American Politics or Comparative Politics on SOP?

[zudei]

To cut the story short, I'm a little confused to the distinction between the two. I am mostly interested in formal modelling of elections, electoral violence etc. using behavioral game theoretic tools. I would term my interests as political economy or positive political theory. However, for departments where these fields are not explicitly listed I am at a loss. Would my (substantive) interests be inclining towards American Politics seeing that I want to investigate electoral behavior? However, I am not (that) interested in American Political behavior. On the other hand, I don't think my interests fall under Comparative Politics, since I am, at least as of this moment, not thinking of a comparison between different countries/systems, or focus on a particular country.

 

Is there anyone with a similar problem? While I will list Methodology as one of my interests, I think it makes sense to have a substantive interest in political science as well. I just can't get the ideological divides between the fields though; it all seems connected...

[TakeMyCoffeeBlack]

It depends. Are you interested in formal modelling of American elections, or of "elections" in general? If the latter, I'd be inclined to say comparative (even if you don't have a specific regional focus).

[IRToni]

Well, it sounds like Comparative to me. If you ask me( as a non-American), AP is just CP with America, so if you wanna do stuff with other countries (even one), you should put CP.

[TakeMyCoffeeBlack]

Well, it sounds like Comparative to me. If you ask me( as a non-American), AP is just CP with America, so if you wanna do stuff with other countries (even one), you should put CP.

 

Interesting perspective. And at times CP is just IR with state/regional comparisons. And sometimes CP, AP and IR are just PT in practice. I guess that's why in the end we all study PS...

[zudei]

In general. But one never knows. I can certainly say that American elections, while very interesting, are not my main interest. I am more interested in the questions of why and how people vote, how political parties induce people to vote etc. The only problem is that some departments term comparative politics as the "empirical" study of political phenomena across boundaries, and then I am confused again.

[zudei]

Interesting perspective. And at times CP is just IR with state/regional comparisons. And sometimes CP, AP and IR are just PT in practice. I guess that's why in the end we all study PS...

 

Haha, exactly! All fields are interlinked after all! I do agree with you both though, CP seems like a more fitting field. I'll rework my letters around this then.

[TakeMyCoffeeBlack]

Haha, exactly! All fields are interlinked after all! I do agree with you both though, CP seems like a more fitting field. I'll rework my letters around this then.

 

Don't sweat it too much. I believe it's in faculty perspectives that one of the faculty explained that they will pass off applications to other fields - sometimes which sub-field you're in depends on who's teaching at what university.

[zudei]

Don't sweat it too much. I believe it's in faculty perspectives that one of the faculty explained that they will pass off applications to other fields - sometimes which sub-field you're in depends on who's teaching at what university.

 

I just pored over that thread and found that post. That calms me down a bit I guess I will not stop worrying till end Dec, so I might as well enjoy the ride... Hope you guys are doing well in your applications!

[IRToni]

What I found quite useful was to look at which subfields the professor I wanna work with are affiliated with? For you, it might also be political theory, or even methods as first field (where possible). Also look at the coursework offered in the different departments, and possible, where available, the comps. Some schools have them online, so that might give you some idea of where the stuff that you're interested in is located at a specific school.

 

Edited for clarity!

Edited November 26, 2013 by IRToni

[RWBG]

To cut the story short, I'm a little confused to the distinction between the two. I am mostly interested in formal modelling of elections, electoral violence etc. using behavioral game theoretic tools. I would term my interests as political economy or positive political theory. However, for departments where these fields are not explicitly listed I am at a loss. Would my (substantive) interests be inclining towards American Politics seeing that I want to investigate electoral behavior? However, I am not (that) interested in American Political behavior. On the other hand, I don't think my interests fall under Comparative Politics, since I am, at least as of this moment, not thinking of a comparison between different countries/systems, or focus on a particular country.

 

Is there anyone with a similar problem? While I will list Methodology as one of my interests, I think it makes sense to have a substantive interest in political science as well. I just can't get the ideological divides between the fields though; it all seems connected...

The set of people studying electoral violence, etc. using behavioral game theory may be close to the nullset. I'm kind of curious about who you're thinking of working with. As to the question of American versus Comparative, it might be worthwhile to look at prelim/field requirements to see which field you would be most likely to fulfill the requirements for. I have one friend who studys Europe mostly, but is being trained as an Americanist because the courses listed under American are the kinds of things that he wants to do, except with Europe. However, as a general point, formal models of elections and electoral violence are fairly prominent in comparative politics, so my guess from your description is that comparative is the better fit.

[zudei]

What I found quite useful was to look at which subfields the professor I wanna work with are affiliated with? For you, it might also be political theory, or even methods as first field (where possible). Also look at the coursework offered in the different departments, and possible, where available, the comps. Some schools have them online, so that might give you some idea of where the stuff that you're interested in is located at a specific school.

 

Edited for clarity!

 

Wherever it's possible to put methods as a first choice, I'm doing that. For the relatively small subset of schools where they ask you to add a substantive field in addition to methods I'm thinking of adding comparative, since my POI's are mostly working on comparative. Thanks!

 

The set of people studying electoral violence, etc. using behavioral game theory may be close to the nullset. I'm kind of curious about who you're thinking of working with. As to the question of American versus Comparative, it might be worthwhile to look at prelim/field requirements to see which field you would be most likely to fulfill the requirements for. I have one friend who studys Europe mostly, but is being trained as an Americanist because the courses listed under American are the kinds of things that he wants to do, except with Europe. However, as a general point, formal models of elections and electoral violence are fairly prominent in comparative politics, so my guess from your description is that comparative is the better fit.

 

Well there are quite a few people modelling electoral competition using bounded rationality, at Stanford GSB there's Jonathan Bendor, at Caltech there's quite a few people, at Michigan there's Arthur Lupia, many theorists at Princeton Political Economy, a good programme on behavioral game theory at FSU etc. All that's at the top of my head, I've done my research though. Even if my POI's don't really work on behavioral game theory per se, I think it's still worthwhile for me to work with them, and I could bring in a fresh perspective.  For electoral violence I was thinking of modelling a network game, and there's a lot of people doing work in that as well (given a lot of it is on civil war or ethnic violence, but my idea is to combine with electoral competition). I think I'm going to put Comparative whenever applicable as well; it makes more sense. Thanks for your help!

[RWBG]

Wherever it's possible to put methods as a first choice, I'm doing that. For the relatively small subset of schools where they ask you to add a substantive field in addition to methods I'm thinking of adding comparative, since my POI's are mostly working on comparative. Thanks!

 

 

Well there are quite a few people modelling electoral competition using bounded rationality, at Stanford GSB there's Jonathan Bendor, at Caltech there's quite a few people, at Michigan there's Arthur Lupia, many theorists at Princeton Political Economy, a good programme on behavioral game theory at FSU etc. All that's at the top of my head, I've done my research though. Even if my POI's don't really work on behavioral game theory per se, I think it's still worthwhile for me to work with them, and I could bring in a fresh perspective.  For electoral violence I was thinking of modelling a network game, and there's a lot of people doing work in that as well (given a lot of it is on civil war or ethnic violence, but my idea is to combine with electoral competition). I think I'm going to put Comparative whenever applicable as well; it makes more sense. Thanks for your help!

Definitely a non-zero (and positive!) number of people who combine formal theory and behavioural stuff, though it's still not a large set. The people doing that kind of thing in political science proper is even smaller, though that might just mean that there's a lot of room to make useful contributions. Who are the Princeton people doing behavioral game theory? Just curious.

At Michigan, beyond Skip Lupia, Scott Page has done some behavioral stuff and knows network theory thoroughly (one of his dissertation committee members was Matt Jackson), and Bob Axelrod has done some stuff on this kind of thing in the past, and it's most of what he's interested in right now. You could probably construct a good committee with them and then someone a touch more substantive (maybe Jim Morrow depending on exactly what you mean by electoral violence). If you really want to engage primarily with political science you probably couldn't do better; places like Caltech and Stanford GSB might better prepare you to go on the econ or business school markets.

[zudei]

Ah thanks! I had Axelrod on my POI list and I've read his papers and books but I did not know that Scott Page has worked with Network Theory. That does sound very promising! At Princeton, while there are no senior theorists working on behavioral stuff in the Politics department, there are quite a few at Woodrow Wilson School, Roland Benabou is probably the biggest. In the department of Politics itself there are a few younger theorists who work on behavioral stuff, Matias Iaryczower for example. I also remember reading a paper by Kristopher Ramsay with Mark Fey of Rochester where they investigated mutual optimism and war and had one section on bounded rationality (non-common priors).