A Mini-Debate on Relevance of Political Science

Statement: Ezra Klein of Washington Post
Poli Sci 101: Presidential speeches don't matter, and lobbyists don't run D.C.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/10/AR2010091002671.html
Examples of four good research pieces and complaints about inattention to APSA Sept 2010 meeting by policy-makers.

Rebuttal: Steven Hayward of American Enterprise Institute
The Irrelevance of Modern Political Science
http://www.american.com/archive/2010/september/the-irrelevance-of-modern-political-science
Examples of "trashy" topics and juxtaposition with economic science and criticism of preoccupation with quantiative methods


Re-statement John Sides, a political scientist who contributes to The Monkey Cage blog
On the Irrelevance of Political Science
http://www.themonkeycage.org/2010/09/on_the_irrelevance_of_politica_1.html
Criticizes Haywards one-sided choice of topics and his juxtaposition of polisci people with economists and advances explanations for polisci research not being so outspoken and popularized as economics research.

I found good arguements in all three pieces.
Enjoy if you have a professional crisis like I do right now!

Another analytic publication contributed

In August I published another article with Central Asia and Caucasus Analyst (cacianalyst.org), discussing the failed coup attempt by Urmat Baryktabasov against the background of failing transitional government in Kyrgyzstan. You can access it here: http://www.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/5386

Back to academia

After serving as an Assistant Executive Secretary with Central Asia and the Caucasus Association of Agricultural Research Institutions (www.cacaari.org) for almost a year, I returned to political science and research - joined IMT-Lucca Institute for Advanced Studies in a beautiful Toscan town of Lucca in Italy. I am not currently absolutely confident about what topic I will take up to dedicate my next several years to, currently only refreshing statistics and improving my quantitative analysis skills.