Sigh.
My Advisor, Joy Killer Extraordinaire, shot down my new topic..."Interesting, yes. Do-able, no." Fair enough. I have to say that I'm still pretty excited about not studying agenda control in the Senate any longer, though I am now staring down the barrel of three weeks in which all of my friends are gone off to their families, and I have nothing to do. I feel slightly excited about the prospect of a guilt-free vacation, but slightly unnerved that I'm losing three prime weeks for work to the Black Hole that is "Lack of Dissertation Topic". Hmmm. Maybe it's time to crack the white of my blank canvases, or write the story that won't pry its fingers from my brain. I just can't get the first lines out of my head:
"Shh. Eeet weel be fahn-TAH-steek. You weel lahve eet. I prroh-mees you."
Seriously. I sit at home whispering this to myself. In that strange, unplaceable accent.
If you have any burning and interesting questions about politics/political science/political economy, and you would like me to consider working on answering them, send them along, willya?
Thanks.
"Shh. Eeet weel be fahn-TAH-steek. You weel lahve eet. I prroh-mees you."
Seriously. I sit at home whispering this to myself. In that strange, unplaceable accent.
If you have any burning and interesting questions about politics/political science/political economy, and you would like me to consider working on answering them, send them along, willya?
Thanks.
Labels: Work and Such
posted by slickaphonic at 4:36 PM
6 Comments:
oh honey. what's the topic that is not implementable? i feel ya on the lack of topics though. original research is hard ass work.
-d.
well, to explain, the Shaz party in israel is the uber-religious party, whose policies are orthogonal to all other parties' platforms, and they are usually necessary to form the winning majority coalition. I.e., because everyone wants them for their team, they're able to get whatever they want.
SO, the question I was interested in, is how does this dynamic (coalition and minority faction capture) work in a two-party system. For example, everyone moans about the Evangelicals 'capturing' government via the Republican party, but it is unclear that they've actually gotten anything. I think these minority groups, at most, have negative agenda control (are able to protect their favored status quos). But apparently, this is just not going to be test-able.
AND THAT'S NOT SCIENCE!!!
argh.
well, actually, this is something I've thought a little about. and the way I think you could approach it is through network analysis. Betsy's dissertation is on political networks at the mass level, but she has other stuff (some with me, some with out) about elite networks. It's all in the works, but I'd be happy to talk sometime.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
yeah, i'm thinking of doing an urban-ethnicity project with network analysis (we have Fowler on faculty now), but the project I described here was more about trying to measure agenda control for minority groups in terms of policy concessions (i.e., the Southern Dems were able to keep affirmative action/voting rights, etc off the agenda because they were necessary to form the 'winning coalition'...but looking for negative agenda control for certain Church groups over time or immigrant populations, etc, would be terribly difficult...because the whole point is that bills regarding their protected SQ's don't make it on the agenda.)
hey, you should come visit over break if you have the time or inclination.
oh, duh. james is who she is working with on her other projects. i forgot he's there now.
i'm going to tahoe tomorrow for a week and christmas week is a bit crazy, but maybe we can come down for a day or two. otherwise, we should just plan a weekend in Jan or Feb.
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