New in The Conversation from Tim Slack and @smonnat.bsky.social Shannon Monnat: "6 myths about rural America: How conventional wisdom gets it wrong" 1/ theconversation.com/6-myths-abou...

Congress scholars call them "show horses" vs. "workhorses," but you're right that it applies to most elite professions, incl. academia & media.

i think a (perhaps underappreciated) aspect of this whole situation is the extent to which every elite profession is filled with people who excel at drawing attention and want to be famous more than they want to do the actual job

what a time

From talking to several business leaders, it's also not how they want to operate. It's more expensive, more uncertain, and degrading. But they are struggling with building institutions to overcome their own collective action problem. Luckily I see some progress on that front...

There's never been a better, more important time to map out the structure of the real productive economy

This bears an important observation, I think. If Trump is truly checked out, there is no president as singular agent with moral liability as envisioned by Article II. And three factions in a trench coat isn't constitutional either.

Or there’s also this. I am full of helpful explications. kieranhealy.org/blog/archive...

some literature for the people: @mattgrossmann.bsky.social, "How Social Science Got Better: Overcoming Bias with More Evidence, Diversity, and Self-Reflection" academic.oup.com/book/39935?l...

Folks look at you like you're crazy when you say we're in the midst of the worst, most unprecedented Article I constitutional crisis in American history, & then it's a day, & the president is illegally monetizing the office & stealing the power of the purse. Again.

Broad generalization of my time in both fields, so forgive me, but: political scientists are far more aware of the contours and nuances inherent in the practice of the scientific method while physicists are more likely to admit the limits of the scientific method in producing understanding.

FIFA is a great example of a powerful, well-connected, corrupt organization for whom any given power claiming "indivisible sovereignty" would find it extremely challenging to discipline. That seems to include the US now too.

Once you see them for what they are, it's safe to ignore them and go about your day.

I'll be there and so will all my friends! Should be a fun time.

🚨Today is the final day to register for the Association of Law and Political Economy's inaugural conference🚨 And even if you are unable to attend the conference, you can still join @a-lpe.bsky.social as a member and vote in the spring elections! Links to both can be found in the post below!

7 months ago, some of us argued that young people are highly responsive to the "nature of the times" (Campbell et al 1960) because they are relatively less politically engaged. Thus, their pro-Republican movement in 2024 was likely not a stable generational difference. It looks like we were right.

Dawg what is going on with grandpa

My default typeface until I started submitting to journals with typeface preferences

The question is not “Times New Roman” (boring) or “Calibri” (also boring). The real question goes like this: why are you all not using “Garamond”? #TeamGaramond

Love to be on Bluesky, the place where we can all get together and rag on political scientists and lawyers (including the political scientists and lawyers)

This is where a science of industrial policy married with new international post-Bretton Woods institutions would do the trick.

The pathway to some kinds of first world re-industrualization is possible, but it requires using a thousand different policy levers (and diffferent ones in each country/industry) and also probably no small amount of international co-operation, per Pettis.

solution: study political theory, which no one thinks is a science

the thing about the Free Press types is that when you push them on their actual ideology, it's NIMBYism

the weirdest thing to me. is that the closest thing to an american volk. that actually exists (a true source of culture that has lived here for centuries) is black america but do we see the major newspapers interviewing black night shift nurses or teachers at practically segregated schools? no

I think those of us with experience teaching at elite institutions kinda know already which corners get cut and how that translates into elite consciousness. A lot of the current elite failure and revolt is not surprising.

I love seeing this type of guy in the wild. Like spotting a rare endangered bird

The funny thing is that our post Citizens United landscape both heightens the salience of party brands as coordinating mechanisms while also obliterating the ability for a putative central coordinating authority to exercise control over the brand and the whip

sorry buckos but the political party is the fundamental building block of democratic politics

Gunnell's The Descent of Political Theory is one of the best books for tracing how the label "science" hot attached to the study of politics (or more precisely, political administration) press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Anyways, for people who want to understand the state of modern manufacturing, I recommend Pettis's article for PW here: www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/tra...

I think politicians, political operatives, and pundits should read *more* political science, not less, and in particular enough to understand that empirical patterns (e.g. loss of presidential party in midterm years) are equilibrium outcomes but not self-executing laws of nature.

This. Don’t blame political scientists for the selective reading, &/or lazy, bad, or silly application of our theories or empirics to electoral practice. The idea that politicians & operatives read <too much> PS is absurd. As are MY’s constant accusations that we’re all partisan hacks.

Seems like a lot of voters might be interested in Trump's position on birthright citizenship, stated here, which would logically extend retroactively to strip millions of people of their US citizenship

My 'American democracy is still working' shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt www.theguardian.com/us-news/live...

to me, I just view “perhaps we should teach more humanities again” as an attempt to regain some balance - which I do think is very important! - and not as an argument for humanities supremacy. the point is there shouldn’t be supremacy regarding the basis of human knowledge, imo

Aside from the more obvious issues here, a more sophisticated notion of the tension between mandation vs. representation needs to make a comeback

Great piece. Incidentally, "nabob" is where we get "nob" as in "Nob Hill" in San Francisco. Plus ça change.

Great question

Calibri is too woke

Yeah. Immigration is great. I owe my life to immigration. Everything I enjoy and think good resulted from some act of immigration. We should have a lot more of it, and make it hella easy.

one way the media really fucked us over when it came to trump was portraying him as a big-time, powerful exec who had a ton of world class executive experience, when in reality he was an LLC king who got most of what he had by ripping off people he hired to do the work and cheating on his taxes

These books are why I've dedicated my life to being the highest paid political scientist in the world

Incidentally, I don’t think it’s well known in the U.S. but David Lodge’s Campus Trilogy is a really fun look at literature, teaching, and morality/purpose. Sadly it’s also a record of a vanished golden age of travel funding and conferences.

Really interesting (and necessary) thread!! It seems that good mentorship can significantly reduce barriers for many low-SES PhD students. We, as postdocs, can also help reduce these barriers by informally sharing our knowledge about norms and customs in academia with our younger colleagues.

I'd argue that there is a difference between the critical practice of the humanities and the broader category of exposure to it. I'd guess that neither are sufficient, nor necessary, to achieve decency, but that the former curated wisely makes it more likely.

The Blue Bottle in my neighborhood is regrettably where a lot of liberal tech Dem orthodoxy is devised and incubated. Good coffee and friendly staff tho

Overruling Humphrey's Executor will, in fact, result in a major diminution of democratic accountability

For anyone who hasn't been in a PhD program in a while, the socially accepted outer limits amongst one's peers for "just faffing about, exploring stuff" have been severely constrained, thanks to a narrowing job market, rising levels of publication, and selecting for generally conservative students