balderdash

Congrats from another (lurking!) old-timer. Also, Wisco admits, feel free to PM me any questions.

Dunno about sage-like, but I am indeed hirsute. (Not every day one gets to utilize that adjective.)

RWBG for most likely to develop a predictive model for the likelihood of winning superlatives.

Totally not my area of expertise, but doesn't Obama have a 12-15% favorability lead over Romney, Santorum, and Newt in a head-to-head? People don't vote for people they don't like, which is perhaps why turnout for the primaries has been atrocious this cycle. And a drawn-out battle - which it is now sure to be - only helps the incumbent, no? Add to this that Obama's approval ratings generally are, for the first time in months, eeking back to positive, the economy is still growing at a not-spectacular-but-not-negligible rate, and the whole culture war bait made the GOP look ridiculous -- thank you, Rush. What is Romney's pitch going to be? "I am a conservative Christian with whom little of my base identifies"? "I will fix an economic problem that is rapidly disappearing based on my experience laying people off"? "I will be tougher on national security than the guy who was responsible* for the killing of Bin Laden"? I don't think any will fly with his constituency, much less independents. I mean, free of any normative judgment, what would we say the chances Obama is re-elected? I'd personally wager about 80%, barring some catastrophe. * Because I know there's a whole question of attributing the success of the mission, but voters generally tend to give the nod to the President, whether good or bad.

I posted it elsewhere, but I declined UCLA comparative with funding.

A few pages back, I complained (sorry!) about a review of a terrible book that I'm struggling to write. I just thought some people might get a laugh out of two sentences whose inclusion I'm seriously debating: "Rarely are such large hats hung on pegs so small." Also: "It is only with difficulty that the reader is able to find space for [book] in the scholarly debate." (Not to be a jerk... but seriously, it's horrid.)

I agree that really it's a complementary relationship. In the roughest of outlines: quants answer "littler" questions (not in a pejorative sense!) with great rigor, while quals go all meta but are more liable to err and allow their biases to creep in. Obviously, there are exceptions to both. But I think the conversation among those who mobilize divergent methods is really useful for shaping interests and ultimately reaping better research. That might be part of the reason why mixed methods analysis is up-and-coming.

Doesn't this sort of depend on the work you want to do? If you are applying for formal work, then yes, a 720Q and scant quant experience will be huge red flags. But if not, then I don't see why it would disadvantage you so long as your POIs and your personal statement have an explicitly qualitative focus. I'm a comparativist and I did only a year of intro stats. For someone who hasn't touched the stuff in 5 years, I'm actually pretty good at math/stats (I did multivariate calc at a local college when I was in high school) - but I applied to work with quals, at qual-heavy schools, because that's the research I want to do. So there's certainly no need to go tech up in statistical and formal modeling before applying for CP.

(And me.) Agreed.

Just wanted to tell everyone who is on UCLA's funding waitlist: I just turned down their (funded) offer. Hopefully someone on here gets it.

SOAS is massively heterodox, so while the training will be excellent, it won't necessarily endear you to American academics who disagree normatively and methodologically (think Chris Cramer). Cambridge is roughly the same, and there are few people who work on the political economy of Africa - the superstars are, like Ha-Joon Chang, focused on Asia. Oxford and LSE, however, are right where you want to be. The former has the CSAE and a vibrant Development Studies group, both of which have strong representation in the issues you've raised. LSE is massive, and has a number of groups/bodies that focus on the same. (I'd list the people at each institution, but honestly I think everyone reading this thread already knows who they are.)

Negative, Ghost Rider. Commence relaxation.

You know.

Well I of course agree with that, apologies if my words implied otherwise. The point is that the relevant people don't have the same conception of "status" as do non-scholars. (Edit: When I said "narrow, narrow subfield," I meant, for instance, CP or IR - and not "formal work on social capital in 1970s Tunisia" or whatever. Perhaps this is the source of the disagreement.)

Agreed on Penelope's ideas. Two additional points, however: First of all, my inclination is that most PhD programs won't be too interested in taking you on if you're not headed into academia. They want students who will land tenure-track jobs at elite schools, not ones who are going to "jump ship" and end up running an NGO. (This excludes the specialized PhDs, which are built for non-academic tracks.) Not necessarily fair, but understandable given their institutional interests. Second, you should really think hard about getting a PhD if that's the route you want to take. You're much better off taking a few internships/doing an MPP/MPA/MA before trying to land an entry-level analyst position with whatever think tank or NGO. The time commitment of a PhD is prohibitive (and not worth the trade-off for the title), and the type of training the doctorate gives you doesn't translate well for non-academic work. If you want research skills, there are easier, quicker, and better-remunerated ways to get them. These aren't hard-and-fast rules, obviously, but just make sure you've considered both fully before applying.

Well the "one or two faculty members there that you are dying to work with" is not the best idea; if one of them moves (likely in a 5-year program), sees his or her research evolve in a direction away from yours, or just turns out to be a jerk... then you're up an unsanitary tributary without proper means of locomotion, dig? But the substantive point about going to the not-necessarily-best-status program is true. The point people seem to forget is that you're not being hired by your aunt, or your friends, your undergrad peers, or whoever. You're being hired by about 10-30 people within your narrow, narrow subfield. And they know exactly what programs train students for the academy the best, whether it's NYU, Madison, UT-Austin, Bloomington, Michigan State, Rochester, or yes, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, or Yale.

This depends on the next two questions. Really there are so few Africanists that it's more like you find the schools with people that could supervise you then apply to a good mix of them. I assume you're doing quantitative work, so Stanford and Yale are tops, each with multiple people in the area. Blattman just moved to Columbia, so that is now an option. UC Berkeley has a few people in that field, and of course Cornell has Nic van de Walle and MIT has Daniel Posner. If it's qualitative stuff you want, then Madison is tops, with Princeton, UCLA, Bloomington, and Stony Brook added to the others. Depends on the research you want to do. I think CBlatts did a dual PhD in Poli Sci/Econ at Berkeley. Usually PS departments are willing to hire an Econ PhD if you do the right type of work, but there's certainly a small bias.

That's what happened to me. Not awesome. Edit: There it is, as expected.

Thank you, and yeah, I'm really relieved to have been offered it. As for the $11-13k: over in the funding thread, RWBG and others did a good job convincing me that the quality of the program is worth even taking out a $5k loan or something (which I may have to do in the three years not covered by the fellowship).

I got the University Fellowship, here. Unfortunately FLAS can't work for me: they don't offer the languages that would be best for me, except perhaps French, but even that is only available to people in the professional schools. It's a real bummer, but I'm sure I can find something else.

You kidding? I'd do it just for the frequent flyer miles.

I'll be declining my offer and the funding that came with it (I was briefly on the fellowship waitlist, but was offered 24k first year with 17k+ guaranteed for the remaining 4 years). Hopefully this will translate to an offer for one of you guys. That said, please allow me a bit of time to do so. I have yet to speak with my POI at Madison, and my official offer there hasn't arrived, so I need to make sure I don't shoot myself in the foot. In any case, I should have it sorted shortly.

I was lucky enough to get a University Fellowship, so funding will be more than adequate years 1 and 4. As for years 2, 3, and 5, I'll have to sort out some external monies. But on the whole, I believe I'll be headed to Madison with adequate finances. When I got my acceptance back in January, I met with my boss/recommender, who does the work closest to what I want to do. He urged me to attend Madison irrespective of decisions from YPS. When I noted the funding differences, he agreed and told me to follow the money, but that "for serious qualitative Africanist work, even Princeton won't match the training and reputation of Madison." Anyway, the point is that while my little heart will regret the lack of opportunities to wear an orange bow-tie, truly the best option in the long run is the school to which I am headed. So I'm elated that it has worked out.

Comparative Politics at Madison: Comparative state formation in Africa has arrived at a crossroads. From the technocratic optimism of postwar development planning, the field has moved through the study of Cold War military governance to state-civil society relations in the context of apparent state “failure.” Here scholars such as Jean-Francois Bayart, Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Jeffrey Herbst, Richard Joseph, William Reno, and Crawford Young built an approach outside the new political economy, situating African elites in a distinct historical and institutional trajectory. Over the last decade, the debate shifted further: state formation as an organic process to be observed was dropped in favor of state-building as a program to be implemented. Exploring how statehood continues to evolve in Africa was lost amid debate over “best practices” and “right” institutions. Criticized as amnesic and overly deterministic by Michael Bratton, Stephen Ellis, and Nicolas Van de Walle, among others, consensus has again broken down. While undertaking the PhD at Madison, I will explore new trajectories in the comparative politics of state formation in modern Africa. Though broadly pan-African, my focus will be on the Great Lakes region and surrounding countries, particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda. Anchored in the longue durée approach to qualitative historical sociology, both my studies and my dissertation will nevertheless delve into alternative research methodologies. Studying a range of tools, including quantitative and game-theoretic modeling, will allow me to refine my approach to best engage with the questions central to the literature: What are the processes that have brought about modern African political institutions, and how do such structures continue to evolve? How do discourse, identities, and contested histories influence these changes? What can be distilled from six decades of research on state formation, and how does recent heterodox institutionalist scholarship add to it? [Elided personal information.] This will build on my Master’s thesis at the University of Cambridge, in which I analyzed political regimes, or groups of elites answering to neo-patrimonial constituents over whom they exercise legitimate, coercive power. Working through the experience of the Congolese conflict over the past two decades, this project interrogated how such networks emerge, compete along a spectrum from local to global politics, and alternately challenge or exploit formal statehood. My doctoral studies will be similarly interdisciplinary. Madison’s faculty in comparative politics is specifically matched to my research interests. Professor Straus’s The Order of Genocide argues the internal dynamics of Hutu coalitions as dictating variation within the Rwandan genocide. Such work centers on ideology, legitimacy, and state capture, analyzing the themes with which I wish to engage while a student at Madison. More broadly, his research is grounded in the historical processes of institutional change in Rwanda, particularly regime transition and political violence over the last two decades, as is my project. Professor Straus’s work also combines qualitative analysis with robust quantitative tools, a close fit to the catholic methodology I wish to employ across a pan-African frame. Similarly, Professor Schatzberg has extensively studied the moral and cultural bases of statehood in Zaire and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In building a framework for comparative state formation that engages with norms and discourse, my work can benefit enormously from this expertise. In addition, his other works on the political economy of governance in Zimbabwe, Cameroon, and Kenya provide further cases to help develop my research in a pan-African perspective. For similarities in both content and approach, my work can thus benefit immeasurably from the guidance of Professors Straus and Schatzberg. Moreover, Professor Tripp’s studies on post-1986 Uganda analyze semi-authoritarian political authority as emerging from a combination of President Museveni’s security apparatus and elite constituencies. In addition to sharing a regional specialty, her work focuses on the interconnections among informal institutions, state structures, and policy performance, as does mine. In addition, Professor Young’s expertise on the Zairian state and the broader postcolonial evolution of African governance is unrivaled; my research would improve considerably from his insights into the historical evolution of statehood in Central Africa. Finally, the resources available to me through the African Studies Program and the Comparative Politics Colloquium will provide invaluable assistance in research design and insight into regime transitions around the world. With so many scholars studying the Great Lakes, comparative state formation, and the political economy of governance, Madison matches my research interests perfectly. Christopher Clapham wrote in 1996 that “the international relations of statelessness have imposed themselves as an issue, not only on the management of the international system, but on the analysis of international relations,” but the literature has yet to fully unpick what statehood in Africa entails. To this end it must revisit the institutional scholarship of a decade ago and embrace recent departures from the technocratic determinism of the state-building approach. “Africa works;” exactly how is not yet known. While undertaking the PhD in Political Science at Madison, I will gain the requisite skills to engage with the emerging literature that answers these challenges. Madison’s comparative politics faculty will help me develop this research and prepare me to contribute to the academy.

PROFILE: Type of Undergrad Institution: Top 20 national research university known for rigor Major(s)/Minor(s): International Studies Undergrad GPA: 3.90. Type of Grad: MPhil in Development Studies at the University of Cambridge Grad GPA: 72, or ~3.85 GRE: 770V 800Q 6AW Any Special Courses: Lots of stuff on Africa and state formation/political violence Letters of Recommendation: 1 from semi-retired Cambridge don who supervised my thesis, 1 from young professor/former UN expert at Cambridge, and 1 from current boss and chaired professor at a top-five SLAC Research Experience: 1 year of RA work as well as the master's dissertation Teaching Experience: None Subfield/Research Interests: African state formation, international development, historical sociology, qualitative methods Other: Applied the previous year and went 0/7. A few book reviews published, some journalistic writing, and 1 conference attendance. RESULTS: Acceptances($$ or no $$): UCLA ($$) and Madison ($$) Waitlists: N/A Rejections: Stanford, Princeton, Northwestern Pending: Yale, Berkeley, Cornell Going to: Since Yale is almost certainly going to be a no, Madison.