networks and the Kantian peace," (working paper version)
Han Dorussen & Hugh Ward, Journal of Peace Research, January 2010, Pages 29-42

Abstract: Classical-liberal arguments about the pacifying effects of international trade are revisited, and it is argued that they consistently refer to the ability of trade to provide ‘connections’ between people and to create a perceived ‘global community’. Dependency and openness are commonly used to test for any pacifying effects of trade in the current literature, but these measures fail to capture some of the classical liberals’ key insights. Several network measures are introduced in order to give natural expression to and to develop the classical-liberal view that trade linkages reduce interstate conflict. These measures applied to trade flows are incorporated in the Russett & Oneal triangulating-peace model. The main results are that trade networks are indeed pacifying in that both direct and indirect trade linkages matter, and as the global trade network has become more dense over time, the importance of indirect links by way of specific third countries has declined, and the general embeddedness of state dyads in the trade network has become more relevant. These findings suggest that the period since World War II has seen progressive realization of the classical-liberal ideal of a security community of trading states.

Background.... More.... The Final Word.

Idiots.

(Nod to Kevin L)

Change of government in Chile

Since the end of Pinochet's dictatorship in 1990, Chilean presidential elections had been won by the left coalition group Concertación. Yesterday, Concertación lost the presidency to a candidate of the right, businessman Sebastian Piñera.  This is partly because they ran a very poor candidate in ex-president Eduardo Frei, and partly because the coalition itself is unraveling.

As far as I know, there haven't been any denunciations from the Chavez - Ortega - Morales - Correa axis as of yet, perhaps because, by their standards, Concertación is not a really a left party.

Harry Shearer dishes on polysci

DIA: You were a politics major at UCLA, but I've also read that you did some graduate work at Harvard. What was that all about?

Mr Shearer: Firstly, it was about staying out of the draft. Secondly, it was about urban government. And thirdly, it was about discovering that I really had had enough of academe, most particularly since my writing style—given my proclivity for mimicry—had grown as tediously unreadable as that of any other "political science" practitioner.

Gee, he says it like it's a BAD thing!

Whole article here.

Fail, thy name is Heagerty

Political Science LOL

There is a nice little polysci journal called the Journal of Politics. I published one paper there with Mungowitz way back in 1993. I still review for polysci journals and recently got a request from the JOP to review a piece. I said yes, somehow missing in the email the fact that the editors of this journal have completely lost their minds.

Today I got a "gentle reminder" that my review was due on June 9. It was a WTF moment because I had only agreed to review the paper on May 19!! The reminder letter said they had a policy of "reasonable turnaround" so I figured this was a weird typo/screw up. Then I went back and looked at the original request email. And it said that they wanted the review IN THREE WEEKS.

YIKES!!!

Here is the message I sent back to the editors:

"Wow. I can't believe you expect reviews in three weeks. Here is what I can give you. I have skimmed the paper and found it on a first look to be superficial and boring. I have no plans to complete a review in the next week or two. I honestly have to say that your turnaround policy is abusive. I guess I didn't notice the "deadline" TWO WEEKS AGO when I first agreed to do the review. I think you'd better find another reviewer and leave me off your list of potential reviewers in the future. I am still shaking my head in astonishment about the message you just sent me.

Good luck with implementing this policy,

Kevin"

(Somewhere, Don Boudreaux is smiling)

Who in the world are they going to get to do referee reports in 3 weeks, and if they do find people willing to do it, how bad are those reports going to be? Look, referee reports are 3-6 months. That's just how it is. All a 3 week policy is going to do is piss people off.

There is no doubt that long delays in getting feedback from journals is unprofessional and unnecessary. I have a piece with an ex-student that sat for 11 months before we got a review (which was a straightforward R&R) and now the revised version has been sitting for about 8 months. I almost don't remember what the paper is about! But trying to combat long delays by setting an absurdly short deadline is counterproductive and silly.

(UPDATE: Note the ANGUS wrote this, not Mungowitz. And, in the hopes of generating infinite citations, I add this link, that links to us, that links to....)

The wonders of Latin American Politics

As I was reflecting on how Alberto Fujimori went from hero to zero in Peru, I saw a news story that Evo Morales was going on a hunger strike to force the legislature to set a firm date for his next election. And I thought to myself, (a) that's crazy, but not unprecedented, and (b) it won't last for long. I then remembered Carlos Salinas going on a hunger strike after his brother's arrest. That one lasted around 45 minutes or so IIRC. Even Vladimir Montesinos went on a prison hunger strike. He allegedly made it 9 days before quitting, though our Peruvian friend and co-author Rodolfo said that the guards were sneaking him candy bars the whole time!

As I now reflected on crazy in Latin American politics, my mind flashed to Abdala Buraram who had a cup of coffee as president of Ecuador before being shown the door due to mental deficiency (I am not making this up).

Then people, I struck gold: photos of Bucaram and Fujimori (a Lebanese guy and an Japanese guy eating cuy together while wearing traditional Andean indigenous outfits. Feast your eyes:





and by cuy, I mean your children's pet hamsters!

Damned Voters!

Literally, according to a new NBER working paper by Robinson and Torvik (ungated version here), entitled "The Real Swing Voter's Curse".

"A central idea in political economy is that voters who are not ideologically attached to a political party, so-called ‘swing voters,’ attract policy favors and redistribution because they become the focus of electoral competition. In many parts of the world, however, politicians do not just use carrots to win elections, they also use sticks - coercion and violence. In this paper we show that expanding the ‘policy space’ to incorporate this can completely overturn the predictions of the standard model. The reason for this is simple. With all groups of voters at play, political competition does indeed lead to a chase for the support of swing voters. In equilibrium this enables such voters to extract a large amount of rent from politicians. Anticipating this, politicians have an incentive to use violence to effectively disenfranchise swing voters. Indeed, and surprisingly, we show that it can be more attractive for an incumbent to disenfranchise the swing voters than the core supporters of the opposition. Swing voters are not blessed but cursed."

After developing a model, they go on to argue that something very much like this has been going on in Zimbabwe.

Sympathy From the Devil

"Influenced by Adam Smith, Darwin believed that a sense of sympathy is essential for the existence of a workable society. That accounts for having a concern for the welfare of others, but not for why one organism within a society will come to the aid of another when to do so is risky or expensive. There are various possible ways of explaining such behavior, some of which Darwin considered...he invoked group selection, with the tribe the unit that gets selected. This may seem odd at first, but consider Darwin's experience during the Beagle voyage. He repeatedly saw evidence of one tribe exterminating another, and found native peoples in decline when thrown into competition with the more economically advanced." [Ghiselin, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming]

"We suggest that in fact social Darwinists came to regard sympathy, the social glue of small groups, as an impediment to racial perfection because it allowed the 'unfit' to survive...The loss of sympathy is tied up with the question of how ideas of race entered into 19th century economics. A critical step occurred when Darwin's Descent of Man proposed that concern for the 'greatest happiness' be replaced with concern for the 'greatest good,' which is defined as racial perfection effected through 'natural selection'...The question is how did economics move from universalism to a form of particularism? Our answer is that The Economist served as a network for late 19th century racial theorizing in British economics...When Spencer's reciprocity norm was replaced by 'natural selection' in which the killer has higher rank than the killed, economics changed. We have conjectured (Peart and Levy 2005) that the coming of 'natural selection' into economics meant the end of sympathy as an analytical construction. Sympathy was an impediment to the law of the strong." [Levy & Peart, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming]

(Nod to Kevin L)