DISCIPLINING THE UNDISCIPLINED

Certainly, Sides wants more political scientists to blog. Laying out the basics of how to create and maintain a blog is an important contribution, as is the advice about how to react to the inevitable comments that any semisuccessful blog attracts. Sides also hopes to erode the idea that political scientists should be “punished” for producing work of interest to policymakers and journalists (Yglesias Reference Yglesias2010). Recently, “Bridging the Divide” is a much discussed topic among policy oriented political scientists (Drezner Reference Drezner2011). The Monkey Cage has played an important role in this endeavor, mostly by bringing the fruit of political science research to bear on major policy questions.

But here is the problem:

This passage has the whiff of an effort at discipline. Wheras the sources of “professional peril” are left anonymous, the inevitable implication is that some blogs are good, appropriate, and should not blot the tenure and promotion cases of their authors; other blogs are inappropriate and not quite “political science.” The question now invariably is to distinguish between the appropriate and inappropriate blogs. Appropriate blogs tackle topics that add value from political science training. Inappropriate blogs address such perilous concerns as personal complaints about children, cats, cars, and (oddly enough) the discipline of political science. The last is particularly problematic, as Sides seems to be suggesting that political scientists ought not comment about the state of the political science discipline on their political science blogs.

Given the attacks that some critics have leveled against academic bloggers, a defensive effort at disciplining the political science blogosphere is understandable (Tribble Reference Tribble2005). We should appreciate that Sides' approach amounts to an effort to defuse certain lines of critique by distinguishing between safe and unsafe forms of blogging. In effect, this burns half of the blogosphere to save the other half. I have a personal interest in this question because I worry that my own blogging falls on the wrong side. Lawyers, Guns and Money was founded in 2004 by three political science graduate students at the University of Washington (Farley Reference Farley2012). Although additional members have been added since 2004, five political scientists have written roughly 83% of 12,000 or so posts at Lawyers, Guns and Money. Traffic to the site reached one million visitors per year sometime around 2006 and last year exceeded two million. Lawyers, Guns and Money currently has between 5,000 and 8,000 subscribers (actual numbers are difficult to determine because of different counting methodology). These numbers are very roughly double those reported by Sides for The Monkey Cage (Sides Reference Sides2011, 267) during a similar time period. Yet when he lists the major political science blogs, Sides made no mention of Lawyers, Guns and Money in “The Political Scientist as Blogger.”

To be sure, it is difficult to criticize Sides on this omission without seeming petty and bitter, and “How could you possibly have ignored my blog?!?” is a silly and unproductive question. An article titled “The Political Scientist as Blogger” surely cannot productively mention every political science blog. The exclusion of Lawyers, Guns and Money makes sense, however, if we understand Sides' effort as both prescriptive and proscriptive; including some blogs as decent and appropriate political science while implicitly excluding others as professionally problematic. Indeed, Lawyers, Guns and Money does not fit many of the criteria that Professor Sides sets forth for “political science blogging.” Posts that synthesize the latest work in political theory and international relations are followed by posts that lament John Lackey's earned run average, or disparage Michael Bay's aptitude for filmmaking. Moreover, the approach to politics at Lawyers, Guns and Money is explicitly partisan. While the authors are trained political scientists, they use their training in service of charged, highly partisan arguments that are often frowned on in traditional political science. Lawyers, Guns and Money concentrates less on the transmission of academic research into the policy sphere and more on the direct application of research knowledge and skills to political and policy questions.

Thus, the exclusion of Lawyers, Guns and Money was tactful rather than accidental; a blog like Lawyers, Guns and Money is not discussed as a political science blog (although its authors clearly think of it as political science) because it is embarrassing to the kind of argument that Sides makes. What constitutes the difference between a political science blog and a blog about politics written by political scientists? Is this is a distinction without a helpful difference? Jonathan Bernstein, unaffiliated scholar and author of a “Plain Blog about Politics” is oft-cited by The Monkey Cage, but he frequently writes about culture and baseball in addition to American electoral politics (Bernstein Reference Bernstein2012).

Surely, lines must be drawn. A blog by a political scientist that focused solely on baseball statistics, or that is preoccupied with photographs of cats in amusing predicaments, should probably be excluded from the genus “political science blog.” If we include or exclude blogs based on particular criteria, we need to be explicit about what are those criteria; what blogging is considered good for the discipline (and presumably good for the careers of the authors), and what blogging is considered embarrassing, problematic, and not the sort of thing you want to include in a tenure file. The cat and baseball blogs listed are easy cases; Lawyers, Guns and Money, American Power (Douglas Reference Douglas2012), and other highly partisan blogs are more difficult to categorize and threaten to test the boundaries (Douglas Reference Douglas2012). Unfortunately, Sides gives little insight as to where the boundary between “a political science blog” and “a blog about politics written by political scientists” lies.

WHAT THE MEDIUM MEANS FOR THE PROFESSION

Professor Sides ably discusses the professional positives of blogging for junior and senior faculty members. Blogging improves teaching, gives scholars the chance to test-drive research ideas, encourages a habit of writing, and publicizes both the scholar and the scholar's research. All of these activities enhance tenure and promotion cases, although Sides also notes that blogging can irritate senior colleagues and consume valuable writing and research time. Again, Sides promotes blogging, however, in an essentially defensive fashion; blogging can help improve earning tenure and promotion, but it is unlikely to have an independent positive impact on a blogger's career. In short, the blog itself is a means to multiple ends, and not an end in itself.

Sides' article surely represents a useful contribution to warn young (and not so young) scholars of the dangers of blogging. However, if the medium of blogging does all that Sides attributes to it, not to mention granting a higher profile to a department and helping “bridge the gap” between policymakers and the academy, then why is blogging not counted in the context of tenure and promotion decisions? A genuine appreciation of the role that blogging plays in an academic career would consider the merits of the medium, and in particular what the medium can offer than alternative venues cannot. Sides suggests a political science blog community that acts in support of the traditional pillars of an academic career, including teaching, but especially research. This idea is fine, but a different approach might examine how blogging might replace some of those traditional elements.

Here is an example: if you are reading this article in PS, the article has gone through a vetting and editing process that has probably lasted at least 18 months. This process undoubtedly improved the quality of the article, but it also substantially delayed its entry into the debate. Had I simply posted this discussion as a blog response to Sides, it probably would have taken me three or four days to write and edit it. I would have included multiple hyperlinks, effectively “citing” not only Sides article but a plethora of different pieces on blogging and the academy. The article could have been viewed by some 4,000 regular visitors to Lawyers, Guns and Money, plus another 8,000 or so subscribers. Any one of these subscribers could have responded (helpfully or unhelpfully) in our comments section, likely generating a long debate both on the merits of the article and on the merits of the author. Sides could have responded within a day, and a multitude of other political science bloggers might have chimed in during the ensuing weeks.

Instead, I published the article here in PS, giving up all of that in return for a line on my CV with the “peer review” annotation. The delay of this article, the loss of all of the interactivity that the Internet provides, and the substantial reduction in the number of people likely to read the piece buy me a slightly improved chance at tenure and promotion. It is true, readers of this article will not be forced to skip over a long debate about the relative merit of Ivan Rodriguez' defense versus Mike Piazza's offense, but then the number of people who read PS cover-to-cover is likely small.

To say that this makes little sense is an understatement.

And so, rather than think in terms of how blogging, tweeting, and other forms of social media could accommodate themselves to the traditional profile of an academic career, let me suggest that we should, as a discipline, think in more radical terms. Effectively, our tenure and promotion system is built around an obsolete social and technological foundation, with career success built around posting a few articles in a few journals subscribed to by a few libraries and read by few people (Cosgrove Reference Cosgrove2011; Healy Reference Healy2011). Rather than take the apologetic line that Sides advocates, we should think about blogging as a crowbar to pry open the tenure and promotion process. As Stephen Walt has argued,

This is not to say that the peer review system lacks merit, because it remains a relevant and important element of the academic project. The Monkey Cage has successfully exploited a hunger in the blogospheric and journalistic communities for good, traditional political science research. A replacement of the peer review system with some sort of “open blog” format would hardly solve all problems. For example, the authors of popular blogs such as Lawyers, Guns and Money and The Monkey Cage have the luxury of receiving feedback from many potential commenters, while excellent work at smaller blogs unfortunately may escape notice. But the peer-review system is hardly the only means to either (a) say something interesting or (b) influence the public policy debate.

To be sure, the metrics for evaluating the contribution that blogging could make to a tenure or promotion case remain murky. Measures such as traffic, links, and comments are all problematic often to the point of uselessness. The best we can offer, perhaps, is that each blog can be evaluated as part of an academic career, and no clear template for how blogging should fit into career progress exists. This proposal sounds frustratingly amorphous, but in most cases the arguments for and against tenure and promotion rely on fuzzy distinction between journals, publishers, and course evaluations, not to mention the always-important-but-never-concrete quality “will this person make a good colleague?” A more holistic approach to tenure and promotion (Young Reference Young2010) would remedy some of the problems of relying on the peer-review system, while also encouraging young scholars to “bridge the gap” by writing articles that people will actually read (Young Reference Young2010). An American Historical Association working group report on the field of public history suggested the adjustment of tenure standards to take into account public engagement (Working Group on Evaluating Public History Scholarship 2010).