Post-Autistic Economics Network Global Economic News Paecon Home Page PAE Review

www.paecon.net THE PERESTROIKA MOVEMENT from the post-autistic economics review, issue no. 6, May 8, 2001 Revolt in Political Science Kurt Jacobsen  (University of Chicago)  In the United States the post-autistic economics movement has reverberated most powerfully in political science departments. There, as in economics, it increasingly is the pure elegance and artificial neatness of models, not their relation to real world activities, that reap the greatest rewards. Every other kind of scholar - and there still are many kinds - has gotten the disturbingly clear message that there is one right way and they need not apply. There was ample tinder for a spark to ignite. One might imagine that the American Political Science Association preaches that the best governing system, despite all its faults, is a democratic one, but APSA luminaries obviously display grave doubts as to how far democracy ought to be allowed to go. From inception the Association never entertained the wildly radical notion of conducting internal elections. What rules is a cozy arrangement whereby a committee chosen by the president nominates its successor members who picks the next governing council who pick the next president, and so on. Disgruntled political scientists link the absence of democracy in the organization to the suffocating disciplinary dominance, especially in the last decade, of formal models and rational choice theory. Rational choice theory derives from neo-classical economics, which ambitious political scientists notice grabs lots of Nobel Prizes. The theory deploys a set of assumptions about behaviour that boil down complicated lives and societies to prioritised "rational" choices in any given situation. In short, political science is sanctifying a chalkboard universe inhabited by "homo economicus,:" which, in the name of utility maximization, tries to erase all trace of culture, history, personality or any quirky quality that might smudge the one size fits all  model. Rational choice undeniably has its merits when used with a bit of humility, especially in studies of collective action. For many scholars, however, it dangles the tantalising appearance of a skeleton key to open everything, although ensuing explanations, critics find are usually trivial, obvious or require psychiatric treatment to restore contact with reality. Rational choice modelers quickly became notorious in political science for forming potent coteries, partly because they wield a common catechism. The APSA of late has been run by rational choice exponents or sympathizers and its flagship journal, the American Political Science Review, reflects their unbending bent. Dissidents complain that rational choice modelers cannot admit that equations are metaphors as much as any literary image deployed by a supposedly "soft" social scientist. Giandomenico Majone, a mathematically trained political scientist who lectures in the US and Europe, suggests the problem lies less with formal models than the excesses of undereducated enthusiasts: "You should know more than the tool you use." Indeed. The revolt erupted last November with a mass e-mailing by "Mr. Perestroika" - probably a junior faculty aware of French events - who excoriated "poor game-theorists who cannot for the life of me compete with a third grade economics student " yet crush the "diversity of methodologies and areas of the world that APSA 'purports' to represent." (Perestroika, according to its - ahem - original sponsors, promoted the "vital creativity" of society's members; development of democracy, "initiative and independence" and "the widening of criticism and self-criticism in all spheres of social life.") In a month a two-tiered movement of insurgents crystallized, divided between those who could and could not afford to reveal their identities. By January 222 senior faculty, including 24 named chairs, signed a reform petition, drafted by Yale professor Rogers Smith. "It is about getting pluralism back into political science," said Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, Distinguished Service Professor at Chicago University. "Why does the [Association and the Journal] seem so intensely focused on technical methods at the expense of the great substantive political questions?" In response APSR editor Ada Finifter (since succeeded by Lee Seligman) asserted that all was well so long as scholars provided "high-quality work using methods appropriate to the research problem." Finifter categorized work outside formal methods as "interpretive" - clearly second class citizens. Perestroikan Greg Kasza of Indiana university beheld the logic: "One scholar works inductively from diverse sources of empirical data to develop a qualified middle theory of how some aspect of politics has worked in particular conditions. His work is 'interpretive.' Another posits assumptions about human behavior observed nowhere and deduces from them a grand scheme of theoretical axioms. She is providing us with 'systematic and reliable knowledge'? About what? If the former is 'interpretive,' might we call the latter "imaginary"?" Still, a conciliatory APSA just selected a Perestroika-backed candidate as President, Harvard's Theda Skocpol. Dissidents hope Skocpol will help carry out, as Mr. Perestroika put it, a "dismantling of the Orwellian system that we have in the APSA." Meanwhile, they are publicizing their cause, recruiting sympathizers and working out an agenda. It speaks volumes that young scholars fear to reveal their identities in a profession that purports to prize vigorous and open exchange. APSA deputy director Robert Hauck, presumably a student of the way power actually works, expressed surprise that anyone needed to shield themselves. New APSA Council nominee James Scott of Yale University vows to push the perestroika platform. Perestroikans agree that the scholarly objective is "high-quality work using methods appropriate to the research problem," but echo the pae movement in arguing that "the problem dictates the method," not vice versa. Perestroikans also aim to improve democracy outside their profession. These increasingly otherworldly methods "in the social sciences make it difficult to communicate with and make our work relevant to the wider public," argues Chicago University politics professor of politics Lloyd Rudolph. "We have to know and live with differences within our profession as well as in the world."