If you were this person, I think you would go into politics rather than political science. Policymakers mostly don’t listen to political scientists, and the replication crisis is reason enough that this is mostly the right choice on their part. Even if your work is good, finding it among the trash would require more work than studying the issue in house. So this creates a feedback loop—competent poli sci graduates go into practical politics, lowering the quality of academic political scientists, giving politicians less reason to listen to them, further pushing competent graduates into practical politics…
Looks interesting. Unfortunately the article is paywalled.
I agree that the median political scientist produces ~0 utility, and the average produces much less than an economist. Still there may be some political scientist producing lots of utility.
Well, I think you could if you could 1) do really high quality research, and 2) find ideas that don’t require policymakers’ buy-in to be implemented, or convince policymakers to be less skeptical of political science than they are. So I guess my original comment is partially incorrect; I think perhaps you could do something useful as a scholar if you talk to policymakers in an issue area you’re interested in before starting your research, and ask them what gaps in their knowledge they can’t find good information to fill.
If you were this person, I think you would go into politics rather than political science. Policymakers mostly don’t listen to political scientists, and the replication crisis is reason enough that this is mostly the right choice on their part. Even if your work is good, finding it among the trash would require more work than studying the issue in house. So this creates a feedback loop—competent poli sci graduates go into practical politics, lowering the quality of academic political scientists, giving politicians less reason to listen to them, further pushing competent graduates into practical politics…
See, e.g. https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-176979334/the-absent-professor-why-politicians-don-t-listen
Looks interesting. Unfortunately the article is paywalled.
I agree that the median political scientist produces ~0 utility, and the average produces much less than an economist. Still there may be some political scientist producing lots of utility.
Well, I think you could if you could 1) do really high quality research, and 2) find ideas that don’t require policymakers’ buy-in to be implemented, or convince policymakers to be less skeptical of political science than they are. So I guess my original comment is partially incorrect; I think perhaps you could do something useful as a scholar if you talk to policymakers in an issue area you’re interested in before starting your research, and ask them what gaps in their knowledge they can’t find good information to fill.