Michael Nelson

Today and tomorrow I get to meet some of our new freshmen students. I enjoy this process (though I’m not a big fan of our unnecessarily complicated course registration system which we all have to use). The students here are really a key to making this such a fantastic job for me.

Last year, I wrote a post with “advice for new students”. I would mostly stress the same points again this year (you can reread the original post for more detail):

1. Ask questions
2. Focus on learning how to learn
3. Learn skills, especially writing and quantitative reasoning
4. Challenge yourself
5. Get involved with university life, but not over-involved
6. Consider study abroad
7. Connect with students, staff and faculty

Wesleyan can really provide all of you with an incredible start to your adult lives and post-baccalaureate careers. So take advantage of this experience! It really is whatever you want to make of it.

I’ve been doing a little reading online to gear up for the new term.

1. One of my favorite annual online visits is to the Beloit College Mindset List. They provide “a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall.” As a professor of international relations and african politics, some favorites from the list are:
   • 32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.
   • 41. American companies have always done business in Vietnam.
   • 43. Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.
   • 64. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely.
   • 68. They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S.
2. Profhacker has become a favorite web resource this past year. They have a great roundup of posts about getting ready for the new semester.
   • One of the articles mentioned raises a possible conundrum for those of us who are thinking about how to be successful teachers and get tenure. Daniel deVise, writing for the Washington Post, tells us that “highly rated professors are … overrated”. He cites a UC Davis-NBER-US Air Force Academy study (available as a PDF here) that found that professors rated highly by their students tended to give higher grades AND imparted less knowledge. Given that tenure at most liberal arts colleges is partly based on teaching evaluations, is this something we should worry about? I would definitely like to see more studies like this (this one may be limited by the fact that it focused only on teaching at the Air Force Academy).
3. Also at the Chronicle of Higher Education, I was intrigued this summer by Adam Evans’ piece on non-western teaching strategies. Unfortunately, it was so brief that it mostly appeared to provide superficial stereotypes. But it did prompt me to think a bit about how I approach the classroom experience and whether my approach is truly “Western”.

30 Ways to Rate a College – Measuring Stick – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

I like the graph here which displays all of the criteria prominent ranking systems use. Above is just a small bit of that image. But I think the bottom-line here is that it can be useful to look at many different sources, paying attention to their various distinctive criteria, when attempting to form an impression of a school.

Tags: college, rankings, the profession

This is my colleague Elvin Lim on Obama’s lack of leadership on the NYC Mosque issue. Obama is compared to Polonius and we are told that Obama is not being professorial enough. Definitely worth a read:

Out on a Lim: Obama’s Leadership Gap.

Tags: Obama, United States

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has been central to my research agenda for a long time now. I am currently in the process of completing a book manuscript that examines African participation and influence in global economic governance. I begin with the assumption that they have to work through coalitions, and then proceed to consider how different institutional environments impact their ability to form and maintain such coalitions. I find that those institutional environments can vary in several important ways, including how specific international and regional institutions overlap. For instance, when institutional environments require rule-making to take place across multiple institutions (such as the case of trade-related food safety measures, where rules are made at the WTO, Codex-Alimentarius Commission and elsewhere), then the obstacles to forming and maintaining coalitions increase. And, indeed, we see African states have more difficulties in impacting rule-making in such environments.

Given the centrality of the WTO to most areas of economic governance, I pay close attention to on-going developments in that organization. This past summer, several stories grabbed my attention: the status of the on-going Doha Round of negotiations, Lamy’s attempts to invigorate that round with a “cocktail approach”, and the on-going struggle to reform trade-distorting US domestic cotton support. This post touches on those themes and several others.

Doha Round Status

The Doha Round is not dead, though reports of its demise recur on a regular basis. One needs to remember that multilateral trade negotiating rounds have always taken a long time to conclude (last time, the Uruguay Round began in 1986 and only officially concluded in 1994). Additionally, there are now many more member states and economic power is more diffuse than it was during past rounds. So it should be no surprise that there have been a number of obstacles to concluding the current round of negotiations. Indeed, towards the beginning of the summer, attempts to conclude the Doha Round seemed to take another blow, as the G8 abandoned a pledge to conclude trade negotiations this year. However, some also cautiously report on continued progress, including sources in India (for instance, The Economic Times).

Director-General Pascal Lamy’s recent report to the WTO General Council tries to frame the WTO’s Doha Round and “Aid for Trade” as important contributions to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. However, his main strategy for keeping Doha alive seems to be linked to beverages…

“Shaken, Not Stirred.” Cocktail Approaches to Negotiations

My attention has been captured lately by Director-General Pascal Lamy’s new strategy in multilateral negotiations: the cocktail approach. He seems very excited about it. There are three core ingredients to this cocktail: (1) Chair-led consultations, (2) informal bilateral discussions, and (3) consultations with Lamy. He speaks of these dynamics as occurring both horizontally and vertically. The idea, apparently, is that these ingredients are already here, and that what is needed is for us to shake them vigorously (perhaps Lamy has an affinity for Bond, since he says that simply stirring this favorite cocktail of his is not enough).

Generally speaking, his method would involve:“Chair-led processes within the Negotiating Groups, maintaining an overview of the entire negotiating landscape (transparency and inclusiveness), and smaller groups in variable geometry and bilateral contacts remain necessary and essential –moving towards a more horizontal view of the issues (negotiating groups and the TNC remaining the anchor of the negotiating process).”

This is not the first time a cocktail approach has been used to encourage progress in WTO negotiations. The idea goes back at least to Tim Josling and Allan Rae who describe its application to agriculture negotiations back in 1999. The idea, they suggested,was to take current tariff levels and treat each level with a different modality. For instance, states could eliminate tariffs where current levels are below 5%, but for tarriffs that are extremely high (say, 300%) states may agree to simply allow space for bargaining. In their analysis applying the “cocktail” approach did have some benefit for African states. Their approach was embraced by a number of negotiators in the early phases of the Doha Round and continues to be mentioned today.

Looking at the broader negotiation literature, cocktails have had other metaphorical use. Cocktail can refer to a hybrid approach in negotiating tactics by individual actors intent on pushing or securing an advantage (see Matos et al. 1998).

Cotton

I am also asked, when I speak about the role African states play on the cotton issue, whether they are merely following another state’s lead (Brazil). I always say that this might be the case with dispute settlement, where African states have only acted as third-party supporters of Brazil’s activities. However, African states have clearly been leading players in using cotton as an issue to press for greater advantage in negotiations on agriculture in the Doha Round. If Brazil’s strategy has been to use judicial processes, African states have tried to push for a legislated solution.

This summer it became even clearer that Brazil stands alone on the cotton issue. It seems to have forgotten the rhetoric of how the “South”, including Africa, is hurt by wrong-headed agricultural policies in the industrialized “North”. Indeed, Brazil’s cotton farmers now apparently are being paid US subsidies. In return for not applying WTO-authorised trade sanctions, Brazil has decided to accept payment from the US to its farmers. As the Financial Times notes, this just makes them new stakeholders in the US Farm Bill. This is too bad, as Brazilian sanctions, while generating a number of negative externalities for Brazilian consumers and American exporters, could also have generated positive externalities for Africa’s more needy cotton farmers.

The WTO is not just the Doha Round

While the apparent lack of progress in the Doha Round might seem to signal a lack of commitment by the international community to this organization, it is far from being the case that the WTO’s relevance relies only on that round.

For one thing, the WTO administers a number of international agreements. One of those, which member states do not have to sign, is the Government Procurement Agreement. This agreement tries to encourage transparency and the principle of non-discrimination in government procurement. Signing the agreement ensures formal access to government procurement contracts in other signatory countries. The United States is one of 40 such countries. So, as the Financial Times reported, it is not surprising that China is actively trying to negotiate access to the agreement. Accession requires the consent of the current parties (Article XXIV, 2).

Indeed, the WTO has played a central role in economic disputes between the US and China in recent years. See, for instance, recent US concerns about China’s garments and textiles.

The WTO also plays a central role in many economic disputes between Europe and the United States. Two of those disputes, one about European subsidies for Airbus andanother about tariffs on certain electronic products, both resulted in WTO panel decisions that favored the US, though Europe is appealing at least the Airbus decision.

My colleague, Peter Rutland, has a nice piece in the Financial Times about Russia’s bid to enter the WTO. It is, as he notes, “embarrassing” that Russia is the only major economy not included in the 153-member organization. He notes many of the important obstacles to that bid: some member countries (Georgia) don’t like Russia very much these days, Russian leaders don’t always seem particularly committed to the process, and the United States has raised a number of objections along the way. Rutland’s piece is partly a reminder that some of these and other challenges remain, even as US President Obama announced last month a joint commitment with Russia to see the bid through. I think that much of this analysis is right, but I would add one more obstacle to Russia’s bid: the on-going Doha Round. If Russia were to join, it would also have a major voice in the on-going negotiations (especially if they continue to drag out). Russia is a big enough player that it could upset many of the deals and alliances that have been made over the last decade. That could be both good and bad for progress in the negotiations. But is is unlikely that it would be neutral.

Tags: Africa, China, doha, EU, negotiation, Russia, WTO

To stay on the theme of the great work our students are doing here at Wesleyan, I wanted to highlight the summer research projects that students completed with our Quantitative Analysis Center.

Each summer, a group of students is given the opportunity to do original research under the guidance of a professor here at Wesleyan. In a certain sense, this replicates for the social sciences what already happens in the sciences here (notably the Hughes program). The summer program culminated this year with a joint poster session that included work conducted by students in the sciences and the social sciences. It was a great fun to walk through Exley Science Center and talk with the students about these great projects, many of which are likely to be published.

Tags: students, Wesleyan

A popular question I get during the summer is, “how is your break?” I wish that I could say that my “break” was wonderful, but that wouldn’t really answer the question.

The fact is that we don’t really get a break as professors. Summers are when we try to squeeze in all of our major research projects, our side projects in service and teaching, and — just like most people — fit in a little vacation time (about two weeks for me this year) with the family. So my level of activity did not really change much when classes stopped. I still have gone into the office everyday. However, it is very nice to have the change.

So what did my summer consist of? Revising a book manuscript, creating a new web resource for students on writing and research (will be tested this fall and hopefully made public next spring), writing letters of recommendation, redesigning our African Studies website and gearing up for my new administrative responsibilities there. Oh, and trying to stay on top of about six other research papers that I really need to just finish and send out.

And of course, doing this while experiencing all of the joy (and sleeplessness) the parent of a one-year old can experience.

The good news, is that I enjoy all of this!

Tags: work

I’ve been meaning to post on this. Kennedy Odede, one of our majors, was recently published in the New York Times on the subject of “Slumdog Tourism”. It is definitely worth a read, especially if you are a Westerner considering a trip to a developing country. See it as an opportunity to reflect on what it means to travel and interact with people who live under such drastically different conditions. What Kennedy does here is try to have us see and feel the experience of being observed by such a tourist.

I notice Chris Blattman has a few posts on the subject of development, or poverty, tourism. Besides the New York Times, which has covered the issue a couple times, the Christian Science Monitor, also had a nice story a year ago.

Tags: development tourism, Wesleyan

There are lots of college rankings out there. Forbes just released their annual ranking, which is one of the few (the only?) that combines public and private colleges and universities. They claim their index is constructed to focus on the “student’s point of view”. I’m not 100% sure what that means (how do we determine the representative “student” out there?). But one thing I do like about their website (besides Wesleyan’s decent ranking) is that they have a “do-it-yourself” ranking tool that allows you to determine what criteria is important. Unfortunately, there is no way to add in criteria that you might feel is missing.

David K. Leonard, Jennifer N. Brass, Michael Nelson, Sophal Ear, Dan Fahey, Tasha Fairfield, Martha Johnson Gning, Michael Halderman, Brendan McSherry, Devra C. Moehler, Wilson Prichard, Robin Turner, Tuong Vu, Jeroen Dijkman. 2010. “Does Patronage Still Drive Politics for the Rural Poor in the Developing World? A Comparative Perspective from the Livestock Sector.” Development and Change. (p 475-494)

If one didn’t know any better, one might think that we were trying to set a record for the number of co-authors on a social science journal article. Indeed, the question of author order has come up recently in our discipline. David Lake has suggested we list people in order of their contribution, and I would have to agree that this is the fairest way to go. And when in doubt, listing alphabetically isn’t a bad backup plan. Essentially, this is what happened with our article, though I would suggest that David’s name deserves even greater recognition than simply being listed first.

I am actually very excited to see that co-authorship is on the rise. Fisher et al. noticed this back in 1998 and Lee Sigelman has updated this analysis more recently. I think this is a signal that we are really progressing in our discipline, which is not to say that collaboration is always a good thing. But when done well, it can be rewarding.

For those of you interested in what our article was actually about, here is the abstract:

Is the analysis of patron–client networks still important to the understanding of developing country politics or has it now been overtaken by a focus on ’social capital’? Drawing on seventeen country studies of the political environment for livestock policy in poor countries, this article concludes that although the nature of patronage has changed significantly, it remains highly relevant to the ways peasant interests are treated. Peasant populations were found either to have no clear connection to their political leaders or to be controlled by political clientage. Furthermore, communities ‘free’ of patron–client ties to the centre generally are not better represented by political associations but instead receive fewer benefits from the state. Nonetheless, patterns of clientage are different from what they were forty years ago. First, patronage chains today often have a global reach, through trade, bilateral donor governments and international NGOs. Second, the resources that fuel political clientage today are less monopolistic and less adequate to the task of purchasing peasant political loyalty. Thus the bonds of patronage are less tight than they were historically. Third, it follows from the preceding point and the greater diversity of patrons operating today that elite conflicts are much more likely to create spaces in which peasant interests can eventually be aggregated into autonomous associations with independent political significance in the national polity. NGOs are playing an important role in opening up this political space although at the moment, they most often act like a new type of patron.

Tags: collaboration, patronage, social capital