A common Ground for Poli Sci

Greg Mankiw spends so time talking about core beliefs shared by most if not all economists. his point has everything to do with restoring faith in academic economics after watching the interdepartmental fights of the last six months, but a friend of mine raised an interesting issue.

Could a Professor of Political Science make such a claim? could and Anthropologist? could a Historian?

I think the answer is a pretty resounding no, though it could be interesting to try to come up with one. But my instinct is at the end of the day, your ideological bend, or the 'school of thought' to which you belong within these disciplines is just to critical to your understanding of the world to be able to find much in the way of common ground.

Part of me feels that this may begin to touch on what the true split between social science and science lies. Scientist not only agree on the way in which inquiry is pursued (lots of historians share notions about what constitutes valid historical proof as well), but also a key notions about how the universe operates. Regardless of whether you think AIDS research breakthroughs will come from one line of drugs or the other, there is a shared understanding about how the disease functions, what its effects on the host are, and what the end goal of stopping the disease looks like.

Equivalent problems in other fields, like 'the rise of democracy in previously autocratic nation' have to grapple with issues like what democratic process is, how a society becomes democratic, and what a democracy in its final form should look like. While social science may try to incorporate the methods of science, it lacks the level of definitional and mechanical clarity that true science posses.

And that's what makes it fasinating.

Happy Valentines Day

Sorry for the drop in posts/ the role... conference takes it out of a girl.

so to make up for it im posting this gem by Mr. Walt of Canbridge, Mass (H/T to my father... who might know me too well)

At any rate I'm happy to say (respectfully) that, seeing as Realist are all a load of crap, I follow very few of the following dictates:

To begin with, any romantic partnership is essentially an alliance, and alliances are a core concept on international relations. Alliances bring many benefits to the members (or else why would we form them?) but as we also know, they sometimes reflect irrational passions and inevitably limit each member's autonomy. Many IR theorists believe that institutionalizing an alliance makes it more effective and enduring, but that’s also why making a relationship more formal is a significant step that needs to be carefully considered.

Of course, IR theorists have also warned that allies face the twin dangers of abandonment and entrapment: the more we fear that our partners might leave us in the lurch (abandonment), the more likely we are to let them drag us into obligations that we didn't originally foresee (entrapment). When you find yourself gamely attending your partner’s high school reunion or traveling to your in-laws for Thanksgiving dinner every single year, you’ll know what I mean.

Realists have long argued that bipolar systems are the most stable. So if any of you lovers out there are thinking of adding more major actors to the system, please reconsider. As most of us eventually learn, trying to juggle romantic relationships in a multi-polar setting usually leads to crises, and sometimes to open warfare. It's certainly not good for alliance stability.

IR theory also warns us that shifts in the balance of power are dangerous. There's an obvious warning here: relationships are more likely to have trouble if one partner's status or power changes rapidly. So that big promotion that you both celebrated may be a good thing overall, but it's likely to alter expectations and force you and your partner to make serious adjustments. The same is true if one of you gets laid off. Bottom line: it can take a lot of patience and love to work through a major shift in the balance of power within a relationship.

Even the best relationships have their bumpy moments, of course, because even human beings who love each other deeply can have trouble figuring out what the other person wants and why they are acting as they are. IR theorists have written lots of smart things about misperception, and it's good to keep some of them in mind. We tend to see our own behavior as constrained by our circumstances, for example, while attributing the behavior of others to their own attributes and wants. "I'm doing this because I have to, but he's acting this way because that’s just who he is!" This sort of perceptual bias is potent recipe for conflict spirals, something IR theorists have long warned about. A small disagreement occurs, and each person's attempt to defend their own position starts to look like an aggressive and unjustified attack. And so we discover another core IR concept: escalation.

I'm hoping a few readers are nodding their heads in agreement at this point.

Which brings me to an especially helpful IR concept: appeasement. The term has been unfairly denigrated since Munich, but it is a critical strategy for preserving any romantic relationship. And if you don't believe me, ask my wife, who made me put this paragraph in.

So maybe learning some IR theory can actually help your love life. If it does, and you're lucky enough to find the right person, and then you might decide you want to institutionalize the relationship by getting married. (This assumes that you're straight, of course, or fortunate enough to live in a part of the world that recognizes the rights of gay people to marry as well).

And then the two of you might also decide to mobilize your combined resources and grow your own alliance network -- i.e., have kids -- either via the traditional method or by adopting. If you do, you'll get to learn about a whole new set of IR concepts, like deterrence, coercion, salami tactics, and overcommitment. But that's another set of problems, and maybe I'll wait till Father's Day to blog about them.

Happy long weekend to all, and good luck to the Harvard delegation.