For the political scientists in the audience: which of the following theories about the APSA “meat market” is true?

1. Schools use the meat market primarily as a way to whittle down the applicant pool.
2. Schools use the meat market primarily as a substitute for telephone interviews.
3. Some combination of the above.

These theories suggest radically different strategies for job-seekers, so it would be nice to know which one is valid (if any).

Related question: I have never met anyone who got a job—or an offer, or even an on-campus interview—in political science after interviewing at the meat market. Do such people actually exist?

Paul Brewer presents the results of a content analysis of The Daily Show conducted by some of his students and himself; the statistics lend credence to suggestions that TDS presents a lot of political information to its viewers.

Mind you, whether this is an appropriate substitute for making citizens sit through The NewsHour is an open question, one best left to people with a far more normative bent than my own.

This weather is obscenely hot and miserable. All I want to do these days is curl up next to an air conditioning vent and sleep.

Getting in the way of that plan: I have to teach, pack, and apply for jobs. Yes, you read that right: even though I have a perfectly good job that I’m not starting for another month, I’m already applying for jobs* starting in the fall of 2006. Academe (particularly, but not exclusively, political science) is insane.

Puerto Rico had an “Anne Heche moment” today when voters approved a referendum that may eventually lead to another referendum that would amend the commonwealth’s constitution to get rid of one house of the legislature and create a unicameral Legislative Assembly starting in 2009.

While in the post-Wesberry v. Sanders era (the real “one man, one vote” case, rather than its predecessor Baker v. Carr) the existence of upper houses can be viewed as a vestige of an earlier era, nonetheless 49 states have retained an upper house, partly for reasons of inertia, but also (perhaps) taking heed of counsel from James Madison in Federalist 51:

In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit. It may even be necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments by still further precautions.

State governments in general tend to be more legislature-dominant than the federal government—members of the judiciary in most states have to run for reelection, circumscribing their freedom of action, while the executive branch in many states is comprised of various (often competing) elected officials rather than a single governor heading an appointed cabinet—so the argument for Madison’s position in the case of states is rather sound.

þ: Steven Taylor, who notes a “pernicious Nebraska influence” going on here.

Today’s Washington Post carries a front-page article that (inadvertently) explains why empirically-oriented political scientists* like myself for the most part avoid doing anything that has anything close to real-world implications. And, it’s a no-win situation unless you’re a raging lefty “new politics” type (i.e., the sort who wouldn’t be hired by Democrats or Republicans to do this sort of work in the first place): somehow I doubt those in our discipline who want our discipline to be more “relevant” will be cheering the efforts of my future colleagues Peter Feaver and Christopher Gelpi to reinforce public support for the Iraq war and the War on Terror.

James Joyner’s comments further underscore the reasons for this reluctance:

Peter Baker and Dan Balz have a front page editorial, er “analysis,” at the Washington Post pointing out that President Bush is a politician who crafts his public speeches with his audience in mind. Even more damning is the suggestion that he hires experts to advise him.

Another data point: a few weeks ago, I made the mistake of trying to explain 50 years of empirical public opinion research to a reporter for the Jackson Free Press (for this article) who was asking why nobody voted in Jackson’s mayoral race, and all I got for it was being accused of being a “cynic.” Talk about shooting the messenger.

Here’s a new one: a parliamentary leader who wants to lose a vote of no confidence:

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will call a vote of confidence in the German parliament on Friday as part of his plan to hold early elections.

Schroeder is hoping he will lose the vote of deputies in the Bundestag, a move that would allow him to resign as chancellor and call fresh elections in the autumn—probably in mid-September.

He would then begin campaigning for a fresh mandate to push through tough economic reforms.

There’s some background on Germany’s rather unusual confidence procedures here at Wikipedia (the standard Wikipedia caveat applies)—there are actually two different types of confidence vote, one of which replaces the chancellor (the “constructive” vote that most comparative politics textbooks talk about) and the other of which requests (but does not require) that the president call new elections.

Although I can’t find the post now (not for lack of trying, mind you), in retrospect the decision to elect the Iraqi Transitional Assembly from a single electoral district was a mistake—one that it appears the Shiites are willing to rectify by retaining the proportional representation system, but using the 19 provinces as electoral districts, thus (in theory) guaranteeing greater Sunni representation in the government even if Sunni turnout is low in the first elections for the permanent government that are supposed to happen sometime in the next year.

Of course, this adds the complicating factor of having to reapportion the legislature every decade or so, and it probably will make it somewhat harder for national cross-sectarian parties to gain seats, but in the end I think it’s a reasonable compromise.

(Other commentary at The Moderate Voice.)

I just bought a round-trip ticket from RDU to BWI for Labor Day weekend for APSA in Washington for $69.40, including taxes and everything.

Of course, I’d rather not be going to APSA in the first place, but my third consecutive year on the meat market doesn’t leave me with a lot of choice in the matter.

Eszter Hargittai and Brendan Nyhan point out (as I noticed sometime in the past few days when surfing eJobs) that the American Political Science Association has condemned the AUT boycott of Israeli universities. I’m glad to see the $77 I sent the association last year (not to mention the hundreds of dollars I have spent in the past) has finally produced something of even minor value.

Of course, the complete uselessness of the APSA has been a recurring theme on this weblog…

Stephen Downes (both in my comments below and at his blog) disputes that the motion voted on yesterday by Canada’s parliament is really a confidence motion; he instead characterizes it as “nothing more than a recommendation to a committee.” This radically understates the nature of the motion.

In parliamentary procedure, a motion to recommit with instructions is more than a mere “recommendation”; it is a message from the floor that the committee must amend the legislation in question and then report it back to the floor as amended. Both Canadian and U.S. parliamentary rules state that anything ordered by a motion to reconsider is mandatory.

The most charitable interpretation—one denied by the Liberals—is that the amendment requires the immediate reporting of a confidence motion by the committee on public accounts. Canadian political scientist Andrew Heard argues that, in fact, the vote was a confidence motion and should be treated as such.

When is a vote of no confidence not a vote of no confidence? When it takes place in Canada, apparently. As Mustafa Hirji of Points of Information explains, Westminster parliamentary rules don’t obligate the executive to resign when they lose a confidence vote, but nonetheless the traditional response of resignation is key to parliamentary sovereignty:

[R]esponsible government’s preservation requires that the Executive honour votes of no confidence. Otherwise, the Executive ceases to be responsible to the legislature and is, instead, responsible only to the unelected monarch or representative thereof.

Responsibility to Parliament is absolutely key in our system of government. Unlike the United States, we lack checks and blances to constrain the power of the Executive. Parliament is the only meaningful constraint on the Executive and their widespread powers. When this constraint ceases to exist, the Governor-General, effectively chosen by the Prime Minister and likely therefore beholden to him/her, becomes the only check on the Prime Minister. That check is neither realistic nor desireable, let alone democratic or accountable.

Of course, if the role of the governor-general (or, in the case of Britain, the monarch) was taken by an official responsible to the electorate or parliament—most other parliamentary regimes use the largely ceremonial president in this role—the conflict of interest would be greatly diminished. Either way, it seems to me that if parliament does vote in favor of a no confidence motion, and the executive refuses to resign, the governor-general has an obligation to dismiss the executive.

Update: More via InstaPundit: perspectives from Ed Morrissey and “ferret” of Conservative Life, as well as liveblogging from Stephen Taylor (not the PoliBlog guy). Kate also has a post at Outside the Beltway, with a link to another news story on today’s events.

Apropos of the U.K. election, Stephen Bainbridge plays ‘predict the election’ and notes Labour’s massive (predicted) lead in seats isn’t matched by its lead in vote share:

It’s an interesting example, by the way, of just how skewed the British electoral system is against the Tories. If I’m right, a 3 point difference in the national polls leaves them almost 200 seats behind Labour.

The British electoral system isn’t skewed against the Tories—at least, not any more, as Scotland’s overrepresentation in Parliament has finally been done away with; it’s skewed in favor of whoever wins the plurality of the national vote. It’s almost (but not exactly) the exact same effect as we see in the U.S. electoral college: “landslides” in the electoral college are easily manufactured by relatively small differences in the popular vote.

The effect is also a partial consequence of Britain’s nonpartisan redistricting system; gerrymandering in the U.S. depresses the number of districts that are likely to “swing” from one party to the other, while the British process tends to produce a larger number of districts close to parity. (However, unlike post-Wesberry America, there is no requirement of strict population equality for constituencies in Britain.)

Shugart and Taagepera’s Seats and Votes explains things far better than I can, if you can find a copy.

I know of which Russell speaks all too well—and one of my best friends, not a political scientist, is going through the same hell at the moment… as, for that matter, was I not so long ago (not to mention, as I keep reminding myself, I didn’t even have a job offer until this time last year). There but for the grace of God, or at least the grace of KGM.

Incidentally, I made myself two promises last year: that I’d quit academia (or at least go and get an M.S. in statistics or survey research or maybe even a J.D.) if I didn’t get a tenure-track job for 2005–06, and that I’d get myself that social life I’d been putting off for the past decade-plus. I went 0–2—or maybe 1–1, depending on how you evaluate my social life (much better than in Oxford, but from a pretty negligible baseline)—but I’m not all that convinced that the first promise was the right one, since there’s nothing else I’d rather do than what I do now, even if the job security sucks. Thus I contribute to the collective action problem that leads to the proliferation of non-tenure-track jobs even at institutions that can afford them.

My future boss links an interesting article in today’s Duke Chronicle about the curricular and extracurricular use of blogs at Duke.

I’m still pondering to what extent I want to use blogs in my classes; I had a really good idea for using blogs in a State and Local class, but it only would work in a state capital. I probably will decide to work blogging into intro in the fall, at least in a limited fashion, instead of requiring a term paper—the Culture War papers this semester were OK, I guess, but I think there may be a better way to work with that idea in a “journal” type format as opposed to the term paper. (þ: Nick Troester)

Robert Tagorda has a link to a really interesting Christian Science Monitor piece that notes a massive collapse in voter turnout in the United Kingdom over the last decade:

With less than two weeks to the May 5 vote, the big question facing British politicians is not who votes for them, but who votes at all. Experts predict the lowest participation in a century.

Turnout that persisted above 70 percent for decades after World War II is expected to plunge to 53 percent this cycle, according to Professor Paul Whiteley of England’s Essex University. Turnout in the 2004 US presidential vote was 61 percent.

Turnout is expected to be especially dire among young people – and worse still in inner-city districts like Vauxhall. “People of my generation do feel guilty if we don’t vote, but 18— to 20-year-olds don’t,” says Mr. Whiteley. “They don’t see party politics as interesting.”

Bizarre theories are raised for this turnout collapse by some:

Some critics charge that the increasingly presidential nature of British politics is a turn-off. Martin Bell, a former independent member of Parliament, says Parliament is too subservient to the prime minister. Mr. Bell, who is now managing a campaign for a candidate running against Mr. Blair in his Sedgefield constituency, also cites the erosion of trust in politicians.

“The problem of trust is at the bottom of the distaste for public life,” he says. “The prime minister hardly ever appears in Parliament. He hardly ever votes himself” in parliament, he adds. The inference is clear: Why should the electorate vote, when the country’s leading politician doesn’t?

The imperial prime minister (or, at least, the imperial cabinet) is nothing new in British politics (Walter Bagehot wrote about it in 1867 in The English Constitution), so Bell’s explanation seems rather unlikely. Another theory seems slightly more plausible:

Then there is the dramatic shift in British political geography. A generation ago, Britain’s electoral map looked like a Piet Mondrian painting: red slab in the north for Labour, blue block in the south for Conservative – a split evoking the contrast between coast and hinterland in the last US presidential vote.

Today, the map is pixellated like a faulty computer screen.

Ms. Giddy says it’s part of a cultural shift. “You don’t have strong allegiances to communities and parties in the way you did, say, when living in a mining town meant you voted Labour as an extension of your community,” she says.

This theory—essentially, dealignment of the British electorate—makes some degree of sense; indeed, dealignment of the electorate is a common explanation for turnout decline (despite increased ideological polarization of the major parties) in the United States. Of course, dealignment would suggest a substantial reduction in the importance of social class in British politics—something I’d hesitate to argue has happened, absent a lot more evidence. Either way, it will be interesting to see if the turnout rate is as low as the 53% figure posited by some of the experts; my gut feeling is that it will be higher, but what do I know?

Apropos the previous two posts, I noticed something odd in the comments on this sidebar post at the Jackson’s Next Mayor blog: two people debating incumbent mayor Harvey Johnson’s position on the abortion issue.

I’m at a loss to figure out what exactly a city mayor’s authority over abortion would be; indeed, the only elected officials I can see whose positions on abortion would be worth knowing (at least, given the current situation where the Supreme Court decides what public policy is acceptable on abortion) would be presidential candidates and U.S. senators, who are responsible for nominating and confirming appointments to the Supreme Court. Even if that weren’t the case, I don’t really know what the mayor could do for or against abortions, or—for that matter—what another candidate would do differently on abortion.

The only thing I can figure is that candidates’ positions on abortion are seen as proxies for general ideology by at least some voters, which I suppose makes sense (given that abortion is a fairly “easy” issue in Carmines and Stimson’s typology), but it’s not all that great of a shortcut.

Tim Sandefur* has a post on Lochner for dummies. I’m personally still wrestling with how to teach ESDP in my constitutional law classes†—in general, the economic liberties stuff in Epstein and Walker is the weakest material and the hardest for the students to understand—so every little bit I can get from alternative perspectives helps. Of course, the quasi-artificial division of ESDP in “Con Law I” and other forms of SDP—what normal humans call the right to privacy (with or without scare quotes), the right to travel, and the whole mess that is discrimination law—in “Con Law II” doesn’t help student understanding much either.

* Who I don’t read nearly often enough because he doesn’t ping any update services when he posts—hint, hint!
† Which I can mercifully put on hiatus while at Duke, though the over-under is that I’ll probably return to the role of jack-of-all-trades Americanist where ever I end up tenure-track (which actually I don’t mind that much).

John Quiggin asks, “Why hasn’t Labour introduced preferential (single transferable) voting in Britain?” It’s actually a fairly good question, although I think Quiggin answers it later in his post:

Sooner or later, there will be a hung Parliament, and the price of LDP support will be full-scale proportional representation. If Labour introduced preferential voting without being forced to, it would not only cement LDP support but would greatly weaken the case for PR.

Labour, however, doesn’t need to make a deal yet—and, judging from the past 100 years of British electoral history, a hung parliament where Labour needs the LDP either to form a coalition or to sustain a minority government isn’t likely to come about anytime soon. So why help the LibDems today if you can put off an accomodation until later, perhaps much later?

After adding fuel to the Munger-Drezner blogging feud (rather lopsidedly decided for Drezner, I might add), I’ve discovered more evidence to back up the rivalry: namely, that the latest US News rankings have Duke and the U of C tied for 8th place in the “political science” rankings. You’ll have to go and read the copy at your local bookstore to verify this yourself, unless you want to drop $14.95 for online access to the full list.

Of course, the standard caveats about the US News rankings being complete garbage apply. These rankings, based on refereed journal publications, are probably a bit better (and put Chicago well ahead of Duke), but omit effects such as book output, Ph.D. placement, and the like, as well as publications in journals outside of political science.

Some interesting discussion is happening on the H-PolMeth list over an apparent policy by the editors of the American Journal of Political Science to reject papers for a variety of reasons, most controversially including summarily rejecting any article that advances formal theory without an empirical application of that theory. Without taking sides (I can always hope I might get a pub in the AJPS someday, and the people on the other side of the dispute include at least one good friend of mine), all I can say is that this one could become highly entertaining real quick.

As alluded to below, I am very pleased to announce that I have accepted an appointment as a visiting assistant professor at Duke University for the 2005–06 academic year, which—if nothing else—will make Duke the most blogged political science department in the world. Thankfully for Messrs. Troester and Nyhan, however, Dr. Munger has chosen to inflict me primarily on the undergraduate population.

I’m told that my offer of employment is conditional on learning how to spell Coach K’s full name, so I suppose I should get to work on learning that, as well figuring out why a glorified gym is referred to as an “indoor stadium”—perhaps because the events at the outdoor stadium, absent the good graces of Mr. Spurrier, are such a disappointment.

In other news, the paper I sent to APR got rejected (or, as I like to call it, “revise and resubmit—but elsewhere”). At least it wasn’t in turnaround hell forever.

Update: Will Baude quibbles with my assertion that Duke is now the “most blogged” political science department in the world. If one were to count the joint-appointed and intermittent blogger Cass Sunstein and the silent Jacob Levy, I might grant his point, although I’ll raise him the equally-silent Dan Lee in the Blue Devils’ defense. Of course, Drezner can squash us all like bugs, but on one-person, one-blog rules I think we’re essentially tied.

Further Update: Mr. Troester adds D. Laurence Rice to the list, pulling Duke ahead by my estimation.

The crisis continues: Mr. Baude has dug up two more UC types with blogs. Can my fellow Cameron Crazies meet this challenge?

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Bob Novak, who for reasons inexplicable to me is still walking the streets of this great nation instead of rotting in jail for contempt of court, states the obvious in a column that can only be characterized as “random 3-graf thoughts from Bob Novak.” Here’s the whole item of interest:

Analysts at the Republican National Committee have sent this warning to the House of Representatives: The party is in danger of losing 25 seats in the 2006 election and, therefore, of losing control of the House for the first time since the 1994 election.

Although some Republicans on Capitol Hill believe the RNC is just trying to frighten them, concern about keeping the present 232–202 edge pervades GOP ranks. The second midterm election of an eight-year presidency often produces heavy congressional losses for the party in power.

A footnote: Rep. Christopher Shays, re-elected from his Connecticut district last year with 52 percent, is considered by colleagues as the most vulnerable Republican incumbent. Other especially shaky GOP House members include Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania and Rob Simmons of Connecticut.

I doubt there are even 25 competitive House seats in the nation, much less 25 occupied by Republicans. Not to mention that the “midterm loss” theory has gone 0–2 since the 1994 Republican takeover of the House of Representatives; in 1998, the Democrats picked up seats during the impeachment debacle, while Republicans gained in 2002 during the slowest “rush to war” in human history. I suppose it’s possible that the historical midterm loss trend will return, but I wouldn’t try to predict it 20 months in advance regardless.

Steven Taylor is putting out feelers for someone who knows international political economy for a potential gig at Troy State University. If you’re interested, you know where to find him…

Every time I log on to MyAPSA, I have to scroll past this stupid message:

Thank you for submitting your proposal to the 2005 Annual Meeting program. We received a large number of excellent proposals—too many, unfortunately, to be able to incorporate all of them into the program. Your proposal has not been accepted to the program.

We appreciate your interest in the upcoming APSA Annual Meeting and hope that you have the opportunity to attend.

Now, if I were just someone who had submitted a proposal and been rejected, I’d be annoyed by the reminder every time I log in that I got dinged—on the first login, I could see it being valuable, but by the 30th or so I think I’d be pissed off. But I didn’t even submit a proposal, so it’s just insulting me for no good reason. Jackasses.

Just another reminder that, as Mr. Pravda says, “it’s always a good idea to underreport your professional income when paying dues to the APSA.”

Leopold Stotch is none-to-impressed with the University of Memphis’ hiring practices, quoting from an ad that I’ve seen myself:

The University of Memphis invites applications for a non-tenure-track position in political science at the rank of instructor for the 2005–06 academic year. The main responsibilities of the position are in the area of International Relations and include lower division courses in International Relations plus upper division and graduate courses in International Conflict, International Relations Theory, and Research Methods and Statistics. The teaching load is five courses per semester; the salary is $30,000; Ph.D. is desired.

Necessary disclaimer: a fellow Ole Miss grad student (ABD, who also happens to be a Millsaps alum) currently holds this position. Did I mention I pray to God every day thanking Him that I only have to teach a 3–3?*