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A Bit More about Theory in Historical Political Economy

Cross-posted from Broadstreet, a blog devoted to historical political economy. As Volha mentioned in her post on Monday, she, Eugene Finkel, and I are working on something—a review of the field of historical political economy for an audience of political scientists. As part of that process, I have been thinking about the role of theory in HPE. Sean Gailmard’s recent...

Reform and Rebellion in Weak States

Sometime during my first year as a junior faculty member, I was wandering the stacks in Wisconsin’s Memorial Library. I can’t remember what I was looking for, but I remember what I found: a multi-volume chronicle of the peasant movement in Imperial Russia. That serendipitous discovery aroused an interest in economic history and historical political economy that has become...

Imagining Trump’s End

I'm teaching Socialism and Transitions to the Market this semester, and we're reading Francis Spufford's excellent Red Plenty. Here he is on Khrushchev's end: e was starting to frighten them…He had made alarmingly specific, alarmingly verifiable economic promises…He had tried to stick his thumb in the scales of the strategic balance by putting the...

A Presentable Enemy (on the future of U.S.-Russian relations)

Andrei Kozyrev, Boris Yeltsin's foreign minister from 1991 to 1996, was in Madison Thursday for a talk on the future of U.S.-Russian relations. We covered a lot of ground at the public seminar and later at our house for dinner—a thrill for faculty and grads alike. What a moment to be discussing such issues, with a U.S. president under...

Nondemocracy (Second Edition)

When I wrote the first edition of my textbook on Formal Models of Domestic Politics, I made a conscious decision not to include models of autocracy. The literature was too new, the big picture insufficiently clear. There was enough to cover on more established topics. Nondemocracy could wait. That first edition went to press...

What I Learned from Working with Deceased Soviet Historians

Cross-posted from Broadstreet, a blog devoted to historical political economy. Broadstreet readers may know that Jeff and Jared are editing an Oxford Handbook of Historical Political Economy. Tracy and I have committed to writing a chapter on “HPE in History and the Social Sciences” that elaborates on various earlier contributions on the relationship between these two component parts of the...

What Would a Russian Invasion of Ukraine Mean for Russia?

My Chicago colleague Zhaotian Luo and I weigh in over at the Monkey Cage blog: Putin is Gambling His Future—and Russia's.

Who Believes Fake News? A Bayesian Perspective, and a Lesson from Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving is supposed to be a minefield, but I've always enjoyed discussing the world with friends and family gathered around the holiday table. This year was no exception. One of my friends—let's call him Dan—is a keen observer of human behavior. We were talking about fake news and why so many people believe it. Dan said that the problem was not...

Drawing the Wrong Lessons from Socialism

I have just forced myself to read the CEA report on "The Opportunity Costs of Socialism." Personally, I rather prefer Francis Spufford's Red Plenty for a palatable introduction to actually existing socialism. But a couple of observations. Somewhat surprisingly for an economic analysis, the CEA report confuses the costs of transition to socialism (e.g., collectivization-induced famine) with the efficiency losses...

What’s Next for the Study of Nondemocracy?

I'm back from a stimulating workshop on autocracy at Indiana University. Regina Smyth, Armando Razo, and Michael Alexeev have some exciting plans to institutionalize the study of nondemocracy at IU, and as part of the planning process they asked Konstantin (Kostya) Sonin and me to provide some perspective on the field. Armando joined us for a freewheeling discussion at...