Three Events at the Midwest Political Science Association Meeting

I’m currently president of the Midwest Public Administration Caucus. The Caucus is hosting three events at the Midwest Political Science Association meeting in Chicago.

1.  Herbert Simon Lecture.  Professor Daniel Carpenter, Harvard University, Crystal Room, 3rd Floor.  Saturday,  April 2nd at 4:35 PM.

We are honored to have Dan Carpenter of Harvard give this year’s Herbert Simon Lecture. Dan is the Allie S. Freed Professor of Government and the Director of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard. His most recent book is Reputation and Power: Organizational Image and Pharmaceutical Regulation at the FDA (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

My thanks go out to Tom Hammond of Michigan State University, Brandice Canes-Wrone of Princeton, and Mike Ting of Columbia for their service on the committee to select this year’s recipient of the Herbert Simon Award.

At that time we will also take a few minutes for an MPAC business meeting, such that it is.

2.     Roundtable on Public Services in an Economic Downturn. Saturday, April 2nd, 12:45 PM.  Location TBA

This roundtable examines the impact of economic downturns on public services and how public agencies cope with the demand to “do more with less”. Our panelists will be Don Moynihan of Wisconsin, Sean Nicholson-Crotty of Missouri-Columbia, Hal Rainey of Georgia, and B. Guy Peters of Pittsburgh.

3.     Roundtable on Regulatory Competition: Causes and Consequences. Sunday, April 3rd, 8:30 AM.  Location TBA

This roundtable examines the balance of effective regulatory enforcement against the need to attract business and how this may result in regulatory competition between jurisdictions. Our panelists will be Evan Ringquist of Indiana, David Konisky of Georgetown, Dorothy Daley of Kansas, and Neal Woods of South Carolina.

My thanks go out to Colin Provost of University College London for arranging our two roundtables.

I hope you will take time to attend all of these events.

CFP: Social Conflict and Simulation Methods

In the mail:

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Call for Papers: Social Conflict and Social Simulation panel at World Congress on Social Simulation
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We kindly invite you to submit a paper to the Special Interest Group Social Conflict and Social Simulation (SIG-SCSS) panel at the 2010 World Congress on Social Simulation (WCSS). As in the last two years we welcome papers that are thematically relevant to social conflict and social simulation in general. Papers will be double-blind peer-reviewed. Outstanding submissions will be selected to be published as a book chapter in the WCSS proceedings.

We expect full papers to be submitted no later than 1 May 2010. Papers shall not exceed 8 pages in length. Detailed submission guidelines can be found on the WCSS 2010 website (http://www.usf.uni-kassel.de/wcss2010/guidelines.php). To indicate submission of your paper for this panel, check the ‘I.4 conflict and cooperation’-box when asked to chose your topic.

For questions please contact Nanda Wijermans (F.E.H.Wijermans@rug.nl)

Next Generation Workshop focusing on Environmental, Social and Governance

All expenses paid for selected grad students!

Conference on Path Dependency

From Polmeth:

That path dependence is a key feature of complex human systems is now well-recognized by students of politics and other social sciences. How best to model path dependence both mathematically and statistically is a matter of debate. This small, select conference will bring together scholars and graduate students who are producing models of path dependence and/or attempting to fit these models to data.  The objective is to stimulate conversations, future exchanges and eventually new work on this topic.

The conference is sponsored by the National Science Foundation under the auspices of the Political Methodological Society. Additional support will be provided by the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan and the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. The dates of the conference are tentatively set for June 4 and 5, 2010. Papers will be presented and discussed on Friday afternoon the 4th and most of Saturday the 5th. There will be a dinner for conference participants on Friday evening. All coach travel and local expenses will be reimbursed. If accepted, all  participants must submit a short, at least 4 to 5 pages, think piece on the topic for circulation to the participants at least 1 week prior to the conference. Advanced graduate students are encouraged to apply.

Interested scholars should send a one paragraph proposal to John Freeman (freeman@umn.edu) and John Jackson (jjacksn@umich.edu) by Feb. 20, 2010. Invitations will be issued by March 15, 2010.  Questions about logistics should be sent to Freeman.

Upcoming conference at Seton Hall law school

Seton Hall school of law is hosting “Religious Legal Theory: The State of the Field” November 12th – more details here.

Law and Zaring on citing legislative history

David Law (Washington University Law School) and David Zaring (University of Pennsylvania Legal Studies Department) have recently posted “Why Supreme Court Justices Cite Legislative History: An Empirical Investigation” on SSRN. Law presented this paper on our panel at the Western Political Science Association Conference  in Vancouver and it sounds like a very interesting project. The abstract if available below the fold.

On the future of state courts research

I recently posted on SSRN an early version of a short essay that is forthcoming at Justice System Journal, “On The Future of State Courts Research.” The essay emanates from a panel at last year’s American Political Science Association meeting in which the participants discussed trends and concerns in the study of state courts. The panel was put together by Steve Wasby (SUNY Albany) and included myself, Melinda Gann Hall (MSU), Matthew Kleiman (National Center For State Courts),David Steelman (National Center For State Courts), Matthew Streb (NIU), and Alan Tarr (Rutgers-Camden). Here’s a small excerpt below the fold:

Building a better legal profession?

Simple Justice blog reports a recent conference on the “building a better legal profession” movement. Here’s an excerpt (quote from the National Law Journal) that briefs it well:

Gathering at Stanford Law School over the weekend, about 50 students from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford and other premier law schools were part of Building a Better Legal Profession’s National Conference of Student Leaders. The two-day event focused on changing what were often painted as the evil ways of big law firms and included presentations and discussion from well-known practitioners and professors. 

The goal of Building a Better Legal Profession (BBLP) is to create collective action among students and associates from top schools to prod large law firms to implement what it says are significant changes needed in billable hour requirements, diversity and the commitment to pro bono work. Their hope is that students and associates from the best schools will not accept jobs at firms that do not change their ways.

I don’t know quite what to make of this – the goals are laudable, change is needed and I like collective action (when it suits me of course), but the timing is very odd and it seems a bit self important and “whiner-ish”. Does this group really have that much leverage? Are they willing to accept lower pay for some of these goals? Are clients willing to subsidize pro bono work?

Perhaps more central to the situation is the matter of diversity? How broadly do they define it? If you want true diversity, then it probably entails recruiting from more than just 15 schools – thus undercutting these students’ leverage.

Race in the War on Drugs: The Social Consequences of Presidential Rhetoric

The Voir Dire team has recently publicly posted on the Social Science Research Network their paper from the Empirical Legal Studies conference, “Race in the War on Drugs: The Social Consequences of Presidential Rhetoric.”  The abstract is available below the fold.

Judicial decision making and the “Foxermeasaluppycat”

Last week I attended the “What’s Law Got To Do With It?” conference on judicial decision making, hosted by Indiana School of Law. I encourage you to check out the above hyperlinked website for the conference since it provides many of the papers that were presented. The conference was put together by Charlie Geyh and others at Indiana law  and Charlie also acted as the conference master of ceremonies. In providing some introductory comments for the conference Charlie suggested an aggregated judicial animal to represent the different schools of thought on the nature of judicial decision making. His animal is named the Foxermeasaluppycat.

I imagine some explanation is in order. I will only give a very brief explanation here, Charlie can chime in if he’d like. 

The Fox = the strategic judicial actor who seeks to get his or her preferred outcomes brought to fruition through sophisticated, forward thinking actions.

The Ermine = the judicial actor who seeks to follow the rule of law. The idea here is that in jolly old England a number of politicians wore robes, but only the judges had ermine trimmed robes – suggesting that they were different from other government actors and above politics – they faithfully followed the requirements of law and outcomes reflected their understanding of what the law demands.

The Weasel = the judicial actor whose decision making reflects their underlying world views or attitudes (aka the Attitudinal model). As we know, an ermine is just the fancier type of the lowly weasel. Whether this means that judges see facts and law through the colored lens of their world view (and decide accordingly) or simply seek to implement their policy preferences through their position of power (perhaps “low politics”?) is debatable, but the idea is that outcomes are correlated with judicial ideology.

The Puppy = This judicial actor cares very much about how he or she is perceived and regarded. Like the young dog, they want to know that others think well of them and are concerned with providing decisions that foster good will with the public and other political actors.

The Cat = This judicial actor cares about their specific self interest and personal advancement. This view is rooted in economic theories of judicial behavior and is distinguishable from the Fox. So, for instance, a judge might rule in a certain way so as to facilitate their advancement in the judicial ranks.

And there you have it … the Foxermeasaluppycat. Certainly, not everyone will agree with any given one or combination of these theories of how judges make decisions. Indeed, one of the high points of the conference was the opportunity to hear some esteemed judges thoughtfully respond to academics’ ideas of how judicial decisions are made. While, unfortunately, their remarks are not available on the webpage, I will assure you that they made some very, very good points and were also quite entertaining. In the end I hope that both judges and academics learned something valuable.

Update: I understand that the videotaped conference proceedings may be made available on the conference website in the near future and that the papers and judge remarks will be forthcoming in book form.

CFP: 2nd International Conference on Corporate Governance in Emerging Markets

Submission Deadline: January 12th, 2009

The conference aims to facilitate dissemination of state of the art research on corporate governance in emerging markets, with the objective of supporting policy and practice development. To this end, it solicits ideas from both theory and policy perspectives as to how to further improve corporate governance research.

The conference will also provide an opportunity to inquire how academic research findings relate to practice in emerging markets by having leading practitioners as discussants. Comparative research comprising clusters of developing countries sharing institutional or macroeconomic similarities are particularly welcome. Papers are expected to be empirical, theoretical or clinical in the law,
economics and finance fields but the conference welcomes papers from other disciplines. Researchers from emerging market institutions are strongly encouraged to participate.

More info here.

Bureaucratic Politics Panels at the Southern Political Science Association

Three panels this Thursday in beautiful downtown NOLA:

• New Approaches for Understanding Preferences, with Christian R Grose (Vanderbilt University), David Lewis (Princeton University), George A. Krause (University of Pittsburgh), and Anthony M Bertelli (University of Georgia/University of Southern California), Thu, Jan 8 – 11:30am – 1:00pm.
• Author Meets Critics: David Lewis’ The Politics of Presidential Appointments, with David Lewis (Princeton University), Gary J. Miller (Washington University in St. Louis), George A. Krause (University of Pittsburgh), Andy Whitford (University of Georgia), and Sam Workman (University of Washington/University of Texas), Thu, Jan 8 – 2:00pm – 3:30pm.
• New Approaches to Studying the Bureaucracy, with David Young (Western Carolina University), Flavio Alfredo Gaitán (IUPERJ-UBA), Andy Whitford (University of Georgia), Soo-Young Lee (University of Georgia), and Saundra Schneider (Michigan State University), Thu, Jan 8 – 3:45pm – 5:15pm.

CFP: 10th Public Management Research Association Conference

Call for Proposals
10th Public Management Research Association Conference
The Ohio State University, Columbus
October 1-3, 2009

CFP: State Politics and Policy Conference

CFP: State Politics and Policy Conference, 5.22-23.09, Chapel Hill, NC

CFP: 5TAD Fifth Transatlantic Dialogue, The Future of Governance in Europe and the U.S.

5TAD Fifth Transatlantic Dialogue
The Future of Governance in Europe and the U.S.
11-13 June 2009 ! Washington, D.C.

CFP: Reducing Poverty

*CALL FOR PAPERS*
Conference on: *Reducing Poverty: Explaining Recent State Policy Innovations and Strategies*

CFP: Conference on Public Service Motivation

CALL FOR PAPERS

International Public Service Motivation Research Conference

CFP: Institutions and National Competitiveness

The Korea Institution and Economics Association announces the conference on “Institutions and National Competitiveness” to be held in Seoul, Korea, on August 17-20, 2009. The official language of the conference will be English. While the theme of the conference is national competitiveness, papers on institutions broadly defined are welcome. For consideration to be on the program please send detailed abstracts to Y.B. Choi at the Department of Economics and Finance, St. John’s University, 8000 Utopia Parkway, Jamaica, NY 11439 or email him at . The deadline for submitting proposals/ abstracts is December 20, 2008 and the decision on the program will be made by the end of February 2009. The deadline for complete papers included in the program is May 15, 2009. For further information on conference programs, see .

CFP: useR! 2009, the R user conference

Deadline: February 27, 2009.

useR! 2009, the R user conference, will take place at Agrocampus Ouest, Rennes, France from 2009-07-08 to 2009-07-10. Pre-conference tutorials will take place on July 7.

The conference is organized by Agrocampus Ouest and the Rennes 2 University and it is funded by the R Foundation for Statistical Computing.

Following the successful useR! 2004, useR! 2006, useR! 2007, and user! 2008 conferences, the conference is focused on:

CFP: Annual Meeting of the International Network for Social Network Analysis

Second Call for Abstracts:

Sunbelt XXIX: The Annual Meeting of the International Network for Social Network Analysis San Diego, California, March 10-15, 2009
Abstract & Early Registration Deadline: December, 15, 2008

Conference registration, Abstract Submission, and Hotel Accommodations can be made at: http://www.insna.org/sunbelt/index.html

The annual meeting of the International Network for Social Network Analysis provides a forum for researchers, academicians, and practitioners to present research and project updates.  Abstracts, not completed papers, should be submitted on the INSNA website which will also ask for descriptive keywords. Keywords will be used to group presentations into sessions. The conference is preceded by workshops on many aspects of social network analysis including introductory courses and trainings on software platforms.  We look forward to an exciting and vibrant conference this year.  FAQ and contact information can be found at http://www.insna.org.

See you in San Diego
The organizing committee:

Rebecca L. Davis, PhD
Laura Koehly, PhD
Thomas W. Valente, PhD

CFP: American Law and Economics Association Annual Meeting

The 19th Annual Meeting of the American Law and Economics Association will be held on Friday and Saturday, May 15-16, 2009, at The University of San Diego.

To submit a paper, click here.

CFP: “Rapid Modelling” Conference

[NB: I know, I think it should be “modeling”, too.]

CFP: 1st rapid modelling conference
“Increasing Competitiveness – Tools and Mindset”

The RMC09 Conference team is pleased to invite you to the 1st Rapid Modelling Conference (http://www.unine.ch/rmc09). The conference will be held on June 29 – July 1, 2009, at the University of Neuchâtel, in the heart of the city of Neuchâtel in Switzerland.

We should do this at the Midwest or APSA conferences

If you aren’t already familiar with Improv Everywhere they are a very loosely associated group of improvisation artists who stage some pretty freaky gags in everyday settings. Here is one of their latest endeavors: Freezing in place in Grand Central Station. (hat tip to  GP)

On a cold Saturday in New York City, the world’s largest train station came to a sudden halt. Over 200 Improv Everywhere Agents froze in place at the exact same second for five minutes in the Main Concourse of Grand Central Station. Over 500,000 people rush through Grand Central every day, but today, things slowed down just a bit as commuters and tourists alike stopped to notice what was happening around them.

Apparently, someone doesn’t like STATA

On the Law and Letters Blog, Belle Lettre goes into some detail on exactly how much she hates the statistics software program STATA. Below is an excerpt from her rant (slightly edited to preserve our pseudo PG rating):

STATA is the worst program in the history of the world, and if I didn’t need to know how to read/do statistics better, I’d want to drop the class. If I wasn’t concurrently enrolled in an awesome Empirical Analysis of Gender Discrimination course, I would definitely drop it, except that I actually want to get an article out on sexual harassment by the summer, and I sort of argue for the use of empirical analysis of discrimination by courts and the EEOC.

Also, while the professors and the TA are awesome, I do not really understand the pedagogy of belaboring the basic DOS commands (granted, I suck at those, but dude, just give a handout) and rushing through, in the last half hour of class, the section on how to tell Stata to calculate the fraction of observations that are one standard deviation away from the mean for the two variables it took me three hours to figure out how to generate and code as dummy variables. I cannot, for the life of me, recall learning how to do this in class. Nor how to properly do a histogram and specify heights and widths and $#@&. I think I can calculate this stuff with a calculator and draw boxes on graph paper faster, but I have to send in log files. Which also took me a half hour to figure out how to do.

Thus, I do not get the point of making people muddle through basic DOS-like commands without instructive guides. Isn’t the point to teach the statistics, not “learn how to be frustrated at a &*$% irritating program”?! Tell people what stupid monkey commands to enter, but ask them to analyze the significance, which is the important part, right?

First, I’d like to say that I really like her phrase “stupid monkey commands” – it seems like a phrase that people could use in everyday conversation – much like another phrase I just learned, “leave Britney alone!” which can be used against someone when they are giving you a hard time (e.g. your paper discussant on a conference panel). But I digress.

Belle, stupid monkey commands and feeling frustrated and inept for no good reason are all an integral part of the development of a social science scholar. It’s kind of like the Socratic method in law school – there’s not a lot of solid evidence that it actually makes you a good lawyer and it’s usually pedagogically inefficient and even abused by some profs. But, it establishes the hierarchy and makes you “work for it”. If everyone just gave you the STATA code or taught their law classes in a concise, straightforward manner, then you wouldn’t learn to “think like a social scientist (or lawyer).” 😉

All fun aside, there is a “hide the ball” dynamic in almost every professional field, but hate the game, not the player (i.e. STATA). It’s funny that STATA should be criticized for being nonintuitive; when people came to discover it in the mid to late 1990s it was heralded as a great advancement, because it allowed you to perform some relatively high end statistical analysis (much more so than SPSS) and was much easier to use than other dos command based programs (e.g. LIMDEP, SAS, EVIEWS etc.). Now, STATA even has a windows based interface, although it’s not that great yet.

For what it’s worth there are some great books for the beginning STATA user – they’re kind of like the Emanuel’s law outlines of statistics. These can be found in the STATA bookstore, although you might find used copies cheaper on Amazon or elsewhere. I have found Lawrence Hamilton’s series of books very helpful. STATA also runs an email listserve where you can post your questions, but that can mean a lot of emails unless you take steps to get it in batches. I also find the UCLA statistics tutorial to be very helpful. Finally, and this is most important Belle, you need to convince your law school to hire more interdisciplinary legal scholars – not only will it help you with these STATA problems, but it will give bloggers endless fodder for debate.

Meanwhile, I think that this little video of “Nick Burns the Computer Guy” is relevant and appropriate to the topic.

CFP: Journal of Policy History Conference

The full CFP is here.

Call for Papers

Deadline for Submissions – December 3, 2007

The Institute for Political History and the Journal of Policy History are hosting a Conference on Policy History at the Sheraton Clayton Plaza in St. Louis from May 29 to June 1, 2008. All topics concerning the history, development and implementation of public policy, American political development, and comparative historical analysis will be considered. Complete sessions are encouraged, but individual paper proposals are welcome. The deadline for proposals is December 3, 2007. Proposals should include one (1) copy of the following materials to be considered:

1. Panel/Paper Description and Contact Information Page
2. A one (1) page summary of each paper
3. A one (1) page C.V. of each panelist

Please send the materials to Policy History Conference, Journal of Policy History, Saint Louis University, 3800 Lindell Blvd., P. O. Box 56907, St. Louis, MO 63156-0907. Incomplete proposals and e-mailed submissions will not be considered.

CFP: Yale Journal of International Law 6th Annual Young Scholars’ Conference

From H-Net:

THE YALE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ANNOUNCES ITS SIXTH ANNUAL YOUNG SCHOLARS’ CONFERENCE
CALL FOR PAPERS FROM JD STUDENTS
Deadline: December 10, 2007

CFP: Causes and Consequences of Conflict (conference & special issue)

In the mail:

Conference and special issue of Economics of Governance:
Causes and Consequences of Conflict

Social Science Research Center (WZB), Berlin, 29 March, 2008

In recent years, theory and empirical research in Political Science and in Economics have made major progress in identifying and analyzing the causes and consequences of conflict. In view of this progress, Economics of Governance invites contributions on Causes and Consequences of Conflict for a special issue on this topic.