Explaining APSA

William Sjostrom has taken a look at the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) press release announcing the highlights for its annual conference next week. Sjostrom thinks the deck of high-profile speakers is stacked:

Their featured speakers from outside the profession are George Soros, Mary Robinson, Paul Heinbecker, Lani Guinier, and Joseph Stiglitz…. Guinier and Robinson are experienced, articulate and smart lawyers. Whatever his failings as a policy maker, as an economic theorist Stiglitz is a genius. Granted, Soros is a few cards shy of a full deck, but he is a billionaire, so maybe he will pick up the lunch tab. What is depressing is remarkably narrow range of ideas present. If this were the annual banquet for The Nation, it would be hardly out of place. But for the APSA featured speaker line-up, it is seems as if the organizers are indulging in aggressive ideological narrowness.

Sjostrom has half a point. I flipped through some of the previous APSA programs, and though there are some exceptions — William Kristol is an APSA regular — most of the guest speakers range from mainstream Democrat (Rep. John Lewis, Amitai Etzioni) to radical leftist (Noam Chomsky). And I’ll certainly acknowledge that the APSA membership and structure is probably skewed slightly to the left. Over time, this is undoubtedly a self-reinforcing equilibrium, as conservative-minded political scientists abandon conferences like APSA for the think tank world or for parallel organizations like the Eric Voegelin Society. The assumption that all academics are leftists probably makes it difficult for APSA to obtain top-flight speakers that are right of center. However, before anyone gets too excited, a brutal, unvarnished truth must be acknowledged — at most, 5% of APSA participants attend these talks. APSA has about 6,000 attendees, and a crowd of 300 for these kind of talks would be impressive. These speakers influence no one, but are rather preaching to a small and committed choir. The reasons for the poor attendance are several. First, these kind of talks are usually held during the vital hours of eating and drinking, where the real business of APSA is conducted: power-schmoozing. Well, that and reconnecting with old grad school friends. Second, after a long day of presenting, discussing, and listening to political science, the last thing most people want to do is go to a lecture about politics. Which is the other dirty secret about my profession — there’s a difference between political science and politics. Most of the presentations and papers given at APSA do not address normative debates about the way politics should be. Instead, they are more detached analyses of why things are the way they are. Sometimes the answers can be ideological, but most political scientists just care about whether their answer is correct — or more precisely, whether someone else can demonstrate that their preferred answer is wrong. Anyway, now is as good a time as any to link back to my tips for conference rookies attending APSA for the first time this year.