Over the past few years, political scientists and political journalists have been sniping at each other. The journalists charge that the political scientists are out of touch. They spend too much time crunching numbers and not enough time actually talking to real people. Their research is inaccessible behind pay-walls, jargon-filled, and too narrow. (Some history here).
The political scientists mock the journalists for attributing too much weight to irrelevant variables and ignoring mountains of evidence. For example, Obama's approval ratings are entirely tied to the health of the economy, even though he has very little control over it. Anytime that a political journalist writes a column that pins Obama's approval ratings on health care or Sarah Palin or his vacation in Nantucket, the political scientists get annoyed.
On Thursday at the APSA conference, several political bloggers, including Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein, spoke on a panel entitled, "What can Political Science offer Journalists?" John Sides moderated. I didn't show up until Friday, so I missed the panel. Luckily, Rob Farley wrote a summary and the debate continued on the blogs over the weekend.
Part of the reason that I went to APSA was to look for fodder for mainstream articles. I was looking for research that would be of interest to a general public. I did see some panels with excellent political science research. They had clear hypothesis, interesting methodology, and fit in well with the existing literature. However, I didn't come away with any topics for articles. Those papers were too narrow or too theoretical to appeal to a broader audience.
Perhaps I just missed the panels with a broader appeal. I did hear about a paper on campaign donations that has some potential. Robert Putnam's new book on religion sounds cool. I'll have to snoop through the paper archives to make sure.
Does it matter if political science research can't be translated? Maybe. In an era, where state legislatures are slashing funds to public colleges, when adjuncts and online education dominate, and when departments are being cut entirely, research with real-world applications would seem to be a good idea.
I liked Mark Ambinder's comment that political science does a lousy job of explaining Sarah Palin. He also thinks it would be valuable if political scientists interacted more with their subjects, rather than hiding behind data sets.
Related: The Relevance of Political Science
Apt. 11d 
Is Sarah Palin so hard to understand with political science? At the time she was picked for VP, any political scientist could have told you with a bad economy and the current polls, Obama was going win. In fact, all of the political scientists who predict elections where saying that McCain was going to lose. McCain’s choices were pick somebody boring and face a 98% chance of losing vs. pick somebody unexpected and maybe increase those odds.
As for Palin’s continued popularity, everything in public opinion is affect. Journalists pretend to be upset by this, but it isn’t hard to explain with political science.
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“For example, Obama’s approval ratings are entirely tired to the health of the economy, even though he has very little control over it.”
It would have been nice to hear more about that during the election.
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From a Comparativists perspective, I think the debates between political journalists and political scientists is really an Americanist (and maybe IRist) world.
And the preoccupation with relevance can be stunting. 15 years ago there were no jobs for Middle Eastern specialists, and now they’re all the rage. If scholars and students only were concerned with short term interests there would be no area specialists for the war that’s going to happen 10 years from now.
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Forgive the many grammatical error in the previous comment.
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I agree with Julie G. There seem to have been no comparativists there (and from Matt Yglesias, a sense that he does not know what the term means) yet everyone is happy to tell us what we’re like anyway. I’ve never had a problem with relevance, as I’ve talked to journalists quite often, and many comparativists from academia are in senior policy positions right now. I would disagree with her in that “relevance” need not mean “short-term interests.” Chile is not part of any global crisis like the Middle East, but I get calls from reporters about it anyway.
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The rage for Middle Eastern studies departments comes from students hoping to get jobs in the state department or something. It isn’t because journalists or the gov’t need the opinions of academics on that topic. I doubt that any academic had any serious impact on the war in the Middle East.
Sorry to be cynical, but here’s how journalists use academics… Something happens. A war. An election. A new poll. That’s the lead. The journalist explains the event. Talks to participants. Tells the story. Then in the last paragraph, he or she will call up an academic to respond to the story. He’ll find the academic through google. Now, the academic’s research will help the academic form a coherent response to the journalist’s question, but his research isn’t the subject of the article. If the academic can’t say something intelligent in three sentences (I’m really bad at this), then the journalist will call another academic.
I wonder how many political scientists have been the lede in a story in the past ten years. I bet I could figure this out quickly. Samuel Huntington, I think. Maybe Robert Putnam. Drawing a blank.
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Phil Tetlock. Walt. Waltz.
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Bueno de Mesquita had a big article on him fairly recently.
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I think Condeleeza Rice had some impact. Larry Diamond. Mike McFaul is on Obama’s Russia team.
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“I wonder how many political scientists have been the lede in a story in the past ten years.”
Are the social scientists making news? (Plenty of natural scientists will have been in either the lede or the first paragraph.)
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I meant to add that I could easily be persuaded that comparative is the most practical of all the subfields.
Putnam and Skocpol and others all think that political science research could be more practical. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/07/polisci
They also said that race and gender had fallen off the radar in research, which is funny, because this came up in over scotch one night last weekend.
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Are the social scientists making news?
Dr. Phil?
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“Dr. Phil?”
Clinical psychologist. Though I wonder if that qualifies him as an antisocial scientist.
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“Though I wonder if that qualifies him as an antisocial scientist.”
Probably, in so many different ways.
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Although theoretically some 45 yrs on the profession is beyond even its post-post-post behaviorist and even past the subsequent “institutionalist” phase into whatever it’s called now–it’s still looks quantative “data-set” proto–neo-behavorist driven “behavior” to me. Open the APSR and it STILL looks like a math or statistics text. So much for evolution. You couldn’t prove Darwin was right by me just perusing ANY issue of the APSR over the last 45 yrs. In the year 2010 it seems like it’s 1962 all over again on Planet Poli-Sci..
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