An op-ed by Jacqueline Stevens a few weekends ago in the New York Times made a lot of waves. In it, Stevens — a professor in the political science department at Northwestern University — essentially declares herself in favor of eliminating National Science Foundation funding for political science research.
Her reason? Political scientists are lousy forecasters.
This post not going to be a response to Jacqueline Stevens. GWU’s Henry Farrell has a great response here, Stanford’s James Fearon — whose work is singled out by Stevens as the type of work she dislikes — has his own response here, and forecaster extraordinaire Jay Ulfelder responds here.
What I am going to take issue with here instead is a two-sentence excerpt. Indeed, in her op-ed, Stevens writes of empirical research in political science that
Many of today’s peer-reviewed studies offer trivial confirmations of the obvious (…). I look forward to seeing what happens to my discipline and politics more generally once we stop mistaking probability studies and statistical significance for knowledge.
Trivial confirmations of the obvious, really?
Authoritarianism in the New York Times?
The view that China should become more democratic is widely held in the West. But framing the debate in terms of democracy versus authoritarianism overlooks better possibilities.
The political future of China is far likelier to be determined by the longstanding Confucian tradition of “humane authority” than by Western-style multiparty elections.
That’s from an op-ed in last Wednesday’s New York Times, in which the authors essentially take a pro-authoritarian stance. In short, their argument is that they have have found a better scheme. The op-ed has prompted surprisingly few responses (see here for a Chinese philosophical perspective, see here for an excellent critical perspective, and see here for Tom Pepinsky’s take).
Rather than Western-style democracy, what the authors have in mind is
… a tricameral legislature: a House of Exemplary Persons that represents sacred legitimacy; a House of the Nation that represents historical and cultural legitimacy; and a House of the People that represents popular legitimacy.
The leader of the House of Exemplary Persons should be a great scholar. Candidates for membership should be nominated by scholars and examined on their knowledge of the Confucian classics and then assessed through trial periods of progressively greater administrative responsibilities — similar to the examination and recommendation systems used to select scholar-officials in the imperial past. The leader of the House of the Nation should be a direct descendant of Confucius; other members would be selected from descendants of great sages and rulers, along with representatives of China’s major religions. Finally, members of the House of the People should be elected either by popular vote or as heads of occupational groups.
So what the authors suggest, then, is a mixture of technocracy and monarchy, with just enough of a bone thrown in to the people so to prevent uprisings?