Ep 06 – World Politics with Chapman and Wolford, Part 1

[0:00:01 Speaker 0] should university researchers be focused on engaging policymakers or citizens? Our scholars succeeding in doing either, and does math have anything to do with any of this? Welcome back to the connector, where we bring together innovative, groundbreaking and collaborative research inside the U. T. Austin political science universe. I’m your host, Stewart Tendler. Today we introduced the first of four episodes discussing international relations with Terry Chapman and Scott Woolford, recorded soon after the British public voted to leave the European Union. These episodes look broadly at the international political and economic order in 2016 and discuss some ways that international relations scholar seek to analyze, assess and explain world politics. In looking back at this first episode, I was reminded of an unpublished essay by Harrison Wagner, which he wrote in 2001 entitled Who’s Afraid of Rational Choice Theory? At the time, political science was debating heavily the relative merits of mathematical approaches to the study of politics. In one of his opening paragraphs, Wagner writes, it is impossible to understand what is at stake in this controversy if one does not understand what a valid argument is, why the validity of arguments is important and why it is often difficult to construct valid arguments or to determine whether an argument is valid or not. The significance of valid arguments can be illustrated in the simplest possible way by a visit to the dog pound. I cannot tell you how many times I have read the story of that visit to the dog pound along with the rest of that essay, and I am unashamed to admit I still understand relatively little about whatever point Professor Wagner was trying to make. If I am following Chapman and Wilfred at all, it has something to do with simple behavioral rules, adding up to complex outcomes and simplifying our approaches in an effort to better explain those complex outcomes. I’ll stop rambling now, and we’ll see if the professors can explain it any better.

[0:02:00 Speaker 1] I’m Terry Chapman, I’m associate professor of government at the University of Texas, have been here since the fall of 2007 where AH came immediately, pretty much immediately after getting my PhD at Emory University. So, uh, so be, I think, my 10th year coming up in the next next school year, maybe ninth. I think I just finished my ninth. It all runs together.

[0:02:26 Speaker 0] What? Can you tell us a little bit

[0:02:28 Speaker 2] about your areas of expertise?

[0:02:30 Speaker 1] Sure. So, um, I mainly do research on international organizations, and some of my early work was about how international security organizations like the U. N. Security Council influence public opinion in different countries and how that in turn, influences leaders that are making foreign policy decisions. Um, since then, I have continued to do some work on security and the linkages between domestic politics and international conflict. But I’ve also moved into doing a little bit more work on international legal institutions like the International Criminal Court and also international finance and financial institutions like the I M. F for International Monetary Fund. So a lot of my research are are in those areas, but that the kind of common theme is on international institutions. I’d say

[0:03:21 Speaker 3] I’m Scott Walford. I’m also an assistant professor of government here at UT. Um, sorry. I’m associate professor of government. You can tell that

[0:03:28 Speaker 2] we did send you back to assistant.

[0:03:30 Speaker 3] It’s a recent thing. I just Yeah. In any case, um, I got my PhD from Emory University as well. 2008 Ah, my first job was at the University of Colorado, and I just finished my fifth year here, so yeah, it’s it’s been a while, so I guess that would Maybe you just finished your 10th right? I

[0:03:50 Speaker 1] think I just finished my ninth doing. Yeah, that’s

[0:03:52 Speaker 3] right. That’s right. A lot of my work is on international conflict. War in peace in general. Um, my early work was on leadership change in war. So what it means to get a new leader in office for your, um, foreign policy relationships lately have done work on military coalitions, especially in terms of how they’re formed, how they cut deals with one another in order to get things done, how effectively they do it. And my recent work looks on how well these things stay together after they win a war. Um, which we may or may not see be relevant in the Middle East in the future.

[0:04:27 Speaker 0] So much going

[0:04:28 Speaker 2] on in the world, right? Ah, this is what’s today’s date? June 28th. So a few days ago, Britain voted to leave the European Union. I mean, Europe’s mess. I’m sure we could talk about that for a long time the Middle East is still not stable. Isis, you’ve done a lot of work on Isis and the Coalition Against Isis or you’ve been working on it. We can talk about that,

[0:04:51 Speaker 3] have at least run my mouth about it. So

[0:04:53 Speaker 0] it seems like the world’s a mess. We would hope that maybe as

[0:04:58 Speaker 2] political scientists as international relations scholars, there’s something that the academy’s contributing Teoh Teoh. I don’t know to some discussion or debate about

[0:05:11 Speaker 0] about world events, but the

[0:05:13 Speaker 2] criticism is usually that it’s not right that they’re chimpanzees at the typewriter, navel gazing or whatever. So I’d like to give you guys the chance to kind of talk about what it is you do and why it’s relevant, and then maybe talk about some of these current events and how some of the research maybe fits in. So

[0:05:32 Speaker 0] maybe we could

[0:05:33 Speaker 2] just kind of start with a discussion about formal methodology and a little bit about what it is and why it gives you all leverage into analyzing international politics.

[0:05:48 Speaker 1] Do you mind if I started, please? Yeah, yeah, so I guess a

[0:05:52 Speaker 3] couple a couple

[0:05:53 Speaker 1] initial reactions and I’ll try to talk too long because I know Scott has a lot to say about this. But one thing that actually I’ve been really pleased with with the academy’s engagement with policy really in the past few years is that there’s I see a lot, and this used to be a split between different sections within the international relations sub field of political science that some people were doing, you know, fancy numbers stuff. But it was irrelevant to the real world, and other people were doing this grand theorizing that was directly relevant to foreign policy. That side of the field, I think, is has been growing smaller and also feeling defensive about the fact that it’s been growing smaller and that it has often raised these calls for more policy, relevant scholarship. But I think that the fact that ah, if you look around at the types of blawg posts that political scientists have done that have caught on with major newspapers. The Washington Post now runs the monkey cage all the time, and these are examples of political scientists distilling really rigorous analytical research into its relevance for real world events, and it’s getting, you know, it’s reaching a lot of people now through these different block posts. So I just see that debate is over in the sense that, um, you just take, for example, since Brexit I’ve seen probably at least 10 different blawg posts, probably three or four those from the monkey gauge, just in the time since since Thursday since the referendum on Thursday give exploring different angles and different implications of this that air getting passed around over social media that are being put up on on media Web pages. And so, to me, that’s I feel good as a scholar about that because these were people that I know there scholarly work. And I know that if they just were toe, say to the general public, Oh Brexit’s about this Look at my paper in the American Journal of Political Science. Of course, that would look like they were counting angels on the head of a pin, but instead, this new form has allowed them to say, Look, Brexit’s about this. I’ve done research and let me distill that in a way for you. So that’s great. Um, a second thing at the end of your question, you said, specifically formal theory. What is formal theory have to tell us, and and this is also something I’ve noticed, it’s I’ve noticed a few posts. I don’t think these air in the majority, But since Brexit saying this was crazy for you know, British people would vote this way. I think in these post go on to say this demolishes the rational choice model of politics. How could rational people make such a big mistake? And I look at these posts and I think to myself, this is one of the most absurd and misinform type of views you could have them. What’s going on? The entire program of rational choice over you know, the post Cold War period and recently in political science is to explain how individuals can make these decisions that they think are maximizing their self interest that result in collectively sub optimal outcomes. Right? So there are all sorts of lessons from rational choice and formal theory that help explain aspects of this. I know Scott were exchanging little memos about this the other day, and he has some ideas about how that applies to interstate relations. So I’ll just name a couple here, First of all, like the people that say that think that rational choice, whatever they have in mind about what that is, um its goal is to prove that people are rational, right? But that’s not its goal. And we can’t prove that people are rational any more than we can, like, prove that two follows one, right? It just that’s an assumption of the logical, um, system of mathematics, right? And what rational choice really assumes is not that people are rational the way we think about it, but that are in the way. We use it in common language, but simply that they have goals and they try to maximize those. Or they try to take actions that will achieve those goals right, And so it’s pretty agnostic about where those goals come from. It also allows people to have all sorts of uncertainty, all sorts of asymmetric information, lack of knowledge, right. In fact, you know, people have even gone so far as to argue that it’s quite rational to not be really informed about international events because they hardly ever affect your life right for British people right now that they are really affecting their lives. So maybe it’s not rational, But the story you know, there’s a couple stories that have been out there about how this happened. One is that there are a lot of voters that were using their vote as an effective way to express their displeasure with the incumbent government and with more broadly incumbent governments around Europe. All right, and that they don’t they don’t really, you know, expect the consequences potential consequences to toe come home to roost. But this that’s a classic coordination problem in the sense that lots of people could think, Well, this isn’t really going to happen. So I’m gonna vote this way and lots of people thinking that and not coordinating on you know their actions could result than in them all voting to a sufficient degree that this actually happens, Right? So that’s one example of how formal theory might help inform what’s happened. How did we get here, right? It’s a collective action problem. Ah, there’s also problems of asymmetric information, right? So there’s been a lot of ink spilt in the last couple of days about the campaigns that were put on by the exit er’s versus the remain people, right? And so yes, political psychologist tells us that people take cues from these things and learn in different ways. Um, they take political psychology, borrows from cognitive psychology to tell us that people process information in different ways and have biases, right? All those things feed into the beliefs they have about the consequences of these actions. Those beliefs maybe very incorrect, right? That doesn’t mean they’re not in a really formal strict sense acting according to rational choice, right? They just have beliefs that, you know, from the outside, as analysts, we think our scurry right, But we could write those down in a model to help explain how people with these beliefs could behave in this way. Right, So So I think those are just two examples of how we might use this framework that people, you know call rational choice, which again is kind of a missing over because the point of it isn’t to prove that people are rational is just the point of it is to provide a common system to think theoretically about politics. But those are just two ways, you know, coordination, problems and asymmetric information that could help someone get a handle on understanding how we will get to a place like this.

[0:12:37 Speaker 3] Um, so I got I’ve got thoughts on both, I guess both topics, right? So I think Terry’s exactly right. That policy relevance has for political scientists is really, um, it’s become a watchword. People really care about identifying how they’re engaging with not only policy makers, but also citizens, right? And that’s actually, um, what I think is most notable about the ways in which most political scientists now are engaging, which is with blogging, making the research accessible and addressing everybody right. Anybody that can read the monkey cage or any of that, any number of blog’s that actually uses academic research in the reports like Box, even or fivethirtyeight, right? You know, I found that Is an academic a lot more satisfying than kind of answering this question? What do policymakers want? Right. That’s a question that gets posed on. And I used to hear it more, I guess, um, when people kind of Oh, this guy does game theory, right? How are you relevant? Right. Do you have what policymakers want? I don’t care if policymakers want what I have. I’m not sure that my job is to be a tool of the people making policy right now, right? It’s Ah, help citizens be informed. Both sides, right? The party in power in the loyal opposition to also begin forms, right? I think, saying that policymakers should be happy with what we tell them. Trusts policymakers. To a degree that political scientists have shown, we probably shouldn’t.

[0:14:03 Speaker 1] Policymakers don’t always want what they would best be served by. That’s right. And that’s that’s a classic way to introduce political bias into your research by, you know, doing research that serves a particular goal of policymakers, Right? That’s the reason we have a separation between the academy and yes,

[0:14:21 Speaker 3] that’s right. You know, ask a really intelligent read if he likes chasing the cheese and the maize and it’s not gonna want to be in there right Might be a stronger metaphor than I meant. Um, but, uh, you know, I think that by engaging publicly this, you know that science and social science should be a public enterprise, you know, not a private or governmental enterprise, right? And I think we’ve done a much better job of that, and I do think you know, following what Terry said that the Brexit story is a way that we’ve really seen this come to the fore effectively. I don’t really have a lot to add. Um, you know, to Terry’s thoughts about how this vote could happen, right? But simply to say that if you’re going to use the tools of formal theory and that frequently for us means game theory, right where we’re using the language of mathematics simply to formalize and systematize sentences that we could otherwise right down in words. But as soon as you’re thinking about the interactions of even just two people, right when they make choices about bargaining positions, whether to goto war, how to try to communicate something to someone who doesn’t have reason to trust you, figuring out how they’re simple behavioral rules that could come from anywhere add up to produce what we all know is a complicated set of outcomes. Formal theory really helps you keep track of that, right? It If the math is right, your logic is right. Um, then it helps us kind of keep track of things that are otherwise super complicated, right? I think in one year earlier comments Stewart was about how the world is. You know, um, we’re seeing turmoil in a lot of areas, right? And it’s and it’s a complicated situation. But I always like to say that, you know, our theory shouldn’t be on Ahmad Apia, right? So the world is complicated. So so is my writing. It seems the wrong way, right? The more complex the world, the simpler our analytical tools almost need to be. To really see how graspable, understandable components can add up to produce something that is complicated, right and complex right, which is, I think, what we see, like in, you know, in the Brexit vote, you see people acting in a certain way that satisfies an immediate goal right, which is letting your cow over graze in the Commons, right? All of a sudden, it adds up to something nobody would have wanted, but they can’t commit not to do right. That’s in fact, you know, that’s one of the classical games that people learn are undergraduates learn the prisoner’s dilemma, right? Or a collective goods problem, which is the tragedy of the Commons is a really common example and, uh, the simplest wannabe teaching away, and we can use it to get a lot of insight into what seems like this big, huge, inexplicable mess, right?

[0:17:03 Speaker 1] There are loads of these examples. I mean, so I just read monkey cage posts from a colleague, um, Julia Gray and a couple co authors Julia Graze, not the London School of Economics. And it was about the not about the decision making going into the vote or how this referendum passed. But rather now that it’s past, what’s the bargaining going to look like between the U. S. And Britain? And will Britain be able to obtain all the benefits that wants from its partners with Europe? Well, at the same time exiting? And how should we expect European partners Toe Act? This is, you know, over the weekend there were lots of, um, sort of alarm bells going off about the European Union telling Britain Well, they should proceed with exiting as soon as possible. Rejecting informal talks more formal talks this morning, Merkel seemed to soft soften on that a little bit. Um, but bargaining theories, formal theories of bargaining tell us a lot about who has a better hand here, right and what they can expect to happen, and given some of the events that have unfolded since Thursday. And the markets. Um, given what we know about how how Britain’s economy will likely be affected by this, it looks like actually, it won’t have a very strong hand bargaining with its European allies.

[0:18:27 Speaker 0] That’s it. For the first episode discussing world politics with Terry Chapman and Scott Woolford, I hope you are feeling like, um or engaged, informed citizen. Please join us next time when we get a little more in depth about international security and economics, touching on topics such as Brexit, Russia, Smoot Hawley, Donald Trump and Dune. Until then, you can find me a Gov dot utexas dot edu