de-funding political science research sets a precedent

In late March, the US Congress decided to eliminate National Science Foundation (NSF) funding for political science that failed to promote the “national security or the economic interests of the United States.” Yeah, seriously.

The response from many political scientists I know was that our discipline makes a significant contribution and is thus worthy of funding (e.g., #PoliSciNSF). But almost a year ago now, Chris Zorn warned us not to engage on the terms of the knuckleheads (my word, not his) who brought about this de-funding of science about whether the research we do is worthy. Zorn instead focused on the precedent such an action sets:

The idea that individual members of Congress should sit in judgment over individual programs of scientific research opens up the possibility of the politicization of the scientific process by people across the political spectrum. This is of course not limited to NSF: NIH, NIJ, DOD, etc. could all see their research arms’ funding compromised by legislators looking to make some political hay. Don’t approve of homosexuality? Defund Prevention Science at DAR/NIMH. Against contraception? Get rid of CRH at NICHD. And so forth.

In the same vein, a recent letter in Science written by Rick Wilson makes a convincing case for why scientists beyond political science should care:

…the larger science community should not ignore the shackling of one program at NSF. If politics dictates what is worth studying, all disciplines are at risk. Why stop at political science? Why not neuter any grants that touch on evolutionary theories? After all, many in Congress deny the value of Darwin. The challenge to science is clear. If politics determines what is palatable, we could be picked off one at a time. The science community needs to clearly voice its opposition to this political intrusion in defining what is acceptable science.

Plenty of folks have weighed in (see this, this, and especially this). I don’t have much to add to this debate, but only want to echo what I’ve highlighted from Zorn and Wilson’s points here: every scientist should see this as an attack. My fellow scientists, you should be concerned when politicians start deciding what kinds of research we should be doing.

mbalimbali

having it all:

• Four Ways to Rethink Having It All (Without Leaning In)
• Can Rural Women Also Have It All? Voices of “Elite Women” Important for Truly Oppressed

academia:

• Why Professors at San Jose State Won’t Use a Harvard Professor’s MOOC
• Improve your Course Evaluations by having your Class Write Letters to Future Students
• On Quitting

misc:

• Malaysia’s election scandals: We discuss some of the vote irregularities being alleged as ruling coalition takes power for a record 13th time.
• Conflict Kitchen is a take-out restaurant that only serves cuisine from countries with which the United States is in conflict.
• “…activism should be undertaken in partnership with affected people, under their leadership. It should facilitate those people defining the problem for themselves—it is only by defining their problem that they can ever be master of it, rather than it becoming master of them.”
• GODS FALL DOWN: The Mythical World of Senegalese Wrestling
• Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) explains an RCT in plain language:
  

WGAPE 2013: some new research in African Political Economy

I’ve just returned home from the 2013 WGAPE (Working Group in African Political Economy) meeting, held this year at MIT.*

The meeting kicked off with some discussion of a new relationship with The World Bank. The details are still being ironed out, but there is a bonus WGAPE meeting planned at the bank later this month, and there is also potential that the World Bank will provide funding to WGAPE to redistribute as seed grants (likely targeted to graduate students) to conduct fieldwork in African Political Economy. WGAPE is a great vehicle for a funding mechanism like this proposed seed grant because it can additionally support fieldwork projects by providing a space for graduate students to get feedback at WGAPE on the pre-fieldwork plan, and later feedback on the written research resulting from the fieldwork.

It’s probably not surprising to anyone familiar with WGAPE that there were papers on ethnicity, conflict, and development (see list of papers with links below). But there was also a paper on the salience of LGBT issues in Africa, written by Guy Grossman. Here is an excerpt from the abstract:

I argue that the uneven upward trend in the political saliency of LGBT-related issues is closely related to two key recent political processes: (i.) a rapid growth of Pentecostal, Evangelical and related Renewalist or Spirit-filled churches (demand-side factor) and (ii.) a democratization process leading to heightened political competition (supply-side). To evaluate the above proposition I put together an original, fine-grained longitudinal dataset of media coverage of LGBTs in Africa, which I use as measure of issue saliency… I find robust evidence that the saliency of LGBTs is increasing in a country’s level of political competition and its population share of Renewalist Christians.

One great thing about WGAPE is learning about other relevant and interesting research, often still in the working paper stages. Here is a selection of interesting papers not presented at WGAPE, but shared by some of its participants during the discussion (disclaimer: I haven’t yet read some of these):

• Education and Human Capital Externalities: Evidence from Colonial Benin by Leonard Wantchekon, Natalija Novta, and Marko Klasnja
• Crossing the Line: Local Ethnic Geography and Voting in Ghana by Nahomi Ichino and Noah Nathan (and forthcoming in the American Political Science Review)
• Mission Education and Ethnic Group Status in Africa by Kate Baldwin
• Crossing Party Lines: The Effects of Information on Redistributive Politics (Sierra Leone) by Kate Casey
• Explaining Coethnic, Non-coethnic and Cross-ethnic Voting in Uganda by Hyesung Kim
• New Tools for the Analysis of Political Power in Africa by Ilia Rainer and Francesco Trebbi

WGAPE also devoted time to discussion on research transparency. WGAPE co-founder and co-convener Ted Miguel has worked with colleagues to get the American Economic Association to set up a registry for any social scientist doing a randomized controlled trial, and the registry is now live. We also learned of the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS), which “investigates new approaches to research transparency and promotes those that demonstrate the ability to improve rigor and credibility.” I recommend reading the blog post series on transparency in social science research.

Though the meeting had quite a few people in the room (the highest WGAPE attendance ever), it still felt like a frank and even friendly place to present works in progress. The thing I like most about WGAPE is my feeling that the intentions behind the comments are good — the goal is to improve the work, and most times we even try to offer solutions for the problems we raise. Winner of the best line uttered in discussion was James Long, who when commenting on a [relatively long] draft survey a graduate student was taking to the field, said, “Focus group the shit out of it.” (To figure out what to cut, obviously.)

The list below is of the papers presented, with links to the PDFs.

• Internal Borders: Ethnic Diversity and Market Segmentation in Malawi, by Amanda Robinson
• The Political Economy of Ethnicity and Property Rights in Slums: Evidence from Kenya, by Benjamin Marx, Thomas M. Stoker, and Tavneet Suri
• Geographic Variation in Ethnic Political Mobilization, by Mauricio Velasquez
• How Political Violence Shapes Trust in the State: Survey Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa, by Omar Garcia Ponce and Ben Pasquale
• Bandits or States: Evidence on the Origins of States from Armed Groups in Eastern Congo, by Raul Sanchez de la Sierra
• The Economic and Social Returns to Cash Transfers: Evidence from a Ugandan Aid Program, by Christopher Blattman, Nathan Fiala, and Sebastian Martinez
• The Long-Term Effects of the Printing Press in Sub-Saharan Africa, by Julia Cage and Valeria Rueda
• Renewalist Christianity, Political Competition and the Political Saliency of LGBTs in sub-Saharan Africa, by Guy Grossman

Also, in case you’re interested in a play-by-play of the meeting, I tweeted a bit as we went along. The top buzz words of the meeting were “shoe-leather” and “placebo test.”

Next spring, the national meeting will be at UC Berkeley. Fall regional meetings are still being figured out, though the Midwest group is most certainly meeting at the University of Indiana (date TBD), thanks to the entrepreneurial efforts of Jen Brass.
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* This year’s meeting was financially supported by the Department of Political Science at MIT and the National Science Foundation.

research frontiers in foreign aid

Photo of building on Princeton University campus taken by Kim Yi Dionne. All rights reserved.

I’ve just returned from Research Frontiers in Foreign Aid, a conference organized by Simone Dietrich and Helen Milner, held at Princeton University.

The work I presented is a very rough first draft, co-authored with Eric Kramon and Tyson Roberts. We look at how foreign aid is allocated in Malawi, and the subsequent impact that aid has on development outcomes. We use data from the Malawi Geocoding Project and focus on aid by sector, i.e., is education aid more likely to be allocated to politically important areas or based on need? And does more health aid have an impact on health outcomes? Our results are preliminary, and there’s still quite a bit of work to be done, but in our initial analysis, we see aggregate aid does not seem to target the neediest areas, but instead there appears to be targeting of areas in which the dominant ethnic group is the same ethnic group of the president. Co-ethnic targeting does not result in our analysis of sector-specific aid (we have looked only at health and education thus far). There is some evidence, however, that both education and health aid are driven by needs in education and health, respectively. Because folks have asked, I’ve posted the slides from the presentation.

I found the other papers presented at the conference really interesting. I’ll share just a couple:

Niklas Potrafke presented a paper co-authored with Heinrich Ursprung that looked at why we give foreign aid. Though the scholarship identifies reasons of self-interest (geo-strategic or commercial) and humanitarianism, Potrafke and Ursprung consider an alternative explanation where aid is viewed as an expressive act that affirms the donor’s identity of being a caring person. They use survey data of German university students from 25 universities over 30 years, with more than 900 variables.

Jacob Shapiro presented a paper coauthored with Eli Berman, Joseph Felter, and Erin Troland on development spending in conflict situations. It’s particularly important research given how much aid goes to conflict countries (20-40% of aid from 1976-2010), especially since conflict incidence has declined over time. Using geocoded data from Iraq, Shapiro and colleagues found small aid projects and professional development expertise to reduce the incidence of violence.

All of the papers are posted online.

mbalimbali to end your Monday

• Academia
  • Colleges Are Slashing Adjuncts’ Hours to Skirt New Rules on Health-Insurance Eligibility.
  • Kerry Ann Rockquemore gives 10 Tips for Thriving During Crunch Time.
  • My discipline, Political Science, appears to be having a hiring slump. I think that happens every year I’m on the job market. I’ll stop doing that for the sake of my friends.
  • The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has published its report on trends in academic labor, The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2012-13. Three quick takeaways: “unabated growth of contingent employment”; “sharp drop in state funding for higher education”, and “growing pay differentials between the public and the private sectors”.
  • NSF Peer Review is under scrutiny (it’s not just Political Science under fire, folks).
• Women and Work
  • Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe asks business community to support 3-year child care leave, among other things.
  • In The Atlantic: “Why 43% of Women With Children Leave Their Jobs, and How to Get Them Back.”
  • In the coming weeks, NPR is running a series of reports on the “revolution” associated with more women entering the workforce: “An Exploration Of The Changing Lives Of Women.”
  • And here’s a funny (?) combination of the first two categories: “My university life as a woman professor.”
• Foodie/Locavore Corner
  • There is “A foodie revolution cooking in West Africa.”
  • In Washington DC, a Former Hill Staffer Turns Old ‘Secret Safeway’ Into Store Specializing in Regionally Sourced Foods.
• What my friends are publishing
  • Former (UCLA) professor Michael Chwe’s book Jane Austen, Game Theorist, is now out and has been featured in the New York Times.
  • Former (UCLA) officemate Cesar Zucco examines the political payoff of cash transfers in Brazil in this forthcoming article in the AJPS: “When Payouts Pay Off: Conditional Cash Transfers and Voting Behavior in Brazil 2002–10.”
• Potpourri
  • Julia Hobsbawm writes a remembrance of her father, Eric Hobsbawm, a year after his death.
  • Who shares data?
  • There is a new African News Search Engine, which searches 255 news sources from Africa south-of-the-Sahara.
  • A female veteran of the Mau Mau refuses to cut her hair until she sees the benefits of independence.
  • “How Cuban Villagers Learned They Descended From Sierra Leone Slaves.”
  • Macklemore‘s new video came out this week:

mbalimbali

• Blood and land: Erodo’s story. From the moment he was born, Erodo, a Kenyan boy born to a tribe of cattle nomads in 1992, has had his life documented by filmmaker Bruno Sorrentino.
• The 150 Things the World’s Smartest People Are Afraid Of
• HIV+ women bemoan exclusion from subsidy: HIV-positive women in Malawi are being excluded from the government’s fertilizer subsidy program for smallholder farmers
• To (All) the White Girls Who Didn’t Get Into The College Of Their Dreams: Kendra James writes of non-white girls, “We don’t get to make ourselves feel better by engaging in a smear campaign against the fictional Cherokee girl that took our Ivy League slot.”
• Academia’s Indentured Servants
• Researching While Black: Why Conflict Research Needs More African Americans (Maybe)
• The Kwani? Manuscript Prize Longlist has been announced; 30 unpublished novels have been selected from 280 submissions from 19 African countries.
• Traditional law denies rights: South Africa’s Constitutional Court rules on the role of traditional authorities and customary law (HT Jill Kelly)

women and saying “no”

In another post earlier this week, I linked to a paper in the most recent issue of PS: Political Science and Politics: “Women Don’t Ask? Women Don’t Say No? Bargaining and Service in the Political Science Profession” (earlier ungated version), written by Sara McLaughlin Mitchell and Vicki L. Hesli. Data for the paper comes from survey responses of 1399 faculty members of US political science departments. To answer the second question — whether women say “no” — the authors found that women were asked to provide more service* and that they agreed to serve more frequently than men. At the same time, they found  that women were less likely to be asked by their colleagues to serve as department chair, to chair committees, or to lead academic programs. (So they’re asked to provide more service, but not the kind with higher esteem.)

Then, today I attended a talk** given by Lise Vesterlund, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh. The talk was on research she’s done with Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser, M.J. Tocci, Laurie Weingart, and Amanda Weirup: “Breaking the glass ceiling with “no”: Gender differences in doing favors.” The research was presented earlier this year at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association, and that presentation was written up on the Wall Street Journal’s blog (gated) in January. Here’s an excerpt of the WSJ writeup:

In one study, 47 business-school students were asked to recall agreeing to a favor on the job at a time when they preferred to say no. The female participants did the favor, even though they were five times more likely than males to report having felt worn out. Perhaps they obliged because they were also twice as likely to have been worried about the consequences of saying no.

In a second study, this one involving altruistic behavior in small groups, female undergraduates were 50% more likely to comply with an implicit request for a favor than were male students. The willingness of women to do favors in the workplace may lead them to become overburdened with low-skill tasks, the researchers said.

At the end of Vesterlund’s talk, I asked a question about why women would agree to a favor even though they were more likely than men to be worn out or worried — I asked, “Shouldn’t women be more worried? Isn’t it different when a woman says no than when a man says no? Especially in a context where women have historically been the ones doing the less esteemed service, when a woman says no, won’t she suffer greater consequences than the man who was never asked?” I might have said something about the people asking her thinking she was an “uppity” woman for saying no.

Here are a few interesting takeaways from Vesterlund’s presentation (not already covered by the WSJ):

1. The difference between men and women in engaging in competition: Using behavioral economics experiments involving both male and female participants, Vesterlund and colleagues found that when given the option to participate in a tournament (and earn higher winnings) or being paid a piece rate (and earn less), men were more than twice as likely to select into the tournament than women — even when controlling for risk aversion.
2. The loss to society: Highly talented women not entering in the competition makes society lose out on their underperformance. As a society, we are missing out on the differential between what women actually earn and what they could have potentially earned, if they were willing to compete.
3. The “say no” club: The origin of the research came from Vesterlund and her colleagues participating in what they called a “say no” club*** (started after a conversation about being overcommitted at work). The club would meet once a month and each person would share what they said yes to, and what they said no to. Members knew that if they said yes to something, they would have to tell the club what they would say no to in return. Apparently, they have started “say no” clubs in different parts of the country.

Vesterlund’s talk was about more than these two studies. She also gave an overview of the research on vertical gender segregation. There were a few papers she mentioned during her talk that might be of interest. I’ve copied them below with their abstracts and links.

Choosing to compete: How different are girls and boys? by Alison L. Booth and Patrick Nolen
Using a controlled experiment, we examine the role of nurture in explaining the stylized fact that women shy away from competition. We have two distinct research questions. First, does the gender composition of the group to which a student is randomly assigned affect competitive choices? Second, does the gender mix of the school a student attends affect competitive choices? Our subjects (students just under 15 years of age) attend publicly funded single-sex and coeducational schools. We find robust differences between the competitive choices of girls from single-sex and coed schools. Moreover, girls from single-sex schools behave more like boys even when randomly assigned to mixed-sex experimental groups. This suggests that it is untrue that the average female avoids competitive behavior more than the average male. It also suggests that observed gender differences might reflect social learning rather than inherent gender traits.

Gender Differences in Competition: Evidence From a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society by Uri Gneezy, Kenneth L. Leonard, and John A. List
We use a controlled experiment to explore whether there are gender differences in selecting into competitive environments across two distinct societies: the Maasai in Tanzania and the Khasi in India. One unique aspect of these societies is that the Maasai represent a textbook example of a patriarchal society, whereas the Khasi are matrilineal. Similar to the extant evidence drawn from experiments executed in Western cultures, Maasai men opt to compete at roughly twice the rate as Maasai women. Interestingly, this result is reversed among the Khasi, where women choose the competitive environment more often than Khasi men, and even choose to compete weakly more often than Maasai men. These results provide insights into the underpinnings of the factors hypothesized to be determinants of the observed gender differences in selecting into competitive environments.

Gender and Competition by Muriel Niederle and Lise Vesterlund
Laboratory studies have documented that women often respond less favorably to competition than men. Conditional on performance, men are often more eager to compete, and the performance of men tends to respond more positively to an increase in competition. This means that few women enter and win competitions. We review studies that examine the robustness of these differences as well the factors that may give rise to them. Both laboratory and field studies largely confirm these initial findings, showing that gender differences in competitiveness tend to result from differences in overconfidence and in attitudes toward competition. Gender differences in risk aversion, however, seem to play a smaller and less robust role. We conclude by asking what could and should be done to encourage qualified males and females to compete.

Unfortunately, the new studies Vesterlund presented today are not yet available as papers to read, but I hope they will be soon (and will post to haba na haba once they are online).

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*Service in an academic setting typically refers to those responsibilities outside of research and teaching (though sometimes overlapping), including but not limited to: participation on departmental committees (i.e., curriculum committees or hiring committees), contributing to university initiatives (i.e., increasing global experience opportunities or participating in the university’s honor code review panels), engaging with professional associations, and generally using your skills and expertise to serve the university (and sometimes even the larger community). Service is usually one part of how faculty are evaluated for tenure and promotion (alongside teaching and research).

**The talk was sponsored by TAMU’s Economics Department and NSF ADVANCE Center.

***These are not at all related to the “Just Say No” campaigns that my generation grew up on: