Alex Lee
@AlexanderMkLee
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Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Rochester. I read a lot of books. Also at @Alexander_Lee @econtwitter .net
New York
Joined July 2020
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Jim Scott, my undergrad advisor, convinced me entirely by example that political science was a worthwhile way to spend one’s life. He thought my thesis was superficial, but relative to his extraordinary work everything probably seemed that way. A radical king among scholars
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Eight years ago, I realized there was no writing on how *political scientists* should use archives, and decided to write it. Now it's forthcoming at
@JHPE_journal
Read it, cite it, and most of all, go an archive and use it.
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I'm looking for a Research Assistant who can read Tamil and has some basic familiarity with Excel. To start, it would be about 20 hours of work, and could be done online from anywhere. Salary flexible. If you think of someone, please pass on my contact info.
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The first copies came today of my book with Avi Acharya from
@OxUniPress
. If you want to know why the state system exists, why it does what it does and whether it will survive globalization, you will be interested in this.
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Fifteen months after submitting proofs, and ten years after staring the project, it’s a little surreal to see this book in physical form for the first time. Thanks to everyone at
@CUPAcademic
for working through the pandemic to get this out, and the PS staff for finding a copy
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A paper I started a decade ago just got R&Rd. It's led me to think about the review process in political science.
There's a lot of attention to the recent long delays, I think the deeper problem is that journals are doing a worse job of selecting good work. A 🧵about why.
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I'm organizing a South Asian Politics section within APSA. A section would be able to organize panels, give awards, and host an annual reception. To do this, we need 200 APSA members to sign this petition. It takes 20 seconds--please sign and circulate!
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The inaugural winners of the APSA South Asia sec. Francine Frankel best book prize are
@AkshayMangla
for Making Bureaucracy Work: Norms, Education and Public Service Delivery in Rural India and
@NiloSiddiqui
for Under the Gun: Political Parties and Violence in Pakistan. Congrats!
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More subtly, RD's moment has distorted knowledge production towards topics where RD is possible, even if the theoretical and substantive contributions are unclear. The focus on the effects of party incumbency relative to the role of other institutions is especially noticeable
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On the market? Not really on the market but want to teach in a great department?
@RochesterPolSci
is looking for an assistant professor in any field of American Politics, broadly defined. Apply at . DM me if you have questions about the search.
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I said I'd join twitter when I got tenure, and here I am. I guess it's symptomatic that it's on a day when I don't have strong opinions about anything, but that's usually a temporary condition
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Finally in print, Zuheir’s and my analysis of the effect of EVMs.
#Vol9Iss2
| Taking advantage of the gradual introduction of electronic voting machines in India, Z.Desai &
@AlexanderMkLee
show that EVMs decrease the share of invalid votes and increase support for minor candidates
#FreeAccess
until the end of May:
👉
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@aviditacharya
and I just got the final blurbs for our book, The Cartel System of States: An Economic Theory of International Politics from
@OxUniPress
. Thanks to
@kfscheve
,
@hvm1
, and too-cool-for-twitter Jim Scott, Melissa Lee, and Jeffry Frieden.
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On open access
@PSRMJournal
: Ballot symbols influence vote choice in India, and candidates respond by trying to choose popular symbols in a lottery
If you're an independent candidate reading this, you want the diamond ring and you want to avoid the ghobi
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In short, this is a method that should always be part of the tool kit in the right context, but we need to be apply the same type of strict scrutiny to RD papers that we do to IV and diff-in-diff
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Was teaching
@pstanpolitics
's IS article, and a student student said she "really liked the Stalingrad paper"
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The new South Asian Politics Section of
@APSAtweets
has been approved! Please remember to join when you renew your membership. All the money this year will go to throwing a happy hour at the conference.
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This paper with
@jackpaine_prof
is now out. When I tell students that a great paper can be one line graph and a lot of explanation, this is the paper I'm thinking of. We explain why the west started taxing more than the rest of the world a lot later than most people think.
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For social scientists doing historical work or teaching how to do it, my paper here (on how to use archives) might be useful.
For authors, FWIW
@jaj7d
runs a tight ship at
@JHPE_journal
, and made the review and publication process exceptionally quick and pleasant.
.
@JHPE_journal
2(3) is now out! All standard peer-reviewed articles by
@t_r_gray
,
@AlexanderMkLee
,
@ProfJRoberts
& others. Articles free w/registration.
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Reupping a post that got lost in the holidays: The South Asian politics section of APSA now has prizes for best book and best article on South Asia. Please nominate work you admire (even your own).
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Glad to see this piece with
@_quale
, on the unintended consequences of gender quotas of the representation of underprivileged groups, out in the latest issue of
@AJPS_Editor
PDF link:
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I'm reviewing an article for a well-regarded journal I won't name, and asked to see the authors' pre analysis plan. The editor told me that it is against "journal policy" to send or use them.
This seems crazy. If they can't be judged, PAPs will become pure signaling.
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After almost posting one, I’ve been thinking about that academic perennial, the “so excited” tweet.
But by the time pubs come out, they’re anticlimactic. I’m excited about ideas and R&Rs, but acceptances are a relief, and the final proof comes long after I’ve moved on mentally
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This paper with
@jackpaine_prof
is now out in print
@IntOrgJournal
.
Short summary: The big gap between western regimes and others only emerged after 1914. This happened because taxation requires both strong institutions and social demand.
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But rdrobust has problems when used by people less smart and honest than CCT
-Poor small sample properties
-Incorrect SEs when the running variable is discrete
-Easy to Phack with controls, polynomial order etc.
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I won’t get into the empirical controversy over the validity of electoral RDs, but I will say that things start to get weird when parties strategically enter and exit, and when there are more than two parties…and that’s basically every election outside the US.
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And then there are the lulz, people who “needed an RD”
-Compares close elections in one region to another (refereed it)
-Is very proud that the results are robust to changing the cutoff point (someone’s JMP)
-Compares close elections to not close elections (saw it presented)
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People always say "well, it evens out," and in the long term that's right. I've probably benefited from off base reviews as much as I've been hurt. But a grad student on the market doesn't get enough draws for that to kick in.
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I've spent the past two weeks working in the Vatican archives.
This institution can be challenging to access for a lay non-Italian speaker like myself, so I'm going to share what I've learned, in case it's useful.
#Archives
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The first South Asian Politics section business meeting and reception at
#APSA2023
are scheduled for Thursday evening. Please mark your calendars, and remember to join the section when you register!
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So, all disciplines complain about "R2," but in political science R2 has dispositive power. And as long as tenure and hiring committees pay attention to outlet prestige, that mean that R2, or the assistant who chooses them, controls where the discipline is going.
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But the floodgates didn’t really open until Calonico, Cattaneo & Titiunik developed their optimal bandwidths. Once rdrobust was out in Stata, RD became so easy anyone could do it
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The result is a string of papers where everything is “done right” but where the results are off.
-SEs of zero (I refereed it)
-Bandwithes of +/- 14% for an electoral RD (I refereed it)
-SEs decreasing quadratically as sample size decreases (I refereed it)
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Come to the South Asian Politics Section Events @
#APSA2024
!
The business meeting and prizegiving will be Thursday, September 5, 6:30 to 7:30pm, at the Loews Hotel, room Washington C
The happy hour will be right afterwards, Thursday 9/5, 7:30pm-? at Independence Beer Garden
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Even when I took causal inference, it was clear that not methods were equal
-Field experiments were pricey and hard for most topics
-"Natural experiments'' were neither of those
-The exclusion restriction of IV was never met
But RD seemed perfect…
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The brilliant
@armenon_memorie
is visiting
@RochesterPolSci
, and I got an action photo of the intellectual exchange.
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This is a fun one: some voters chose based on election symbols. Candidates who are randomly assigned their preferred symbol get more votes.
#OpenAccess
from
@PSRMjournal
-
Election symbols and vote choice: evidence from India -
-
@AlexanderMkLee
&
@WeihongQ
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I didn’t take a picture of my book conference, but you can see the leftover cookies and a pad of great comments. Thanks to
@sofiafamaral
@rikhilb
@beajauregui8
@Prof_Nishith_P
@_quale
@thoughtsofgabi
@AkshayMangla
@bethany_lacina
@LlerenaSearle
and
@Prof_Nishith_P
!
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Mark your APSA calendars:
The first ever business meeting for the South Asian Politics Section will be 6:30PM – 7:15 PM on Thursday 8/31 in JW Diamond Salon 7.
The section happy hour will be held at
HiDef Brewing Co
on Thursday 8/31 starting at 7:30PM
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Accepted at
@cps_journal
: OBC quotas led to socioeconomic gains for OBCs, and these gains are not captured by the OBC elite.
For Americans: Imagine if affirmative action was implemented at different times in different states, and you could compare them.
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The big problem in political science is that the editors, with some exceptions, defer to the reviewers completely. At most, they may read the tone of the reviews, and aggregate that into a decision.
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Mark your calendars for the APSA South Asia section's events at
#apsa2024
.
The business meeting and prize giving will be Thursday, Sep 5, 6:30-7:30pm at Loews, Commonwealth A1.
The happy hour will be right after the business meeting, 9/5 7:30pm-? at Independence Beer Garden
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@RochesterPolSci
is hiring *at least* 3 APs. Come join one of the best early career groups in the world!
Needs include gender diversity, big data, authoritarianism, IPE and REP. But it's best athlete: If you fall between fields, you'll fit right in
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My take on the UK chaos: This is an institutional design issue. If party leaders are chosen by one group (party members) and removable by another (MPs), you're going to see a lot of "crises" where MPs drop leaders none of them wanted anyway. This one just happened *very* fast
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I'm organizing an APSA South Asian Politics section, for we need the support of 200 APSA members. We have 250 names, but are still a few members short. Even if you don't study South Asia,* please sign if you would like to see more SA work at APSA.
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And to complete the tweet storm: there will be nine South Asia-focused panels at
#apsa2024
, choosen by program chairs
@ProfAmitAhuja
and
@AdamZiegfeld
! If you are interested in serving as program chair for APSA 2025, please email me at alexander.mark.lee
@rochester
.edu.
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If you’re hiring in CP, PE, or gender politics, you need to take a hard look at my student and coauthor,
@_quale
(). He has an AJPS and a CPS R&R with me, a 2nd year paper in QJPS, and fascinating ongoing work on the Indian courts. He’s also a great guy!
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The South Asian Politics section would like to announce two new prizes. Please send nominations (including self-nominations) to the committee by February 1st. If you’re the author of a book, you can ask your editor to send copies.
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I will be attending
@APSAtweets
, but will move things so that I will not be staying, meeting or presenting at the struck hotels.
The extremes of "all of LA is now tainted by neoliberalism" and "strikes are good when they don't inconvenience me" both seem dumb.
That's the tweet
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Since editors *almost* never engage on substance. So everything depends on which reviewers you draw, and how much energy they have. So there is a lot of chance. So more people decide to roll the dice and submit, further burdening the editors.
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Come to the first South Asian Politics section business meeting and happy hour at APSA!
Business meeting: Thursday (8/31) 6:30 to 7:15 in LACC Room 306A (a new, unstruck, location).
We will then walk to the happy hour: 7:30 to 9 at HiDef Brewing Co .
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@_adasgupta
I had a couple months before starting my PhD, and asked for recommendations on classic social science that I wouldn’t get in grad
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This is fairly well known in the methods community, but doesn't seem to slowed the gold rush...and I'm as guilty as the next person.
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As an India scholar, people often tell me that Modi is an example of the “right wing populism” that has become globally prominent in the last decade, and that he is analogous to Trump, Bolsonaro, Le Pen, Orban etc.
A thread on why I think this take is wrong.
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Without getting into the substance, Esther read the paper, and had an opinion. She's an adult talking to an adult. The APSR letter defers entirely to the reviewers.
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Given the large number of inquiries from extraordinarily qualified people I’ve received already, I’m going to stop replying to dms about this job. Thanks to everyone who shared this!
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Here's an example. Compare the key paragraph of two reviews (both negative) of the same paper at AER and APSR (previous team).
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@AjayVerghese
, Ved and I wanted to know what rural Indians think of the experiments that are run "on" them.
Come for findings on sampling, consent and understanding. Stay for this description of me: "Respondents poked fun at Coauthor A for the clothes he wore during fieldwork"
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My take on the "did anything good come out of colonialism" question.
Today, at
@BlogBroadstreet
@AlexanderMkLee
discusses how colonialism changed history - for better and for worse.
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@RochesterPolSci
is holding zoom interviews for our American politics search. Additional candidates in black politics may be interviewed at a later date. Eager to hear about the research of some of the candidates in this extraordinary pool.
#PsJMinfo
#poliscijobs
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We were promised a new age of data driven journalism. We got this:
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If you want a erudite summary of politics in contemporary Uganda, look no further than this, by my friend Ken Opalo
Today is as good a day as any to read up on the Museveni succession…
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@therabz
@CUPAcademic
Yes, thankfully. It's out now, thought I can't vouch for India-Pakistan mail these days.
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@annemeng_
@ScottFAbramson
@jackpaine_prof
@scottatyson
@MayyaKomis
Jack may be the US Army of eating, but two large Salvatores pizzas is the Vietnam of food
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@JP_Halll
This is an experimental study. The policy is that PAP submission is optional, if the author(s) choose not to send it they won’t make them. This seems flawed: if your PAP didn’t “work,” you can change the specification, submit it and nobody will ever know.
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I just want to publicize this opportunity for a free trip to India for faculty at community colleges and minority serving institutions. No Asia Studies background necessary!
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Just to clarify, we *strongly* encourage applications from people of all genders and backgrounds, studying all topics in empirical political science. My description of the departments needs reflects my personal views, and I am not on the committee
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It’s hard to imagine Trump running away from home to become a celibate Republican activist, or paying the kind of deference to party leaders that Modi has.
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4. Not really. Modi is pro trade. He spoke in *Davos* about the “worrisome” decline in trade and FDI.
His “neutrality” on Ukraine is old dogma within the Indian foreign policy blob. To the extent that he’s deviated from them, it's been toward the US and 🇮🇱 and away from China
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I'm looking for a research assistant to transcribe and translate some Medieval Latin manuscript documents this summer. Work would be remote and flexible. I estimate 100 hours at $22 an hour. Email a CV to Alexander.mark.lee
@rochester
.edu
Please retweet!
#medievaltwitter
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That's it. Good luck!
Be sure to have an expresso in the courtyard.
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@jmurtazashvili
The area covered by the current states of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Bhutan and the Maldives. Kanchan suggested adding Myanmar, which I'm open to.
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So, I’d score Modi a 1.5/4 on the right-wing populism scale. He’s a pretty standard Indian right winger.
That doesn’t mean he’s not bad—I find the heavy-handed control of the media and law enforcement scary. But his career can’t be fitted into a simplistic global narrative.
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My take in
@HindustanTimes
, which may make nobody happy. Caste reservations work, but the system needs reform.
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@SivCheruvu
I’m not sure media control and the fake news discourse are diagnostic for RWP. A wide range of leaders not usually considered populist, from Saudi Arabia to Singapore, use this. But 100% agree that it’s the most concerning part of the current dispensation
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@twittwoods
@GerardoMunck
@jackpaine_prof
@CUP_PoliSci
You should still read the book, but this is the graph on which we base that claim. Sustained colonial pluralism has an exceptionally persistent association with democracy post-independence. It's certainly not a sufficient condition (Zimbabwe, Myanmar...) but very predictive.
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@PlanasRodriguez
On this issue broadly, see
On the issue of when you can approximate a discrete variable (like month or day) as continuous, see
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@aspaglayan
@JHPE_journal
I’d say that process tracing approaches are telling you how to reason causally from a given set of qualitative information, and I’m telling you how to gather that information without bias
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@mike_gibilisco
@armenon_memorie
@RochesterPolSci
This is its new avatar, the democracy center working group. But it still involves wine,
@GretchenHlmk
’s house, and CPE.
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You'll need to fill out a form online specifying who you are and what you want to look at.
They also asked for a a letter of endorsement from a tenured prof at a research university (I wrote a self-endorsement) and for my doctoral diploma (the only people who have ever asked!).
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@alexgazmararian
For those of us who extra impatient to see this, would you have a sample chapter you’re comfortable circulating?
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@_adasgupta
That was the kind of guy he was. Very few people would take that much time recommending books to a clueless 22 year old.
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