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thanks for that. what would you point us to if we were interested in learning political science? (e.g. books, courses, communities, podcasts, blogs, channels?

thanks for that. what would you point us to if we were interested in learning political science? (e.g. books, courses, communities, podcasts, blogs, channels?)

notafraudster 6y ago
My background is academic and so I worry that any recommendations I give will suffer from reflecting that. It's way easier for me to say "spend ten years of your life living and breathing this stuff, it'll clear up your thoughts nicely!" than it is to point to a YouTube channel. CGP Grey sometimes does very 101 level topics on electoral systems, but very little on what I'd call the political science of representation or US-specific institutions. My advice, if you want to get a sense for the academic lay of the land is to try an Intro to US Politics course at any college that is well ranked, and to follow currently active professors from research universities on Twitter. Often by reading today's journal articles, you a) get a sense for new findings, and b) get a sense for whose shoulders they stand on, and where they come from. And academics do a shitty job of sharing these ideas with the public. I do read Andrew Gelman's blog, but he's a social science statistician and so mostly he's working on quant methods and not substantively interesting questions. The main journals in US politics are: American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics. I checked the syllabus of my first graduate level American Politics class from, err, a fair few years ago now. Here are some of the canonical books I'd recommend that speak to the kinds of questions I study: - Anthony Downs: An Economic Theory of Democracy - John Zaller: Nature and Origins of Public Opinion - David Mayhew: Congress The Electoral Connection - Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal: Ideology and Congress - Keith Krehbiel: Information and Legislative Organization - Mathew McCubbins and Gary Cox: Setting the Agenda (or their other book, Legislative Leviathan, both great) These speak to some of the biggest theoretical and measurement considerations in American Politics and Representation. All of them should be readable without prior college experience. I will note that I just offered you like 5,000 pages of book that will probably take a year to get through. Hope some of this provides a useful jumping off point.

thanks for that. what would you point us to if we were interested in learning political science? (e.g. books, courses, communities, podcasts, blogs, channels?)

notafraudster 6y ago

My background is academic and so I worry that any recommendations I give will suffer from reflecting that. It's way easier for me to say "spend ten years of your life living and breathing this stuff, it'll clear up your thoughts nicely!" than it is to point to a YouTube channel. CGP Grey sometimes does very 101 level topics on electoral systems, but very little on what I'd call the political science of representation or US-specific institutions. My advice, if you want to get a sense for the academic lay of the land is to try an Intro to US Politics course at any college that is well ranked, and to follow currently active professors from research universities on Twitter. Often by reading today's journal articles, you a) get a sense for new findings, and b) get a sense for whose shoulders they stand on, and where they come from. And academics do a shitty job of sharing these ideas with the public. I do read Andrew Gelman's blog, but he's a social science statistician and so mostly he's working on quant methods and not substantively interesting questions. The main journals in US politics are: American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics. I checked the syllabus of my first graduate level American Politics class from, err, a fair few years ago now. Here are some of the canonical books I'd recommend that speak to the kinds of questions I study: - Anthony Downs: An Economic Theory of Democracy - John Zaller: Nature and Origins of Public Opinion - David Mayhew: Congress The Electoral Connection - Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal: Ideology and Congress - Keith Krehbiel: Information and Legislative Organization - Mathew McCubbins and Gary Cox: Setting the Agenda (or their other book, Legislative Leviathan, both great) These speak to some of the biggest theoretical and measurement considerations in American Politics and Representation. All of them should be readable without prior college experience. I will note that I just offered you like 5,000 pages of book that will probably take a year to get through. Hope some of this provides a useful jumping off point.