The filibuster is bad when it constrains the good guys but good when it constrains the bad guys

What is the point of democracy in this world?

This sentiment is more common in my field than I expected when I entered it. In this line of thinking, what is the role of a demos in a democratic system?

Grumbach is external validity pilled, it's happening

I'm sympathetic to Dave's points, but also wonder what did we collectively expect? The political actors doing this stuff do not see academia as a non-ideological truth machine, and I'm not sure we make a convincing case that they should. It's easy to find colleagues who explicitly reject that model.

Students are entering a world where Gen AI will be widely available. We must teach them to use it as a complement for the skills we teach, not resist it as a substitute. A corollary is, we must teach skills that AI cannot reliably replicate reasonably well. Being honest, we often don't.

This is true. But it’s also true that SS/HUM defines literatures, fac lines, and whole fields in ways that appeal to progressives and reinforce their worldview. It’s not healthy for academia, intellectually or politically.

Bednar is providing great content and clear voice on administrative problems under Trump. This is essential reading.

I wish this were true. I don't think it is.

It’s unfortunate that Defund was such a profoundly bad idea, that it now takes up all oxygen in conversation about parties and law enforcement. It’s also not a serious argument whether the D party is full top to bottom of electeds and allies that favor less robust law enforcement and prosecution.

One thing I always wondered about work on extremism penalties is, how to better account for strategic choice of platforms by candidates. If candidates chose to maximize e(vote share), then any randomly assigned deviation should make them do a little worse, but locally, its effect should be small.

This is a great paper

People will literally say "I don't do formal theory, that's just making stuff up" and then use polity scores

This is giving strong doomsday clock vibes. Building a scientifically credible measurement scale for socially important events takes a very special kind of disposition, and I do not think this is it.

I do not see how this is *not* about policy disagreement. The reason to upend constitutional order is to change what the government does, I.e. policy.

GOP presidents take different (legal) actions to control the executive branch, not because they have stronger will, but because they face a more acute problem of control. The agency loss for a GOP president is larger than for Dem presidents, and the difference is growing.

This is as good a time as any to post a paper I've been working on with @LindseyGailmard: The Persistence and Fragility of Bureaucratic Capacity. We ask: what makes bureaucratic capacity persist, and what makes *threats* to bureaucratic capacity hard to reverse?

Why are critics of social media companies so interested in the personal status of their CEOs? Who cares if Mark Zuckerberg is a pathetic nerd, you don’t have a personal relationship with him.

Not a FB user, but I am glad they are getting rid of fact checking. It seems pointless at best -- the shared commitments that support a healthy polity are not really about neutral referees -- and often does seem to favor Democrats in specific cases. The study below is not convincing to me.

This is all true, but there are deeper problems than not *pulling* punches. Much of academia has a strong ideological slant, which makes it hard to think of a full range of critiques of a given piece of research in the first place. We think of the ones that educated liberals are inclined to notice.

My dispatch from way down in the termite mound: Chatbots in academia seem something like having a research assistant that is extremely diligent, cheap to the user, and about as capable for many tasks as a college junior (+/- ). I guess I don't know if that's good or bad...

I won’t opine on what constitutes real economics, but one good reason to impugn the rationality of individuals in politics is to justify ignoring their inconvenient demands.

Occasional reminder that formal modeling is free

I’m afraid that part of the problem is we make the attacks very easy. My university published a sample DEI rubric which downgraded applicants who aspired to treat all students equally. This isn’t a “liberal value” I recognize and it creates an exposed right flank.

Strongly recommend this book

I made an HPE starter pack, please join in if you are here for HPE and Broadstreet!

I simply do not think it's an assault on democracy for the president to appoint people who will do what he wants, even if they are bad people or bad at their jobs. An assault on democracy is when the president cannot be held accountable for maladministration, because they subvert elections.

My hottest disciplinary take is that the comparative-American separation in US departments exists for the protection (and benefit) of the former, not the latter.

Stoked for this. Looks like an incredible book.

Math ensures two things: that stated claims actually follow from premises, and all implications of the same premises can be found. If it’s done correctly, in equilibrium you don’t need to read the math in detail to get the ideas. That doesn’t mean the math is irrelevant.

Tried to put together a list of pol econ people (both theory and empirics) on bsky: go.bsky.app/UhWxdmh Probably missing a lot of names: let me know who I should add!

Haha no serious discipline would use a quantitative index to measure major sociopolitical change to such a precise degree without a transparent connection to the underlying variables that generate it oh wait

Agree with this. Collective faculty statements are different from statements by administrators. There may be rationale for administration to implement "institutional neutrality" on itself, which I don't mind. Admins as such do not have academic freedom. But...

Thoughtful piece here. I feel that much of empirical social science at present is aimed at gaining control in the world. I wonder what will happen when we all have to realize we cannot have it.

Coming in 2024! Cover art day is a good day. There are also blurbs and you can even order a copy: tinyurl.com/4e35mjef Intro chapter: www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~gailmard/em...