Current Criticism of APSA Is Nothing New

Over the several decades of my professional career, complaints aboutAPSR and petitions to change the structure ofAPSA have been perennial features of life among politicalscientists. To a remarkable extent the agenda of concerns hasremained quite constant, focusing on issues of allegedly excessiveemphasis on technique and method, the representativeness of theReview, and the APSA's governing structures.Over the years the Association has tired to address these concerns,sometimes with a degree of success, but rarely enough to satisfy orsilence the critics. In part, the problem lies in the supposedincompatibility of the ostensible polarities; teaching versusresearch, technique versus substance, real world politics versustheoretically driven research. Of course, these are not either/orchoices but questions of degree, and the appropriate balance mayvary considerably across both time and the spectra of subject matterand professional career paths. Moreover, though we may give it morelip service than true commitment, the principle of interdependencereally does operate on each of these dimensions of our disputes. Asthat splendid scholar and wise man, V.O. Key, Jr., said in hispresidential address 40-odd years ago, “Method without substance maybe sterile, but substance without method is only fortuitouslysubstantial” (1958, 967).

“Nor should we omit in our study [of public administration] theproblem of legislative-administrative relations, in view of theincreasing role of the public servant in the determination ofpolicy, through either the preparation of legislation or the makingof rules under which general legislative policy is given meaning andapplication” (Gaus 1931, 123).

In the title of his 1993 Gaus Award Lecture, Francis Rourke posed thedeceptively simple question, “Whose Bureaucracy Is This, Anyway?”His subtitle was “Congress, the President, and PublicAdministration.” Rourke, a pioneer in the field of bureaucraticpolitics, concluded that federal administration was constitutionallyand politically under the “joint custody” of Congress and thepresident. Clearly, Congress has formidable constitutional authorityand responsibility for the structure and operation of the executivebranch. A great deal of political science research demonstrates thatthe legislature and its committees are a major political force infederal administration. Even as the older “iron triangle” modelgives way to newer approaches, no one (other than misguidedreformers) could reasonably answer Rourke's question and excludeCongress. Its oversight, influence, and intervention in agencyoperations on behalf of policy objectives and incumbency are centralfeatures of contemporary federal administration.

As someone who has reported on this Association for two decades, whohas profited from what I have learned from you, I am deeply honoredto deliver this lecture, following such major figures who haveconnected political science to the real world as Lee Hamilton, DonnaShalala, Pat Moynihan, and, of course, Dick Cheney. Big time.

This collection of rich, provocative essays heralds a new opportunityfor the reinvigoration of political science. Our premise, and thepremise of our essayists, is that the term “area studies” is amisnomer. The political scientists whose works have focused onspecific world regions have yielded significant theoretical andconceptual contributions for the discipline, both in the past and inthe present.

Area studies in the United States is under siege. Government andfoundations are turning their attention and funds elsewhere.Although they operate from very diffrent quarters, critics aretaking area studies harshly to task for both alleged errors ofcommission and omission. Yet mine is an optimistic message. Thesedifficulties must be seen within the context of a change in thedemographic composition of graduate studies in the U.S. An infusionof intellectual energy from foreign graduate students and post-docsis leading to a reinvention of traditional area studies as globalnetworks of scholarly engagement. Over the longer term thesenetworks, and the scholarship they will create and sustain, bodewell for the continued intellectual vitality of this field ofscholarship.

I see four areas where the study of postsocialism has madesignificant contributions to our understanding of politics, One isin providing an ideal laboratory for comparison. Here, I refer tothree aspects of the region. First, it contains a large number ofcases—28 in all and a good deal more, once we take into account“patch-work” politics and economics of the Russian Federation, forexample. Second, the “great transformation,” to borrow from Polanyiand to refer in this instance to an even “greater” process involvingthe construction of economic and political regimes, nations, andstates, deals with virtually all the fundamentalissues of politics. Finally, the region exhibits enormous variationin political and economic outcomes, whether we focus on economic andpolitical regime types and the institutional details of theseregimes; economic performance, levels of economic development, typesof economic reforms, and the role of foreign capital; the age andsize of the state and its capacity to define and defend borders,command compliance and extract resources; and the nationalcomposition of the population. At the same time, causes are limited,largely because of the homogenizing effects of state socialism andthe temporal similarities in when these great transformationscommenced. This combination of variable outcomes and constrainedcauses is, of course, precisely what comparativists value.

In this brief overview, I argue that Africanist contributions to thestudy of politics have not been insignificant. While Africanists,like many other comparativists, have felt uncomfortable about theimperialist aspirations of rational choice, they increasingly seethe future as a time when theoretical and methodological pluralismwill prevail.

For political scientists studying the Middle East, the invitation todiscuss the possible relevance of their work to comparative politicsin general is a welcome and rare opportunity. There is, one senses,a gap between the Middle East political science community and themainstream disciplinary generalists. To the extent that they evencare about being part of the field, some Middle East politicalscientists feel ghettoized—their region and their work are ignored.Some feel as well that mainstream comparative politics theorizinghas not offered much toward better understanding to Middle Eastpolitics. Such concerns motivated the establishment of theConference Group on the Middle East, which organizes sessions inconjunction with, yet separate from, the main program at the APSAAnnual Meeting. It is noteworthy that some of the most imaginativerecent work on Middle East politics draws from anthropology,political economy, social history, and critical cultural andliterary theory. “The Middle East political science community” isnot populated exclusively by political scientists.

I begin with three general points about the relationship of areastudies to political science, before turning to the specificcontributions that Asia and China studies have made in advancingknowledge in political science.

It took some gentle prodding from professors Cynthia McClintock andJohn Harbeson, conveners of this session, to persuade me toparticipate. The reason for my reluctance may be obvious,considering the composition of this panel. My distinguishedcolleagues can speak about “them” when referring to thecontributions of scholars from the regions on which they specialize.This, I gather, allows them some degree of objectivity whensummarizing and assessing the works of their colleagues in therespective regions; instead, when I analyze the contributions ofLatin Americans, I analyze “us.”

Census 2000 is over; the debate over adjusting the census is not. Inthis essay I respond to a number of points from Anderson andFienberg (2001) and report some of the results from Census 2000.

In late August 2000, at APSA's Annual Meeting, a panel of politicalscientists offered forecasts for the 2000 presidential election.Although they differed in particulars, most of the forecasters'models incorporated a measure of economic growth plus thepresident's approval rating. Because the economy was prospering andPresident Clinton enjoyed phenomenal approval numbers for the eighthyear of office, the consensus prediction was a Democratic (Gore)victory by upwards of 6 percentage points. Although politicalscientists had offered forecasts before previous presidentialelections, these political scientists' predictions for 2000attracted more interest than usual. Their predictions drewexceptional interest both during the campaign, when nobody knew forsure how the election would turn out, and after, when theforecasters had to account for their mistakes.

APSA is pleased to recognize the following political science facultywho received campuswide awards for teaching excellence in the2000–2001 academic year. APSA and Pi Sigma Alpha, the nationalpolitical science honor society, annually recognize award winningfaculty by inviting them to the APSA Honors Reception, issuing thema certificate noting their accomplishment, and announcing theirawards in PS and on the APSA web site. Know someone who should be onthis list? Go to<www.apsanet.org/teach/2001awards.cfm> tosubmit information.

Instructors constantly encourage students to learn and processinformation. Brock and Cameron assert, “Individuals processinformation, learn concepts, and solve problems in different ways”(1999, 251). Some students learn by listening, others learn bytaking notes, more learn by seeing, and still others learn by doingand saying. Yet in many college class-rooms, the dominant teachingmethod is the traditional lecture. While lecturing may be anecessary teaching technique, it is often insufficient for teachinga large number of students with varying learning preferences.

Introduction

In recent years, the availability of online source material andonline papers has increased instructors' concerns regardingplagiarism in the classroom. Many instructors do not realize,however, that the digital revolution has also created a niche forfast and (at least somewhat) reliable plagiarism-detectionsoftware.

In the interest of providing graduate students with information andadvice concerning their graduate careers, APSA has begun a series ofefforts to identify “good practices” or “best practices” withrespect to a number of aspects of graduate education. The thought isthat faculty, junior and senior, may serve as sources of usefulinformation that supplements what departments provide to their ownstudents, At a minimum, from these efforts, students would be ableto learn of a variety of perspectives, some of which might bedifferent from those to which they had already been exposed by theirown advisors and other faculty with whom they have studied.

I am struck by how similar the process of constructing a prospectusis to developing plans for a new house. One starts with a desiredplot of land and an uncertain vision of an eventual home. The plotof land is terrain to exploit. The vision is of something to becomfortable with and, ideally, something of which to be proud.Getting there, however, is a very bewildering process. Anarchitectural plan and specifications serve as the blueprint—theprospectus—that provides the basis for approval for moving ahead.The chief concerns on the part of the permit reviewers is whether“it will stand up” and whether it meets appropriate planning andconstruction criteria. The chief concerns of the prospective ownerare: “How much will it cost?” “Can it be built within a reasonableamount of time?” and, “Will it look good enough when done?”

You are feeling relief that your coursework is drawing to a close.You have become somewhat competent at going to class, discussingmaterials, and passing tests. However, you have a sense of dreadthat keeps creeping up on you every time you try to think of “thetopic” for your dissertation. You look to the senior graduatestudents and even ask them questions about how they found theirtopic. Divine revelation seems to have hit them and you wonder whenyour turn will come. But they seem to be all-knowing, more likebudding faculty now than one of you. So you try to fight the notionsof self-doubt about whether you can actually find a topic and startthe quest of finding someone to help you. You naturally turn to theprofessor whom you “know the best.” Is this the right choice? No oneseems to know; you just have this sense that you want to completethe process as painlessly as possible. As questions swirl insideyour head—from how to choose an advisor to what might be the rightway to pick a dissertation topic—you may ask yourself what theprocess of writing your dissertation proposal will really belike.

Student preparing dissertation proposals may benefit from many sortsof interactions with faculty members. Here I consider the differentsorts of advice and support that faculty may provide ina variety ofdifferent roles and relationships to students.

The central research questions that I wanted to pursue in mydissertation were clear to me early in my graduate school career. Iwanted to explore why some groups in the United States were sowoefully unrepresented in many of the nation's high-level politicaloffices. In 1991, when I began to think more concretely about mytopic, there were only two women serving in the U.S. Senate, and theliterature exploring the experiences of women candidates was verylimited. Because of the seeming injustice of this situation, Iquickly knew I wanted to jump into this area of research to see if Icould shed some light on what was causing the enormous discrepancyin the number of men and women being elected to top offices.