Ezra Klein wants
to know why economists are overrepresented in the blogosphere, while political
scientists are nowhere to be found. And even Henry Farrell
can’t single-handedly make
the problem go away. It’s deeper than that, and Richard Baldwin,
I think, hints at the answer
when he notes that economists are discouraged from discussing the policy implications
of their work in peer-reviewed journals. As a result, he says, "the discussion
of research results that does not take place in the journals has spilled over
into cyberspace."
Baldwin is not particularly happy about this: the econoblogosphere, he reckons,
operates at a lower level than the discussion sections of learned publications.
On the other hand, as Andrew Leonard notes, it essentially
offers anybody with an internet connection unfettered
access to high-level economics debates at roughly a graduate-seminar level.
Insofar as Leonard and Baldwin disagree, I’m with Leonard. Whatever the economics
profession loses from the lack of policy discussions in refereed journals, it
more than makes up for in the vibrancy of the inter-blog conversation –
which in any case is vastly more effective than any journal in terms of bringing
important research to the attention of economists worldwide.
So maybe, if the political science community wants something similar, they
would have to stop talking politics in their refereed journals. Which, admittedly,
might be hard.
(By the way, a little known fact: Brad Setser, econoblogger
extraordinaire, is actually a political scientist by training, rather than
an economist: his doctorate is in international relations. Which almost certainly
means he’s got a better grasp of economic realities than if he’d stayed in economics
departments for his whole academic career.)