Again, must plead a busy schedule for infrequent updates. I also think I’m going to migrate to a more focused blog as soon as the semester ends.  This blog has suffered from a lack of a theme as much as my own busy schedule. I’m defending my prospectus at the end May, and I think I’ll start another blog called “Piloting the SS Dissertation: From Candidacy to Completion.”  That incarnation of the blog will follow more how to preserver and finish the dissertation, from a social science perspective.

Anyway, all that to say that this blog might go dormant soon. It’s never really had a focus other than “Things I Occasionally Find Interesting” which isn’t particularly effective. However, here is one more link I find interesting.  Basically, a review of the new Mann and Ornstein book by a legal/poli sci professor who actually gets the importance of institutions right (i.e. – polarization and hyper-partisanship stem from the rules of the game). Honestly, the only reason we ever had a period of “bipartisanship” was because of a historical anomaly with the party of the left.  The reviewer also recognizes that “reform” is another word for “policy.”  And passing policy in such a polarized system is really, really hard. Anyway, just a good piece that’s a great deal more realistic and accurate than most.

Alright, so I keep saying I’m going to keep up with this better (and I will), but since I haven’t posted in a while, here’s a story from Digital Journal about the Midwest Political Science Association Conference in which I am prominently featured. For my research! With a picture!  The picture eliminates one the better columns on my poster, but still, nifty.

I’m a long time fan of the website Cracked.com (think the Onion with lists and curse words), but they rarely have anything political despite the obvious comedic opportunities inherent in politics. However, one of today’s articles was on political scandal (see here).  It gets comparative too, offering up the many antics of Italian self-parody Silvio Berlesconi in addition to folks familiar to Americans like President McCrazy-Pants Andrew Jackson. For the record, I love Andrew Jackson as the historical founder of the modern Democratic Party, a believer in a more open and non-property-based electorate, etc. But he was crazy, and really hated Native-Americans, so not a lot to like there.  Anyway, just a bit of light-hearted (well, some of it’s actually pretty mean, but funny), politically themed reading for the day.

Slate had an interesting article today on the DIY movement. Don’t be put off by the title; it’s not all about beer. It’s more of a brief love letter to the DIY movement, including homebrewers, but it makes several mentions of state, local, and national regulations as they relate to Do-It-Yourselfers.  I must admit, even as a subnational policy scholar, I hadn’t thought of how cities, states, and even the feds can affect the policy climate for folks like this.  The web of city, state, and national regulations governing these activities must be fascinating.  To a political scholar, anyway, probably less to “normal” people.

I must admit a certain affinity for these folks.  As a former musician, my musical heros – punk bands of the eighties like Black Flag &  the Minutemen – embraced the DIY aesthetic in creating their own record labels, venues, recording studios, etc. Not sure how much overlap there is between issues such as welcoming homebrew regulations, backyard agriculture (the chickens the guy mentions in the article), home recording studios, and the like, but the overarching interest in creating something, be it music, beer, or breakfast, is shared across the areas.

It is interesting to think about though.  With the proper data, which might be difficult to get, you could create an index of how welcoming jurisdictions are to DIY activities.  You’d have to define which activities qualify, likely focusing on the “home industry” stuff like homebrewing, backyard agriculture, biodiesel production, etc.  I’m curious as to whether openness to these activities would fall along a single dimension or whether jurisdictional openness to activities like homebrewing might end up being somewhat orthogonal to most DIY activities, particularly in areas with blue laws.  In any case, you could produce some interesting maps and charts, showing the ease of engaging in these hobbies across different states and cities.

What I like most about issues like this is how they illuminate the public policy process. All these activities have to intereact with the state, in some capacity, and that’s the essence of public policy.  I imagine that the elimination of restrictions (or the establishment of them) would offer some excellent examples of both collective action problems and interest group politics. In short, these are good examples of how “politics” is not just Congress and the President. It permeates everyday life and has a huge impact on how we live, work and play.

Now I just have to figure out how to get some publications out of creating an index of “openness to DIY” activities.  Maybe after tenure…

Not usually in the business of advertising for my friends on this blog, but “Battleground” is both a pretty good show (the bit with the volunteer speaking in the King’s English in the pilot is priceless) and politically themed, so I figure I can get away with it.  Full disclosure: a former college roommate of mine (Jordan T. Maxwell, the “senior adviser”) is a member of the main cast.  He’s considerably less obnoxious in real life.

Anyway, the show follows the (fictitious) Senate Democratic primary campaign in Wisconsin of a distant 3rd place candidate attempting to upset a dottering incumbent. As a former campaigner, it’s pretty spot on about the feel of a campaign: characters, locations, relationships. And the look of campaign offices.  All campaign offices have a similar feel: borrowed, third-hand desks, a couple dozen phones, cheap cubicle barriers if you’re lucky, industrial “eggshell” walls, mismatched carpet, strip-mall location, etc.  They got the sets down.  Sorry, not to harp on the sets, they just made me a little nostalgic.

The story and the characters are good too.  I’ve only seen the pilot and 2nd episode (there have only been two so far), but the jokes are pretty good (seriously, the King’s English bit is funny, although the “pseduo-documentary” style is a little overdone, but that’s just nitpicking), and the characters are all the right age (i.e. extremely young).  I’m eager to see where they go with this, past the primary and the campaign I mean. It’s nice to have shows set in the world of politics, particularly when they come at least somewhere close to the mark.  Now, we just need a show focused around political science professors (or grad students, but that’s probably stretching it).

Been a busy month.  Several conferences, more traveling than I really like (especially when the department isn’t paying for it) and lots of progress on the dissertation.  Also, one of these days, I’m actually going to live tweet/blog one of these conferences like I keep saying I’m going to do.  This is relevant because I just got back from DC and the APSA Teaching and Learning Conference, which happened the day after I presented my poster at the Southern Politics and Policy Conference.

Bit of a whirlwind last couple of days, but the TLC was much better than I had expected. Got to meet a lot of really dedicated and energetic folks that were very interested in the state of political science instruction. My presentation on supplemental instruction went pretty well too. I was part of the Community College tract, which happened to be dominated by a load of Texas political science professors.  First year for the tract and the attendees were inspiringly committed.  Most of them even stayed all the way through the conference to the final meeting on Sunday morning at 8am.  Making me rethink my interest in a community college career.  I do enjoy teaching and the mobility wouldn’t hurt.  Something to think about, and, as I said, the passion of the TLC folks was inspiring. I could probably squeeze a little research in there even with a heavy teaching load.

As for the SPPC, I wish I could have stayed longer.  Just got to hang around for the poster presentation and the dinner reception.  Even so, lots of good conversations and meeting people.  I’ve gone over the program, and there are several folks I need to contact about their research, particularly the immigration stuff.  Good to see the issue getting some attention from the subnational folks.  Means I gotta move fast if I don’t wanna get scooped though.

That’s about it for the moment.  I’m really going to focus on more consistent updating from now on…seriously, this time…I mean it. Anyway, more detail and insight to come, now back to research.

Been neck deep in prospectus writing (and traveling, and holidays, etc.) for the last several weeks, but I’m going to be making a concerted effort to continually update this blog in the New Year.  Seriously this time.

Anyway, people always look at me kind of funny when I tell people that I don’t watch the State of the Union (or the primary debates, etc.). “But you’re a political scientist,” they cry.  Yes, but I don’t study rhetoric or the Presidency.  I study policymaking but at the subnational level.  Agenda setting really isn’t my thing. I already know what special guests are going to be there.  Honestly, there’s not a lot the President could say that would affect my research or even provide me good quotes about immigration, etc. for my work.

Although, to be fair, there was a (brief) section in last night’s SOTU about comprehensive immigration reform, but I found the quote on my Google Reader, so no need to sit through the whole thing to get that tidbit.

As for being a well-rounded citizen, I already know who I’m voting for.  Or, more correctly, I have a solid decision-making model of voting for myself and the probability of it changing is so ridiculously small as to be non-existent. Unless the two parties suddenly traded all their positions, my vote wouldn’t change.   And, since the emergence of a truly competitive third party is spittin’ distance from impossible, there’s really no need to update said decision model.

Honestly, I guess it is kind of unusual. Even as a political scientist, I probably consume far less political news, and certainly far less campaign news, than a similarly politically sophisticated person might. I’m interested in issues.  I was fascinated by the SOPA/PIPA thing recently (and actually contacted my Representatives for the first time in a while), but I’m just not all that interested in the theatre of politics.  Or, at least I’m not interested in the aspects of politics that are typically reported on (polls, day-to-day tactics and “gaffs”, scandal reporting, etc).  I think the Monkey Cage, particularly John Sides, has done an excellent job of pulling out the theoretically relevant aspects of the campaign as time has gone on, so I’ve kept up in that way.

But honestly, even from the standpoint of a citizen/voter, most of it is just not that interesting.  I’m not going to change my vote, I’m not going to abstain from voting, and so, from both a research and voting angle, this primary season is fairly meaningless to me and the SOTU isn’t all that compelling either.

Still would have made my community college students watch it for credit though.

Interesting if not particularly surprising piece about the difficulty of screening “likely” vs. non-voters (see here).  I also liked the peek inside campaign polling vs. public polling.  The most interesting piece of data was likely that “non-voting” respondents to the likely voter screen still tend to turnout at relatively high rates.  Of course, it takes the author the length of the article to get to the concept that people are expressing their dissatisfaction with the “system” or the slate of candidates, rather than whether or not they’ll actually vote.

Which brings up the point of calling these people “liars.”  I mean, it’s laying a normative judgement on top of what is a psychological process. When the respondents say “I’m not voting,” they likely really mean it at that moment.  Later post-hoc justification, an “epiphany” about a particular candidate, simple social pressure, all these drive them to turnout.  I’m not expecting a detailed discussion of political psychology, but it’s a little harsh to call them “liars,” although admittedly it’s decent headline writing and an overall good piece of journalism.

Just a quick re-post from “The Ticket”, the state leg blog.  Basically, term limits are bad for legislatures, representation, etc.  Basically, detrimental to democracy all around (see here).  This is one of my favorite examples of how some folks can still support a position after it’s been empirically shown to be detrimental and satisfy none of their justifying conditions.  The literature is pretty consistent: term limits are a bad idea.  And yet, a la Rick Perry, the idea still gets tossed around, even by people that ought to know better.  Which may or may not include Perry.

A Harvard fellow’s opinion piece on “entrepreneur visas.”  I agree (from an empirical standpoint), but I would add that most immigration fosters job creation, or at least fills out the extreme ends of the labor pool (no/low-skill and very highly skilled).  Couple of points to make.  First, this opinion piece is likely based on some recent research, co-authored by another Harvard Scholar, showing differing attitudes toward high-skilled vs. low-skilled immigrants (see here, gated unfortunately).  This is not to understate the empirical evidence that immigrants are good for the economy, but just to underscore that pro-immigration supporters tend to focus on high-skilled immigrants because even if support is still weak, it’s higher than for low-skilled immigrants.

Secondly, I’m a bit pessimistic about the possibility of nationwide immigration reform anytime soon, although I’ll be the first to admit it’s necessary.  Even though my research focuses on subnational responses to immigration, the patchwork of laws and regulations is baffling (even to so-called experts, like myself), it’s certainly inefficient, and most of it is downright detrimental to state and local economies.  However, the last two major nationwide general immigration laws – the Immigration and Nationality Act (the INS Act) & the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) – were passed in 1965 & 1986 respectively.  Well, based on the timing, maybe we’re due for another major policy change.  We’ve certainly been nibbling around the edges for a while (IIRIRA in ’96 – which slammed shut the door on earned legalization, thereby causing most of the increase in permanent undocumented residents –  REAL ID & Secure Fences in ’05 & ’06, etc.), but the need for immigrant labor and capital is such that I just don’t think anything broadly negative can squeeze through the system, and anything positive (i.e. with some sort of earned legalization or expanded visas as Wilkinson argues) seems unlikely as well.

Finally, while I agree morally with the current immigration policy focus on family reunification, I have to agree with Wilkinson that a more skilled based system is necessary. And, if not to replace the current system, then applied on top of it.  For example, we educate hundreds of thousands of foreign students every year in college, grad school, etc.  It’s nice to get their money and labor for a couple of years (or the better part of a decade for some grad programs), but many would like to stay and I don’t see how that’s a bad thing economically, socially, or otherwise.  But the current system makes it hard, and, I suspect, incentivizes longer stays in grad school to remain on a student visa.

Anyway, I liked the opinion piece and though the focus on high-skilled immigrants was interesting.  Lots of states and municipalities have tailored policy responses – accepting foreign licensing, housing exemptions, etc. – to higher-educated, higher-skilled immigrants and it’s interesting to consider what the feds could do.  However, I have to wonder how the opinions of high-skilled immigrants might change (public opinion interacts with native education) if large numbers started competing for high-skilled jobs? Maybe I could run a survey experiment…