Political Economy ranking

[politicaleconomy]

Dear all,

The US News ranking allows one to differentiate between five subfields and that's very nice. But what do people do who want to move into political economy?

Say someone (i.e. myself) wants to do political economy work, but not the econ type (formal), but the polsci type (i.e. comparativist approach with cutting-edge methodology and econ-related variables). It doesn't require a lot to make out the top 3:

Harvard

Stanford

Michigan

But thereafter it seems difficult to make out a significant difference. To give some scope, I would argue that the following departments would have to follow the top 3. But in what order? And why?

NYU

Duke

MIT

Columbia

UCLA

Yale

Berkeley

Princeton

UCSD

Thanks in advance for your time and input!

Best,

[RWBG]

I'm a little unclear about the demarcation you're making between "econ-type (formal)" and the "cutting-edge methodology" of the "polisci type." Plenty of the political economists at Michigan are using formal models; did you just mean formal versus stats? But you do mean CPE and not IPE? If you can clarify what you mean, I can give my thoughts, whatever value they have coming from someone not yet in a Ph.D program.

[politicaleconomy]

Yes, no IPE; CPE is probably the right term, which also implies an emphasis on stats over formal.

[RWBG]

Well, I don't know if CPE implies an emphasis on stats over formal. I think to some extent, how you rank the schools here depends on how much stats/formal you want. However, after thinking about it for a bit, I don't know if I could rank them for you. Schools like Princeton would be good if you want both the CPE substance and methods training, NYU's good if you want to do more formal stuff in addition to the stats, UCSD is good if your work has some cross-over with IPE (which much does). Admittedly, I'm much more familiar with IPE.

[saltlakecity2012]

I'm interested in the same issue, and I think I understand your differentiation between the "econ type" and the "poli sci type" of political economy. Operating on the assumption that you mean schools with people on the cutting edge of comparative politics who use highly sophisticated methodology (modeling drawn from traditional econ type pol econ, etc.). I think part of the problem you're going to run into with this query is that, especially if you're interested in comparative political economy, each school has strengths in some areas and weaknesses in others. For a good comparative program, you want a combination of people with relevant regional and substantive expertise (e.g. someone with a background in Southeast Asia + someone with a background in Political Violence). You're also looking to throw in the people who are working to integrate pol econ models into more traditionally qualitative substantive focuses, If I understand you correctly.

If you can provide a regional and topical field of interest, that would be helpful in suggesting which programs might be best.

[politicaleconomy]

While I did not plan on tailoring this thread towards my decision, I broadly want to look at economic growth, social welfare policies and public sector spending, potentially even some human capital work (my interests are broad, I know. But luckily the season went well, hence, the intent to make this thread quite general.)

But aside from my interest, maybe people can give some general advice about the departments. After all, research proposals can change dramatically and the highly acclaimed "fit" should not induce one to attend, say, a department with weak financing or a lack of rigorous method training (not that that's the case with any of the above institutions).

So, if possible, how would you rank places 4-12 if US news asked for your opinion. Alternatively, if that is easier, what would a SWOT analysis for these departments look like?

Thanks again!

[saltlakecity2012]

Man... this is really quite difficult. They're all fabulous. For my interests, I can say that my preferred schools out of that bunch are: NYU, Berkeley, UCLA, Yale, UCSD. And that's not really in order. But there are lots of different ways to do what you're talking about. Some of those schools have more people working on empirical political economy, while others are doing more theoretical work. Some provide good training in both. Some schools offer excellent political economy focus if you want to study the US or the EU, while others are better for studying IR or CP questions from a political economy framework. My bias is towards the IR/CP-type questions - hence my selections.

[midwest513]

I liked to think of political economy as more of a framework for thinking about politics. To some people it means doing pretty extensive formal modeling..which obviously has it's place. But to me (while I can do some supplementary model building and game theoretic stuff) political economy is more about understanding how the economy and politics interact and the feedback effects that entail (at least in my research). I think some of the agent based stuff is cool but a bit much for my taste.

[RWBG]

I think some of the agent based stuff is cool but a bit much for my taste.

What do you mean by "a bit much"? Just curious!

[saltlakecity2012]

I liked to think of political economy as more of a framework for thinking about politics. To some people it means doing pretty extensive formal modeling..which obviously has it's place. But to me (while I can do some supplementary model building and game theoretic stuff) political economy is more about understanding how the economy and politics interact and the feedback effects that entail (at least in my research). I think some of the agent based stuff is cool but a bit much for my taste.

I think there are 2 main uses of the term "political economy" - and I was just talking to a professor at NYU about this, actually. 1) Looking at political problems using economics tools. 2) Looking at the intersection between political and economic phenomena. I think you can do both types of political economy either qualitatively or quantitatively - so I suppose what we really have is a 2x2 matrix establishing the set of ways you can do political economy.

[RWBG]

I think there are 2 main uses of the term "political economy" - and I was just talking to a professor at NYU about this, actually. 1) Looking at political problems using economics tools. 2) Looking at the intersection between political and economic phenomena. I think you can do both types of political economy either qualitatively or quantitatively - so I suppose what we really have is a 2x2 matrix establishing the set of ways you can do political economy.

Can you really look at political problems using economic tools qualitatively?

[midwest513]

What do you mean by "a bit much"? Just curious!

favorite example of formal modeling not being the most useful thing in the world is agent based modeling. I'm not saying it can't have applications in political science that are successful (legislative politics has really flourished in AP...and formal modeling has revealed a great deal about political institutions), but agent based modeling tries to explain too much in many senses. These microfoundations based models seem to be interested not in causal relationships (what I am interested in), but explaining everything. It's a little much for me because in many senses I think these all encompassing formal models can miss very important variations in attempting to explain everything they explain nothing.

[saltlakecity2012]

Can you really look at political problems using economic tools qualitatively?

Couldn't one argue that a lot of neo-Marxist analysis does exactly that?

[RWBG]

favorite example of formal modeling not being the most useful thing in the world is agent based modeling. I'm not saying it can't have applications in political science that are successful (legislative politics has really flourished in AP...and formal modeling has revealed a great deal about political institutions), but agent based modeling tries to explain too much in many senses. These microfoundations based models seem to be interested not in causal relationships (what I am interested in), but explaining everything. It's a little much for me because in many senses I think these all encompassing formal models can miss very important variations in attempting to explain everything they explain nothing.

At least to my knowledge, that's not actually how ABMs are used. The idea isn't to get a realistic account of the world, but to program a number of agents with simple rules and then examine what the emergent properties are of a system populated with those agents. For example: Axelrod's first computer tournament was an ABM-like system that didn't have a real-world analogue, but had numerous nontrivial implications when you looked at the results. ABMs also are interpreted way differently than formal theory models, in that formal theory models are more deductive, while ABMs give you a simulated data that can be examined inductively.

Couldn't one argue that a lot of neo-Marxist analysis does exactly that?

It depends on what you're calling "economic tools". Certainly neo-Marxist work doesn't use tools being used by modern economists (those tools are basically all mathematical). From my experience, I'd say that the tools used by neo-Marxists are much more derived from sociology, although the work I've read definitely fits the category of looking at interaction between political and economic phenomena.

Edit: I should note that I'm hardly that familiar with the neo-Marxist literature, so maybe you have examples of work that could be better characterized as using economic tools qualitatively?

Edited February 24, 2012 by RWBG

[saltlakecity2012]

It depends on what you're calling "economic tools". Certainly neo-Marxist work doesn't use tools being used by modern economists (those tools are basically all mathematical). From my experience, I'd say that the tools used by neo-Marxists are much more derived from sociology, although the work I've read definitely fits the category of looking at interaction between political and economic phenomena.

Edit: I should note that I'm hardly that familiar with the neo-Marxist literature, so maybe you have examples of work that could be better characterized as using economic tools qualitatively?

I'd say that if you consider concepts like utility maximization, rational choice, and using capital flow as a unit of analysis to be economic tools (which I do, using the term "tools" to mean conceptual frameworks that underpin many parts of the discipline), then using economic tools to look at political problems qualitatively is doable. Here perhaps we venture a bit more into political theory than into comparative politics, but oh well.

Re: the neo-Marxist stuff, I will get back to you. My initial thoughts are that neo-Marxists deal primarily with the location, transfer, and use of power - and that power can be linked very closely to utility in the study of the intersection of politics and economics. I haven't read any Poulantzas in years, though, but if I come across something particularly useful I will PM you.

[midwest513]

At least to my knowledge, that's not actually how ABMs are used. The idea isn't to get a realistic account of the world, but to program a number of agents with simple rules and then examine what the emergent properties are of a system populated with those agents. For example: Axelrod's first computer tournament was an ABM-like system that didn't have a real-world analogue, but had numerous nontrivial implications when you looked at the results. ABMs also are interpreted way differently than formal theory models, in that formal theory models are more deductive, while ABMs give you a simulated data that can be examined inductively.

Not arguing that the entire field isn't useful, but I do think that by going with a 'microfoundational' approach the literature sets some pretty strong assumptions about the actors/agents and tend to generalize alot for these models...in fact many of them either stop and make conclusions based on the findings of said models or they base their entire statistical analysis on them. I think people lean on them a great deal more than you may suspect.

[RWBG]

Not arguing that the entire field isn't useful, but I do think that by going with a 'microfoundational' approach the literature sets some pretty strong assumptions about the actors/agents and tend to generalize alot for these models...in fact many of them either stop and make conclusions based on the findings of said models or they base their entire statistical analysis on them. I think people lean on them a great deal more than you may suspect.

I think you might be confusing heavily microfoundation dependent models (e.g. the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models in macroeconomics) with agent based models, which don't have the same structure. Microfoundations are usually discussed when you have some larger level macro-phenomena (like how labor supply responds to an increase in aggregate demand) that you derive from rules about how individual agents in a system work, e.g. representative consumers, etc. - these kinds of models are not ABMs, as ABMs don't assume higher level structures, but just look at emergent properties. In fact, agent-based models have sometimes been suggested as alternatives to DSGE models, given that they make weaker assumptions about equilibrium, the behavior of agents, etc. Many ABMs don't even assume rationality, instead relying on evolutionary mechanisms, etc. But maybe you can give an example of work that uses an agent-based model in the way you're describing.

[midwest513]

I think you might be confusing heavily microfoundation dependent models (e.g. the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models in macroeconomics) with agent based models, which don't have the same structure. Microfoundations are usually discussed when you have some larger level macro-phenomena (like how labor supply responds to an increase in aggregate demand) that you derive from rules about how individual agents in a system work, e.g. representative consumers, etc. - these kinds of models are not ABMs, as ABMs don't assume higher level structures, but just look at emergent properties. In fact, agent-based models have sometimes been suggested as alternatives to DSGE models, given that they make weaker assumptions about equilibrium, the behavior of agents, etc. Many ABMs don't even assume rationality, instead relying on evolutionary mechanisms, etc. But maybe you can give an example of work that uses an agent-based model in the way you're describing.

I think maybe I'm a bit confused with the characteristics of ABM's...I thought ABM's were more computational models with elements of game theory. For example...this book:

http://myweb.fsu.edu/dsiegel/BDSTBook.html

I like the idea and found some of it interesting but they seemed overly interested in trying to completely account for all sorts of patterns in elections. I really don't want to/don't have a time for a formal critique of the book, but just my thoughts.

[RWBG]

I think maybe I'm a bit confused with the characteristics of ABM's...I thought ABM's were more computational models with elements of game theory. For example...this book:

http://myweb.fsu.edu...l/BDSTBook.html

I like the idea and found some of it interesting but they seemed overly interested in trying to completely account for all sorts of patterns in elections. I really don't want to/don't have a time for a formal critique of the book, but just my thoughts.

My understanding is that agent-based models are a particular class of computation model that focus on programming simple rules and observing the complex emergent properties that develop from those simple rules. However (and here's where I start to move into territory I'm even less familiar with) I believe there are computational models that are basically using computers to program more complex (often dynamic) games in a more deductive fashion. The link you posted looks like an example of the latter (although even there, it looks like the computational model is ancilliary to the main part of the book, which looks like it consists of standard formal models).

Edited for grammar and spelling.

Edited February 24, 2012 by RWBG

[TicToc.]

OP, to make things simple for you--out of your original list, Stanford and Mich stand out as the best for CPE and IPE. UCSD is also very good. For the most part, the other schools you list--Yale, for instance--don't quite stack up in terms of reputation compared to the likes of Stanford, Mich, and UCSD (a holy trinity of PE work).

Keep in mind, I'm basing this off of the information you've provided in your posts, so there are obviously other factors in determining which schools are the "best."

[Anna87]

Any advice on other schools with strong political economy and comparative programs. Im looking anywhere in the top 25 range.

[whattheydo]

Any advice on other schools with strong political economy and comparative programs. Im looking anywhere in the top 25 range.

You could look into Washington-Seattle. There seems to be some flux in the department there (maybe because of funding issues?) but I'm told that comparative and PE are relative strengths of the department. Some younger faculty (Menaldo, Adolph) working in those areas, and Ahlquist, of FSU and now Wisconsin, was a good placement in recent years (though evidently a couple members of his committee have since moved on...).