Sean Gailmard
@SeanGailmard
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Herman Royer Professor of Political Economy, @UCBerkeley Political Science. Unrepentant disciple & occasional priest of the dark cult of rational choice theory.
Berkeley, CA
Joined August 2018
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Possibly the best explanation of the need for theory in the study of society
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The greatest trick The Federalist ever pulled was convincing people 230+ years later that a series of bargains necessary for unanimous agreement among entrenched elites was actually a deeply deliberated source of common wisdom
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Grateful my CV exists so I can look up my office number
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I have a 10 minute phone call about 2 hours from now, so obviously my whole day is shot. Anybody else think like that or just me?
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My friend and colleague Bob Powell passed away today.
Bob was an unequalled scholarly force, an incredibly generous colleague, and an intellectual hero to many of us including me.
His memory will always be a gift to our field and to Berkeley. I will miss him immensely.
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Coming in 2024! Cover art day is a good day.
There are also blurbs and you can even order a copy:
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I think I finished a book manuscript today.
If you're interested in English imperial government in the future US (and its effect on US institutions), or generally in principal-agent problems of governing an empire, DM me and I will send you the manuscript.
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If the
@nytimes
were located in California, the Bay Area health commissioners would be national heroes
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Found an interesting working paper. Excited to open it in a browser tab, leave it unread, and forget about it completely when my machine randomly crashes in 2-3 months.
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Happy to say this paper forthcoming at
@AJPS_Editor
.
I try to understand how colonial legislatures became so powerful in Britain's American colonies. Context is that the crown legally allocated many powers to royal governors, but Govs de facto gave them to col. legislatures.
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Re “I’m not good at math” from new students, I hit em with the ol dazzle dazzle: in the 9 years from grades 4-12, I got a D or F in math 5 times. Many students who think they’re bad at math might just need a reason to get better.
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This is an egregious violation of academic freedom. It does not get worse than the state threatening prosecution for pursuit of an academic argument contrary to the state's policy.
Verified this is genuine (email sent to employees below). Key excerpt:
"faculty or others in charge of classroom topics & discussion must themselves remain neutral on the topic & cannot conduct or engage in discussions in violation of these prohibitions w/o risking prosecution"
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"Don't divide the country with your demands for accountability" now running neck and neck with "What about the deficit?" as
#1
hypocritical GOP talking point
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who 2 days ago voted to invalidate the certified electoral votes of states that went for Joe Biden, says that "Impeaching the President with just 12 days left in his term will only divide our country more."
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The impactfulness of academia is a result of specific ways of constituting and doing academia that engender social trust. It is not a structural constant in the world that we can use as a tool. We will seriously damage academia if we confuse this and probably already have.
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Happy to have this paper out. Ungated:
I make...well, a few points about primacy of theory to draw useful conclusions from empirics, even "credible"/identified empirics.
I think one of the most imprtnt is about external validity or causal generalization
New in
@JHPE_journal
: "Theory, History, and Political Economy" by
@SeanGailmard
. Free access with registration.
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It's a rather strange feeling to review a short paper, recommend "Accept with minor revisions" on 1st round, then see 2 other reviews cite my own work as justification to reject.
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The civil service can still compete with the private sector for talent. The secret is they have to be treated like professionals and given some discretion to pursue what they consider meaningful work.
But after 1940, those people had better opportunities, and they took them.
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The idea that faculty should limit their speech, lest they “incite” external enemies of the institution, is deeply dangerous to academic freedom. This is frankly a really concerning Op Ed.
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After living in an incompetently governed 1 party state, where leaders still manage to blame the GOP, I’m starting to suspect that partisan conflict is amplified by politicians because it lets them explain why they never get anything useful done.
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Hard to believe this is actually out, but happy to see that it is. Thankful to the many colleagues & friends who helped me make it happen.
.
@SeanGailmard
's Agents of Empire "demonstrates the imperial origins of arrangements at the core of the American democratic republic - representative assemblies, separation of powers, judicial review."
Out Now
#PoliticalEconomy
#History
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Not a single person in this writer's room thought maybe taking shots at community college is going to land wrong.
Jimmy Kimmel just scorched earth on Aaron Rodgers!
“A guy who went to community college, then got into Cal on a football scholarship & didn’t graduate… Aaron Rodgers got two A’s on his report card, and they were both in the word, ‘Aaron’.”
@jimmykimmel
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Absolutely amazing what you find when you change offices after 14 years
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The University of Florida is not even attempting to hide that it will silence faculty in the interest of the state. If you were writing a script you couldn’t come up with a clearer violation of academic freedom.
The University of Florida has a long track record of supporting free speech and our faculty’s academic freedom, and we will continue to do so.
Read the full university statement:
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Really not appreciating whichever of you is doing a resume experiment on prospective PhD students contacting faculty
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This is a real honor — David’s work has been as inspiring to me as any in this area.
Also great to see they’re out in the wild — I haven’t seen it yet!
Every so often you read a book that speaks of what you think you know, and it adds an entirely new dimension you missed. This was the case for me with Agents of Empire from
@SeanGailmard
. Brilliant.
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Becky Morton was a great scholar who also made our discipline better. She made up her own mind and broke through information cascades about talent like few others. It's no wonder she helped to make NYU a great department. I will miss her. RIP Becky.
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For the first time in 4 years I have an empty queue at
@The_JOP
, and will close this browser tab. Happy to have done this job—I enjoyed it and handled some great papers—but just as happy to pass the baton to
@tom_s_clark
.
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A lot of my research has the overriding theme that everything in politics sucks and that is as good as it will ever get, and I really feel like this hopeful message is necessary right now
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Abby was my 1st PhD advisee. I've been amazed by her creativity & precision in research since she was in grad school & learned much from her work then and since. It is a thrill to see her reach this well deserved milestone. I look forward to seeing what she does next. Very proud.
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Completely thrilled that my student
@ryan_hubert
just had a paper accepted at AJPS. Ryan is doing really interesting work on effects of fact finding deference to trial courts on information & substantive content of case law.
Paper is here:
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I feel that certain problems in our information ecology would be mitigated if media elites would just say true things, instead of saying untrue things to counteract other untrue things.
Alas, commitment problems strike again.
The simple reason why so many people weren’t keen to discuss the ‘lab leak’ *theory* is because it was originally conflated by the right with ‘Chinese bio weapon’ conspiracies and continues to be conflated by the right with anti-Fauci conspiracies. Blame the conspiracy theorists.
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It is clear from a number of recent cases that this is an important moment for academic freedom in the US. But we need to be clear on what the threats are. In my opinion, the two most recent salient cases, Dorian Abbot & UFlorida, offer a clear contrast.
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This looks like an amazing study but it suffers from a big problem which is that a lot of social scientists wish it weren’t true.
Today we released the first papers from OpenResearch's Unconditional income Study, which gave 1k ppl $1k/mo for 3 yrs & had a N=2k control group
This 🧵 is for RCT nerds: how did we measure the cash's fx? Learn about 96% response rates, blood draws, changing a state law & more..
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Very happy to see this paper published at APSR: "Imperial Politics, English Law, and the Strategic Foundations of Constitutional Review in America"
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I love EITM because it is a dynamic environment for thinking about the interplay of theory and data. It continues to regenerate with new perspectives rather than teaching a party line.
If that sounds interesting to you, please apply or encourage your students!
We are now accepting applications for the EITM Summer Institute, hosted virtually by UC Berkeley. The Institute will run from June 27 – July 15, 2022. The application deadline is Wednesday, April 15, 2022.
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Glass half empty: Everything is a clusterfuck
Glass half full: At least the fucks are all clustered
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Super proud of my student Jason for this paper. Measurement of delegation has long posed a serious challenge to the advancement of this literature. Jason and Tony have developed a sophisticated and accurate ML approach to overcome it. Should have big positive impact.
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This q is interesting because social scientists have well developed norms about it but they’re also kind of arbitrary.
Would the ideal social theory come from a person sequestered from society as a baby? How much are you allowed to observe before you’ve sinned against science?
Is there a standard term in academia for changing your hypotheses after the fact to match your findings?
(I know preregistration is designed to solve the problem, but what's the problem called?)
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~CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT~
Andrew Little (
@anthlittle
) and I are hosting the 7th conference on Comparative Politics & Formal Theory at Berkeley, Oct 11-12. Details below. Pls retweet! Especially interested in apps from women & scholars of color.
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I signed this as well. I would add that an administrative decision to boycott would be an egregious infringement on academic freedom. Scholars decide what collaborations have scholarly value, administration does not.
I almost never sign the various petitions that circulate through academia, but I made an exception and signed this one--against the boycott of Israeli academics.
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My kid started kindergarten and I think his teacher is about to see a new favorite animal
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It is discouraging that some scientists think that if you mean well and use the right mind tricks, you can control what people believe for their own good.
In reality the mind tricks are not very effective, and they weaken our levers in the long run.
When you can't just "trust the science" because the scientists keep lying to you and then saying, "oh, that was just a noble lie, sorry about that."
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When that is the case, you have "academic freedom" only provided the state does not care what you say. Which means you have none at all.
It is a disgrace, and it is beneath the many high quality universities and excellent scholars in the Florida state university system.
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Academic boycotts are intrinsically a violation of academic freedom. If supported by university administration, the problem is compounded. The AAUP course change is a mistake.
🚨 The AAUP has reversed course on academic boycotts.
It now says they “can be considered legitimate tactical responses.”
“The new statement doesn’t mention Israel, Palestine or other current events—but the timing isn’t coincidental.”
And just as university administrators are
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I don't consider pubs. per se important for an ABD. It is important that they have a clear and compelling agenda, a pipeline of submission-ready and well-executed work (book ms. or papers), and at least one paper/chapter that shows ambition, originality, and clarity of thought.
As the job market starts to open…
What is a good number of publications to have if you are ABD or a new PhD?
To others serving on search committees this year, here is my plea:
(1/10)
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Social scientists will literally display this on a slide then teach lasso like nothing even happened
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Sincerely touching to read the tributes and remembrances people have posted about Bob Powell today.
Our department created a page where people can post and collect these thoughts in a single place. Please consider sharing a thought.
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To be fair, this research design could have gotten you a QJE paper not that long ago.
States where physicians are highly paid have lower Covid-19 mortality per capita.
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So proud and happy for Jason. He was my student but I learned much more from him than vice versa. Well deserved.
Tenured and Associate-ed. Thrilled to be of the
@universityofga
@UGA_PA_Policy
@UGA_SPIA
community and excited about the work that I have ahead of me.
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I cannot imagine a cause for which I would consider it categorically immoral to go against the leadership of a political organization, no matter the organization. Maybe my reading is off.
All things considered, do you believe it is immoral to ignore the explicit demands of organized labor?
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This is an egregious violation of academic freedom. The state of Florida should be ashamed and the university should defend its faculty at the highest level.
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This account is so tiresome. If you want to compliment the perfectly curated sets of people who are into that, that’s great. But why pick on somebody just because they don’t play your game?
We’ve finally found someone to give
@LarrySabato
a run for his money. Nice file cabinets. 1/10
#CharlesBullockIII
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The Florida case is totally different. The university is saying that the ability of faculty to speak on matters of public importance is subordinate to the interests of the state government, as defined by the governor.
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Federalism is the main reason the whole country isn’t run like the federal govt. The problem here isn’t federalism, it’s that we sometimes choose incompetent leaders. Federalism at least limits the damage.
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Certainly most papers are not worth much, but evaluating academic research paper-by-paper misses much of its value, from two sources.
(i) It is necessary to have a community of scholars to figure out which ideas can stand up to a wide range of counterarguments.
1.8 million academic papers per year. Most never read, plagiarized, fake, or useless. What % were paid for by taxpayer $$$?
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My op-ed in The Hill, on the op-ed in the Times: The enigma of the resistance op-ed
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This is on the money. Tenure is integral to the definition of “merit-based” in the first place. The metric is the judgment of scholars in a field who have a long term stake in the institution. It’s not number of “top 5” pubs or whatever could be automated by a dean.
Tenure isn't about free speech. It's about self-governance: where the standards for success are set by people who live and understand the relevant kind of success.
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What good is water tight causal inference if I have no idea how to compare the thing it’s about to any other thing that ever happened?
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Everyone knows Trump is a threat. The question is what is the best way to deal with it: letting Biden continue, or replacing with a better candidate? NYT et may be wrong but Biden presents real risks both as candidate and as executive. Not talking about it isn’t realistic.
I am disappointed with mainstream US media, including the New York Times. The headlines are all about Biden’s debate performance. Yes, he’s old. Yes, it would’ve been great to have had a more inspiring younger candidate. Yes, he had a bad night, certainly compared to his State of
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@IdeanSalehyan
Hello, would be willing to give me a rundown of the topics in American politics that are trivial shit? Thank you.
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Politicians don't like accountability, and they only tolerate it in competitive systems because it's required to win over voters.
There are no "good guys" in politics who will do the right thing if we just give their group unrestricted power for a little while.
Did you know the California State Capitol no longer provides a dedicated work space for journalists who cover the legislature and governor?
With the final two weeks of session (featuring long days and late nights) this is a privacy and safety concern. Let’s talk about it 🧵
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A welcome surprise
Very pleased to announce that
@SeanGailmard
and I have been awarded the Duncan Black Prize by the editors of Public Choice.
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It's going to be really tragic when we get a great paper about the academic productivity shock from the Musk takeover, but there is nowhere to post it
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I feel like the party of science should have a better grasp of selection bias
New data analysis from
@justicedems
and
@sunrisemvmt
shows vote share for House Democrats actually declined in swing districts as candidates adopted more conservative views.
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Empirical social science will keep re-teaching itself the same thing forever: when researchers really want to find something, they will succeed.
In our case it's the One Weird Trick theory of mass behavioral-social change.
Effects of behavioral interventions are almost always smaller than you think, part 1 million (also predictions from profs and practitioners slightly worse than regular people!)
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Will never happen for sociological reasons but still worth pointing out.
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‘I hope economists see it’ 😂😂😂 they’ll see it, act like they thought of it, and not cite this important paper
Also,
@jonmummolo
,
@conjugateprior
and Dean Knox (way too many Dean Knox come up when I search) critique of Fryer’s racial bias in police shooting is forthcoming in APSR. This is a great landing, and I hope economists see it 1/n
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EITM is a fantastic opportunity to meet great students, talk over what we are doing in research, what we are trying to do, and how to do it better. I love teaching there and meeting up with alumni over the years.
PhD students: please apply! Colleagues: Forward to your students!
2024 EITM Summer Institute applications still open so come join us to learn more about connecting theory and data! Participants receive full tuition and financial support from the NSF. Applications due March 8, 2024 and more information is at
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When are we going to learn that fact checking, exactly like law, can never be a neutral process that saves us from politics?
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Seeing all these world leaders acknowledge Biden, and how their acknowledgement affects Americans, makes me think there is an international basis for domestic institutional stability, even in established polities, that we have not paid enough attention to.
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Not sure the causal arrow runs as assumed in this tweet. Conservative attitudes toward science (& academia) are a result of a long term dynamic, not an exogenous cause of it.
Also aren’t actual sciences less ideologically homogeneous than humanities and most of social science?
Why are there so few conservatives in academia?
Sorry, are we seriously debating why a political movement that vilifies science -- from climate change to covid -- is underrepresented among scientists???
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The ability to handle collision of ideas is part of the social infrastructure of democracy. We need to do more to teach it to students. I am proud to lead the Berkeley Liberty Initiative because I think it can help.
In a divisive election year and with tensions high on campuses nationwide, The Berkeley Liberty Initiative at
@UCBLettersSci
is beginning its next chapter under new program leadership and expanded outreach to students and faculty.
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@JohnHolbein1
Sometimes yes. If your claim on the attention of your peers is "We found an intervention that has important effects on society" then a valid objection is "no you didn't."
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Stoked for this, will be my first test flight with this book ms.
Only minor detail being, I have to finish it
And ... just like that ... I have the book manuscript for the PE of Empire Symposium: Agents of Empire: British Imperial Governance and the Strategic Foundations of American Politics by
@SeanGailmard
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Formal theorists:
they've taken RDD, they've taken IV... is there nothing sacred left.
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Twitter is so back
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In these uncertain times, it's reassuring to know my employer's HR compliance process believes in me. Thank you, University of California Outside Activity Tracking System.
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This is a great one for discussing external validity and scalability. Quote tweets do not create new faculty positions.
Wow.
(It's not clear that the boost to downstream outcomes like flyouts could hold in long-run equilibrium, or that added visibility really is the mechanism driving it. But still, pretty striking, QED!)
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Quite possibly the 2nd most important thing to happen this week:
Today in Broadstreet, guest
@SeanGailmard
argues that while credible identification has important benefits for empirical HPE, making it the centerpiece of any HPE research program will distort the kinds of historical & theoretical understanding we create.
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Grad students: please apply! Colleagues: please consider suggesting this to your grad students. It's a really constructive workshop with a lot of feedback on students' research. Bonus, nobody tells them they can't do models without empirics.
And! Applications for the 2019 EITM Summer Institute are now open!
Join us at Emory from July 1-19, 2019! Applications are due Monday, February 4th and more information can be found here:
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I am writing a chapter on formal modeling in historical political economy for the Oxford Handbook of HPE.
What are your favorite examples of HPE papers with formal models? Reply, DM, or email me.
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Free speech is important because governments sometimes do things that the public who elected them doesn't like. It's bad for public accountability if the government is able to restrain speech in this way, and it's a bad sign if they even want to.
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We are failing in our duty to teach strategic reasoning & communication to public health professionals. And failing very badly.
TAPPER: "How are restaurants, airlines, others, supposed to know if the people coming to their establishments [are vaccinated]?"
FAUCI: "Well, Jake, they will not be able to know. You're gonna be depending on people being honest enough to say whether they are vaccinated or not."
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Great news for Berkeley. Andrew is a creative, skilled modeler who has only just warmed up.
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EITM was amazing this year. Very grateful to the students, faculty, and the incomparable Eva Seto for making it so. The EITM institute is now in its 3rd decade! We'll soon be older than some of our participants.
Congratulations and thanks to
@SeanGailmard
for completion of another EITM summer institute
@UCBerkeley
!
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Thoughtful piece here from
@MattGrossmann
. I feel that much of empirical social science at present is aimed at gaining control in the world. I wonder what will happen when we all have to realize we cannot have it.
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Blanket prohibition is a step too far but is in the right direction. Running a class with no purchased readings is work, but it's possible more often than it seems. And it's a real step toward inclusion, unlike our often preferred solution of cheap talk on big ideals.
Yesterday we were notified by our University president that starting fall 2024 that we will no longer be allowed to assign any resources (books etc) in any class in an effort to reduce cost burden on students.
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Best reason to believe that leaking Dobbs opinion was good for the right: it blurred the bright line about the exact moment a right was abrogated. That makes coordinating counter action harder.
I still cannot believe that when Roe was overturned last year, the only protests organized in LA came not from the Democratic Party, but some weirdo communist cult group. There was so much energy on the ground and all of it was wasted.
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You, a bad person: we should give people advanced training so they can accelerate human achievement
Me, a good person: have you considered decelerating human achievement
Really winning the battle for hearts and minds here
And why do these folks want kids learning math so fast? They want their labor and productivity to “accelerate human achievement.”
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To be more direct, we see a lot of papers of the form "Bold Claim about Human Behavior: Evidence from Dog Catchers in Tuscaloosa". Why do we do this, and what do we learn?
If you care about dog catchers in Tuscaloosa, that paper is a banger.
It is our theory M, and observable similarities between settings A and B, that do the work here.
I think the upshot is that it is a waste of time to study things that are not intrinsically interesting or important solely because they allow causal identification of something.
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Everyone just admit it’s ok when the right people do it, it’s bad when the wrong people do it, and let’s get back to whatever we were doing before.
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The buzz around that really terrible Hannity/Carlson paper makes me despair that increasing technical 'rigor' in social science methods simply raises the barrier to entry in the snake oil business.
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Few can match what this man brings — to the conference hall or the dance hall. Congrats Jake.
Thrilled to win the Emerging Scholar Award from the APSA Political Organizations and Parties Section. I’m really thankful to be in this discipline and working alongside such outstanding scholars and human beings.
Luckily have a sibling dance video for the occasion.
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I am sad to learn of the passing of Bear Braumoeller. I did not know him well but he always seemed like a thoughtful, insightful person who thought seriously about hard problems and tried to help others do the same. This is a real loss for the discipline.
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It's hard to be humble when you have literally revolutionized social science by finally bringing credibility to it
The credibility revolution in soc sci research is important but some humility is in order - DID models misspecified for years, RD estimates often noisy/underpowered and published selectively, and exclusion restrictions in IV models often highly dubious. (Why I like experiments!)
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Great lineup of chapters & authors. Excited to be a part to this.
We (
@jaj7d
& I) are *very* excited to announce the chapters for the Oxford Handbook of Historical Political Economy (out in early 2023)
We are proud that it is interdisciplinary. It is a mix of mostly political scientists & economists, as well as historians & sociologists
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