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.

• 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:
  

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.

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.

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:

Lewis’s article is the first to document the experiences of pregnant or nursing moms during interviews for academic positions in political science. Using data from 349 female political scientists who responded to an online survey, Lewis found very few women who reported to have been pregnant or nursing when interviewing for positions (14.9% and 11.8%, respectively). More interesting were the anecdotes respondents shared in open-ended responses to the survey. For example:

When I interviewed the first time, pregnant, the worries that had led me to keep it a secret were confirmed. I was asked about my family life by three different faculty members. I was deeply uncomfortable with the entire interview. Further, I doubted my own abilities — I was exhausted throughout the interview, given the stage of the pregnancy; uncomfortable because I could not enjoy a glass of wine at dinner, and could not tell anyone why I would not drink. I could not imagine telling them why I was so tired, and why I could not drink. The entire situation was miserable.

And here’s a tidbit from a woman who was a nursing mom at the time she was interviewing for positions:

I did not ask for accommodations because I did not want to bring up the fact that I had a new baby and needed accommodations. In retrospect this was a mistake because I did not have time to pump, which was distracting, uncomfortable,a nd also I ended up leaking during my job talk (but fortunately only I knew this). It was very difficult.

“Keeping quiet” sums it up about right.

I thought I’d share my own recent experience. I had a baby in October, and he is breastfed. In December, I was invited for on-campus interviews, to be scheduled some time in January or February. Before I got on the phone with anyone about the details of my visits, I had to make a decision about whether I was going to bring up the fact that I was a nursing mom and would like to be accommodated. Both places I was invited to were great departments, and I wanted these jobs badly; I definitely wanted to put my best foot forward. However, after a little more than two years in the profession (and five years as a mom), I knew that no matter how great a job was, if I had to “keep quiet” about my family, I was going to be miserable. Thus, I let both places know that I had a breastfed infant at home and so I could not go for an extended period and I would need breaks to express milk. And BOTH places were accommodating. In fact, one of the people coordinating a visit didn’t skip a beat when I asked and said that they had a few options to choose from (including flying the baby with me to the interview), and would be accommodating for whichever was best for me. At both interviews, sufficient time was set aside for me to pump, in a private office. (The real challenge in my experience was making sure there would be enough breastmilk for my son during my absence. The second biggest challenge was transporting the breastmilk pumped during the interview and all the equipment used to express it and keep it at a certain temperature.)

If I had to advise someone else in a similar situation, I would say it depends. In my case, I already had a job (many people interviewing for positions are not so fortunate), so I had less to lose. My interview experiences also may not be the norm — the two places I interviewed struck me as being very family-friendly. I know there are places that are not. I want to tell everyone to just do what I did because it’s better for your mental state and every department should be accommodating and if they’re not, they’re jerks and you don’t want to work there. But you might need to work there.

One last thought — when interviewed for the Inside Higher Ed piece, Lewis said:

We need to tell more of the success stories … of women who have successfully navigated the tenure track as a mother. We need to hear more about women who do it well — or at least try to do it — and don’t have that expectation that we have to wait.

The problem with our ability to tell these success stories, is that doing so requires that we have them first. I have met a few tenured women who have been able to do start a family pre-tenure, but there aren’t many. We need more women to be successful and I’m sure we’ll tell their stories. Until then, we might find a lot of women keeping quiet.

P.S. The same issue of PS: Political Science and Politics has another article that may also be of interest: Women Don’t Ask? Women Don’t Say No? Bargaining and Service in the Political Science Profession. In a future post, I’ll talk about negotiations, drawing from my recent experience on the job market.

State House has noted these claims and misgivings. State House has followed the debate incidental to these claims with keen interest, and would wish to respond as follows to put the record straight:
1. Neither the President nor any official in her government denied Madonna any attention or courtesy during her recent visit to Malawi because as far as the administration is concerned there is no defined attention and courtesy that must be followed in respect of her.
2. In any case, even if the defined parameters of attention and courtesy existed in respect of Madonna, the liberties of discretion to give or not to give that attention or courtesy would ordinarily and naturally remain the preserve of the host. Attention or courtesy is never demanded.
3. Granted, Madonna has adopted two children from Malawi. According to the record, this gesture was humanitarian and of her accord. It, therefore, comes across as strange and depressing that for a humanitarian act, prompted only by her, Madonna wants Malawi to be forever chained to the obligation of gratitude. Kindness, as far as its ordinary meaning is concerned, is free and anonymous. If it can’t be free and silent, it is not kindness; it is something else. Blackmail is the closest it becomes.
4. Granted, Madonna is a famed international musician. But that does not impose an injunction of obligation on any government under whose territory Madonna finds herself, including Malawi, to give her state treatment. As stated earlier in this statement, such treatment, even if she deserved it, is discretionary not obligatory.
5. It should be put on record that Madonna did not come to Malawi at the invitation of the President nor her government. In other words, she was neither the guest of the President nor of her government.
6. For all that is known, she came to Malawi like any other visitor that feels like coming to Malawi. Such visitors don’t have to meet with the President and are never amenable to state attention or graces.
7. If the argument is that because she is an internationally renowned star, and, therefore, Madonna believes she deserved to be treated differently from other visiting foreigners, it is worth making her aware that Malawi has hosted many international stars, including Chuck Norris, Bono, David James, Rio Ferdinand and Gary Neville who have never demanded state attention or decorum despite their equally dazzling stature.
8. Among the many things that Madonna needs to learn as a matter of urgency is the decency of telling the truth. For her to tell the whole world that she is building schools in Malawi when she has actually only contributed to the construction of classrooms is not compatible with manners of someone who thinks she deserves to be revered with state grandeur. The difference between a school and a class room should be the most obvious thing for a person demanding state courtesy to decipher.
9. For her to accuse Mrs. Oponyo for indiscretions that have clearly arisen from her personal frustrations that her ego has not been massaged by the state is uncouth, and speaks volumes of a musician who desperately thinks she must generate recognition by bullying state officials instead of playing decent music on the stage.
10. For all that is known, Mrs. Oponyo has never been responsible for arranging state meetings with foreigners who are looking for those meetings. If Madonna was indeed a VVIP and a regular guest of State Governments as she wants to be seen and treated, she would have been familiar with procedures that have to be followed to get such meetings. They don’t happen by simply sneaking into a country whose President and Government you scarcely desire to meet.
11. Even if Madonna followed the procedures to have her meetings with the President or government officials, the administration reserved all its rights to grant the meetings or not.
CONCLUSION
It must be noted that the President, Her Excellency Dr. Joyce Banda and her Government are ready to welcome any philanthropist seeking to assist in improving the welfare of the people of Malawi knowing that Her Excellency, herself, is a known philanthropist. However, acts of kindness must always remain as such; they must not smack of blackmail. In addition, let philanthropists not hold to ransom the President and any official of her Government because they showed some kindness to any Malawian.

“Dancing with the Agogo”s at the Orphan Care Center in. Namitete!” from Madonna’s Instagram feed

Both outlets (among others) did a fine enough job shaking their finger at the pop star that I could almost leave well enough alone. But much of the Western reporting missed the controversies surrounding the more substantive issues of Madonna’s trip to Malawi.

First, Madonna is over-claiming credit for the work she is doing with buildOn to build schools in Malawi, detailed in this article by Malawian journalist Mabvuto Banda and this article by Malawian journalist Ralph Tenthani (and then there’s this one from the BBC). Madonna is touting her recent partnership with buildOn for constructing 10 schools in Malawi, when in fact, they’ve built 10 school blocks, some of them at existing schools. Maybe the Material Girl doesn’t know the difference between schools and school blocks (a school block is a cluster of classrooms, and a school is a cluster of school blocks), and maybe I’m just splitting hairs — but I would like a bit of truth in advertising. If I gave someone a laptop in a village, can I say that I created a technology center in that village?

Then, responding to the less-than-enthusiastic reactions she was receiving in Malawi (huge turnout from schoolchildren at her events notwithstanding), Madonna’s charity representative, Trevor Nielson, lashed out at President Banda’s sister, Anjimile Oponyo, the former executive director of the school Madonna promised to build but later reneged. Malawian journalist Phillip Pemba quoted Neilson as saying:

“Madonna has no problem with the President of this country. But Anjimile Oponyo, who is the sister to the President, is demanding money and matters are in court. Her contract was terminated as head of Madonna’s girls’ school project in Malawi.

“She is now using her position [as Principal Secretary] in the Education Ministry to create trouble for Madonna. She is using her office to avenge on her personal grudge with Madonna and pursue her personal financial interest. We are surprised that she is doing that,” said Neilson.

And then I read this at the close of the Gawker story:

Trevor Neilson, Madonna’s philanthropic advisor, accused Banda of being influenced by a “grudge” her sister Anjimile Oponyo holds against his client, who fired Oponyo from her position as head of Raising Malawi a couple years ago on suspicion of theft. (A report by Neilson’s Global Philanthropy Group consulting firm placed much of the blame for Raising Malawi’s failure to construct a girls’ school, after receiving $3.8 million in funds to get started, on Oponyo, who is alleged to have mismanaged funds for personal gain. At the time, Malawi officials blamed Madonna for failing to provide the $15 million she promised.)

In an earlier post about Madonna, Malawi, and Anjimile Oponyo, I discussed how the New York Times was unfairly characterizing Oponyo’s compensation as extravagant. But now we are leaping to Oponyo as being a thief. There was gross financial mismanagement of Raising Malawi funds in the United States; as Oponyo wrote in an email, “No money for the school came to Malawi.”

Finally, I’m never a fan of poverty porn or people as props. Did the patient in this picture consent to having this photo taken?

“With Dr. Borgstein, my Hero! Pediatric surgeon at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Blantyre. 500 surgeries a year! He saves lives. ThAt’s TALENT!” from Madonna’s Instagram feed

If Madonna just stopped going to Malawi, I would not feel compelled to write about how lame she is.