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Generational talent
Alexei Navalny is dead, murdered by the man whose corruption and brutality he dared to contest. — How is it, I sometimes hear from friends or relatives here, that in a country of 300 million we cannot find some more talented person to run for president? This, I believe, misunderstands the nature of politics. True political talent is extraordinarily rare. It...
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...
Censorship, Propaganda, and Repression During Putin’s War on Ukraine
My remarks (slightly edited) last night at Ukrainathon, a 24-hour educational marathon benefiting displaced students and scholars from Ukraine. Thanks to the PONARS leadership for this great initiative. For my fifteen minutes, I would like to talk about domestic politics in Russia, which is obviously central to this conflict. Let me begin by revisiting some claims I made a week before 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.
A Good Workshop
Cross-posted from Broadstreet, a blog devoted to historical political economy. A few years ago, in reflecting on the annual meeting of the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics, I wrote: What makes for a good conference? The opportunity to see old friends and make new ones. Quality panels with work that challenges and crosses intellectual...
Taking Stock of Russian Economic History
Cross-posted from Broadstreet, a blog devoted to historical political economy. The following remarks were prepared for a roundtable discussion at the annual meeting of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. I am a co-editor of the Broadstreet blog by virtue of a serendipitous discovery: a multivolume chronicle of the “peasant movement” in nineteenth-century Russia that I discovered...
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...
State Power and the Power Law
Cross-posted from Broadstreet, a blog devoted to historical political economy. Pavi had a great post recently on the different ways that historical political economists have conceptualized and measured state capacity. I want to follow up with a small point that doesn’t have anything directly to do with historical political economy, but that I believe is important for historical political economists...
What Did Stalinist Industrialization Accomplish?
Cross-posted from Broadstreet, a blog devoted to historical political economy. The spring quarter at Chicago starts in a week. I will be teaching a course on the political economy of communism and the postcommunist transition. I love this class, which I taught at Wisconsin for many years, and not just because it is an opportunity to subject a captive audience...
What Joe Biden Could Learn About Reform from Tsar Alexander II
Joint with Eugene (Evgeny) Finkel. Cross-posted from Broadstreet, a blog devoted to historical political economy. Climate change, racial equity, immigration, healthcare: Joe Biden has a lot on his plate beyond bringing the pandemic to an end. In possession of the narrowest of majorities in the House and a ten-seat deficit in the Senate on all business that can be filibustered,...