I think there's something pretty general about Tyler's information consumption that he prefers a lot granular, contingent, and detailed stories that have a good dose of an overall framework, but not necessarily where a clear theory that is being tested. You see this in his preferences for travel, his distance from the sort of Top-5-journal econ crowd, his preference for literary fiction and movies, and even in his preference of Plato over Aristotle.
While he is very much trained in and finds himself in the build-a-theory-and-test-it tradition and finds a lot of value in that, I think in a lot of his reading, viewing, listening, traveling he is trying to correct the excesses of that tradition by constantly exposing himself to complex, messy, loosely organized details. This is why he is among public intellectuals very good at avoiding at the pitfalls of monism and professional deformation, i.e., the pitfalls of seeing the world only the lens of one's preferred theory.
Your interpretation sounds right to me. I was wondering if it is a books versus articles thing. These are his favorite books and messiness/info density is something that books do well. Articles (and even blog posts) are something else. He certainly links to articles on the blog and by all accounts reads them (eg, his surveys of the econ job market papers), but they seem to be a bit lower on the prestige scale.
I would strenuous vote "no" on this. The worst thing about writing by historians is the tendency to include voluminous, barely relevant detail. Facts which do not play a role in establishing (or challenging) the author's thesis should no be included.
And, on another note, I am skeptical that there are 53 biographies that are more worth reading than, say, The Deadly Ethnic Riot, or some of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's stuff, to name just a couple. Cowen's list just isn't very credible.
I think you're right if the audience is other political scientists. The current model works for us. But I was trying to think of why so few of our books get traction outside the discipline. I think How Democracies Die is one of the few.
Oh, I thought we were discussing Tyler Cowen as the audience. Or perhaps readers of his blog. Why is he recommending 50+ biographies over The Dictator's Handbook?
Yes, I sort of elided Tyler and the public there. He has some distinctive tastes in what he wants out of a book. I still think there aren't a lot of PS books that are enjoyable reading experiences in addition to saying something worthwhile.
I think the problem is with political science as a discipline. It has become bogged down in finding correlations between 'intermediate variables' and then manufacturing just-so stories to explain those correlations. By intermediate variables, I mean niceties of institutional design and subtle variances in electoral systems (that in the real world are probably not doing much causal work on things that really matter). I mean, if what you are writing about is the correlation between a change from first-past-the-post to partial proportional representation with party lists in sub-federal elections in Tanzania and the number of female candidates elected in said elections (basically the template for 90% of quantitative comparative politics articles), then who is going to want to read a book based on that? Not even the female candidates in aforesaid elections I would imagine.
You're probably right about this, but a lot of disciplines including economics seem to do the same thing. Economists might even be more likely to pick up on weird natural experiments. For some reason they are also able to go big sometimes and provide something more interesting.
I think there's something pretty general about Tyler's information consumption that he prefers a lot granular, contingent, and detailed stories that have a good dose of an overall framework, but not necessarily where a clear theory that is being tested. You see this in his preferences for travel, his distance from the sort of Top-5-journal econ crowd, his preference for literary fiction and movies, and even in his preference of Plato over Aristotle.
While he is very much trained in and finds himself in the build-a-theory-and-test-it tradition and finds a lot of value in that, I think in a lot of his reading, viewing, listening, traveling he is trying to correct the excesses of that tradition by constantly exposing himself to complex, messy, loosely organized details. This is why he is among public intellectuals very good at avoiding at the pitfalls of monism and professional deformation, i.e., the pitfalls of seeing the world only the lens of one's preferred theory.
Your interpretation sounds right to me. I was wondering if it is a books versus articles thing. These are his favorite books and messiness/info density is something that books do well. Articles (and even blog posts) are something else. He certainly links to articles on the blog and by all accounts reads them (eg, his surveys of the econ job market papers), but they seem to be a bit lower on the prestige scale.
>Maybe we should put more “stuff” in our books.
I would strenuous vote "no" on this. The worst thing about writing by historians is the tendency to include voluminous, barely relevant detail. Facts which do not play a role in establishing (or challenging) the author's thesis should no be included.
And, on another note, I am skeptical that there are 53 biographies that are more worth reading than, say, The Deadly Ethnic Riot, or some of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's stuff, to name just a couple. Cowen's list just isn't very credible.
I think you're right if the audience is other political scientists. The current model works for us. But I was trying to think of why so few of our books get traction outside the discipline. I think How Democracies Die is one of the few.
Oh, I thought we were discussing Tyler Cowen as the audience. Or perhaps readers of his blog. Why is he recommending 50+ biographies over The Dictator's Handbook?
Yes, I sort of elided Tyler and the public there. He has some distinctive tastes in what he wants out of a book. I still think there aren't a lot of PS books that are enjoyable reading experiences in addition to saying something worthwhile.
I think the problem is with political science as a discipline. It has become bogged down in finding correlations between 'intermediate variables' and then manufacturing just-so stories to explain those correlations. By intermediate variables, I mean niceties of institutional design and subtle variances in electoral systems (that in the real world are probably not doing much causal work on things that really matter). I mean, if what you are writing about is the correlation between a change from first-past-the-post to partial proportional representation with party lists in sub-federal elections in Tanzania and the number of female candidates elected in said elections (basically the template for 90% of quantitative comparative politics articles), then who is going to want to read a book based on that? Not even the female candidates in aforesaid elections I would imagine.
You're probably right about this, but a lot of disciplines including economics seem to do the same thing. Economists might even be more likely to pick up on weird natural experiments. For some reason they are also able to go big sometimes and provide something more interesting.