Than apparently most sports commentators (see here).  This might be a good example in my ongoing quixotic quest to increase general understand of the implications of Miles’ Law (“where you stand depends on where you sit” – see here for a discussion).  Basically, blaming the personal faults of the people in charge of institutions (e.g. the college presidents, conference commissioners, etc.) for the behavior of said institutions ignores the fact that leadership ability, a difficult to define quality at best, is usually swamped by the demands of the environment.  In other words, you (or anyone else really) would likely have done the same damn thing in a similar situation.  A corollary to this is that assigning personality traits to institutions (like the “greed” of Syracuse, the “disrespect” of Texas A&M, and the “spite” of Baylor), anthropomorphizing them, is a horrible way to think about the behavior of institutions and the outcomes of interactions between them.

It’s probably an inescapable fact of human psychology, but emotional reactions to institutional behavior (like the breakup of the A&M-UT rivalry, Hook’em) tends to obscure the fact that they operate according to predictable and understandable way. Texas A&M isn’t “greedy.”  It’s officers are behaving in a rational (or more likely a “satisficing”) fashion, in order to get the best deal they can for their institution.  Others (people and institutions) are upset because such behavior affects their level of utility or income derived from games, or simply because it may force them to go begging to another (lesser) conference (e.g. Baylor).  Call Baylor a sore loser all you want, the institutional ability to mass with the A&M-SEC deal was there, A&M moving to the SEC would hurt Baylor, therefore Baylor made a legal move completely in keeping with it’s institutional preferences.  The fact that people are surprised is more interesting than anything else.

Anyway, the above illustrates a few points.  First, Miles’ law as I’ve mentioned.  Secondly, the insights of political science and social science more generally are broad and useful.  These theories work whether it’s Congress or the Big XII.  And finally, that I should quit procrastinating and get back to working on my dissertation.

Planning a wedding is hard.  Also tends to make you a touch busy, so this website hasn’t had anything new posted in about 10 weeks.  Unacceptable.  The internet must hear of my political science brilliance (or something).  Anyway, between moving, marriage, APSA, and everything else, it’s been a busy couple months.

However, not without political science goodness. Alek’s and my Working Group went over well at APSA. PS has been contacted about our symposium idea; we’ll see what they say.  Slowly but surely I’m gathering, planning, organizing, and outlining my dissertation.  It’s not even as hard as I expected, since it’s kind of entertaining when it’s something your interested in.  A few more conference proposals (Southern, SPPC, and TLC) have been sent off as well, along with a grant funding request for some more implicit research.  Hopefully we’ll get about 1/2 the money we need from the grant, and the rest from faculty.  Additionally, I’ve been working hard to make my CV attractive to teaching universities (liberal arts colleges, etc.) since, in all likelihood, I’ll be following my new wife to her job sometime in the next year, and having a good teaching resume should help me expand my possible employment options, even given geographic restrictions (i.e. give me more job options wherever the hell I end up).  All in all, busy both personally and professionally, even if I haven’t been posting as much about it.  In the coming days and weeks I’ll have far more frequent updates about the state of my research and other professional/academic posts.

As a small preview, this article from PRQ is a really interesting take on pro-immigrant policies from the standpoint of businesses as interest groups (gated: http://prq.sagepub.com/content/64/3/612.abstract).  Gave me the idea for my States Politics and Policy Conference (SPPC) proposal, concerning the type of immigration policy businesses should press for, given their labor needs.  Hopefully, that’ll end up as a chapter in my dissertation as well.