Why Major in Political Science?

in 1989 I worked as a consultant in the Chilean presidential election now Chile had had a military coup in 1973 1989 was the first election that they had had since the coup so for 16 years they'd been a military dictatorship the people who were running spanned the ideological spectrum from the far left to the far right so the interest in that election was extremely high every night each of the three candidates in random order would get a half hour on public television where they could make their case to be voted for in the streets of Santiago de Chile a city of six million people or just deserted because everybody was watching the election and I remember thinking to myself I hope I never live in a country where elections are that important well damn because there were 200 people at least there on Monday night in the debate watch party it was hot it was crowded and some of it was because I did propose a drinking game perhaps that you know where if different people said different words or phrases that everybody had to at least say whoo actually that was none of it of course the fact is that people are really interested in politics and in some ways it's a bad sign when people are really interested in politics because it means that there are things that need to be done but a big reason why you should consider majoring in political science is it would equip you to do some of those things rather than just complain it would it will equip you to learn something about the engineering principles and the ethical problems and let me say that again both the engineering principles and the ethical problems that we face if we just try to think about this as engineers we'll get it wrong and if we only think of it in ethical terms we're going to get it wrong we have to do what's possible and what's good so I think political science is actually the oldest majors the oldest feel of stud study because even small groups who lived in a clan on the plains of Africa were obliged to try to find ways to work together so of all the fields of study politics is the single essential human social activity politics ranges from war to trade to choosing things and working in groups so a definition of politics might be making binding agreements using rules that are agreed on advance now the French philosopher Rousseau asked a great question he said how can men be both free and yet bound by wills not their own how can a man be both free and yet bound by a will not his own well suppose I think there should be a speed limit and I think it should be 70 and we choose 60 I get pulled over I have a black BMW 330 by the way so I'm exactly the sort of asshat you think I am I get pulled over and the cop says you were doing 71 in a 60 and I say no no I thought it should be 70 I didn't consent to that 60 hahaha he just writes up the ticket well I didn't consent to that did I yes I consented to there being a speed limit and I can sent it to a set of rules or a process by which we will decide what the speed limit is majority rule going through a legislature that means that I'm bound by the by the rule even if I don't agree with the outcome that's the nature of politics and it's why rules are so important rules are more important than they should be we can't rely on preferences as being something that's just naturally expressed by groups they're filtered through institutions political science is the study of effective and ethical institutions it's a way of understanding how do we aggregate all of the information that individuals have into something the group can use because groups don't have preferences if you only learn one thing here today it should be that groups don't have preferences what groups have is decisions choices rules those are aggregate concepts but groups don't have preferences individuals have preferences and they want to work in groups that's the step that makes politics so interesting and important now one of the most famous symbols of political science is Odysseus bound to the mast you remember the story of Odysseus the goddess querque said you were going to encounter an island the beautiful women the sirens will sing songs that you will find so seductive that like many sailors before you your ship will run aground on the rocks and you will die but you won't be able to prevent yourself because the song is so seductive so tell your men to bind up their ears with cotton and wax so that they can't hear this seductive song but you Odysseus ask your men to tie you to the mast however he's the captain he has a problem doesn't he because he knows as soon as he hears the song what's he going to say what's he going to say here's the seductive song he's tied up what does he say untie me let me go what will they mutiny because if it disobey his orders that's mutiny but if they obey his orders they're actually disobeying his will because his will was to be able to make a credible commitment his will was to be able to say here's an agreement that I want to be bound by that's really the fundamental problem of politics you may have heard the old sort of Cohen if God is all-powerful can he make a rock so big he can't lift it well when you think about it if God is all-powerful he can make a rock of any size and he can lift a rock of any size so there's actually no conflict you're just violating those but there is a problem with legislators if legislators are powerful can they make a law so strong that they cannot rescind it can a legislature pass a law that it can't change often you are in the position of Odysseus you want to be able to give orders not just now but to the future you want to be able to say here's the way this is going to happen in the future so I put up some binaries one is the problem of authority versus anarchy and each of them would seem to have problems political authority if it works is the doctrine that we are obliged both morally and practically to obey the dictates of the state so if we are told to do something by the government were obliged to do it and that gives the state the right and the power to punish us if we violate the rules does anybody know who Adolf Eichmann was Adolf Eichmann who he organized a lot he made sure that the trains ran on time he was tried and he gave a very specific and famous defense of his actions what was it I was just following orders well that's actually true isn't it he was ordered to do that and he would have been killed if he hadn't followed the orders so was he not guilty you think he was guilty does that mean I can disobey the orders of the state when can i disobey the orders of the state there is a doctrine called philosophical anarchism philosophical anarchism is that I am NOT automatically obliged to obey the orders of the state immoral orders of the state I can ignore in fact I'm obliged to ignore them because remember Adolf Eichmann was hung he was killed by a court and his crime was obeying orders because the orders were bad well if the state can give orders that are bad how do we tell the difference that's why you should major in political science not because you'll know the answer because you'll understand that question a lot better there is the thing if you think that Adolf Eichmann should have been let go you believe in political authority all the rest of you are anarchists because anarchists all men all of philosophical anarchist is is someone who believes that I am not automatically obliged to obey the orders of the state if the state gives me an order that's immoral I'm not obliged to follow it and in I may be obliged to disobey it how do you tell the difference almost all of us actually are philosophical anarchists it's a big club in fact the people who are not frightened me whatever order the state gives I must follow it yikes second the problem of cooperation versus conflict it's often the case that cooperation sir seems to serve our interests however it's even better if all of you cooperate and I go off and do what I want one of the things that humans are pretty good at doing is cooperating more than you might think if we thought of human beings as the sort of autistic Homo economicus out only for themselves we actually care more about other people then we might expect but sometimes we don't care about each other at all and we revert pretty quickly the things that induce us to cooperate or probably our expectations about others if a whole bunch of us get someplace at the same time and the door is pretty small maybe they're taking tickets what do we do we form a line almost anybody from a Western society without being told forms a line but suppose somebody cuts in line what do you do you probably yell at them suppose three people cut in line you go just like that suppose ten people cut in line you say oh hell no and you walk up there to institutions break but they break like glass not like steel they shatter once there's no line anymore there's really no line we just all push ahead so this is a question of game theory this is a question of expectations institutions rules traditions are the equilibria of game that we don't understand very well that's why you should major in political science that application of game theory will change the way that you think about everything it will change your life and you actually can't live without it the arrests I guess they're going to die credible commitment or cheap talk I've already talked about a bit but it is interesting to see how often in international relations people take extreme positions positions that probably aren't tenable but what they're trying to do is improve their bargaining position but since the other people know that they ignore it which means that many of the statements that we see in politics and between nations have almost no information content but then the question is why do we make them why do we feel obliged to make these sorts of statements well maybe the domestic audience that's looking at the statements by the president that's who I'm really talking to so I make these bellicose statements to rivals but what I'm really trying to do is get reelected back at home well if that's really what's going on it may mean that international relations may require institutions that are different than just the anarchic interaction of nations bumping into each other but how can they be enforced how can something like the United Nations enforce those kinds of rules there's a problem between engineering and ethics one of the things that a nation is obliged to do is to survive in fact if the nation doesn't survive it doesn't matter how otherwise just its Constitution was you might say oh yes that nation that didn't survive and whose people are now all enslaved that was a really just Constitution nobody cares their people are now all enslaved they lost you have to win you have to survive you have to be able to defend your borders and maintain order internally those constraints whether you like it or not are more important than any of the ethical or justice based concerns that seem like we should all work on so the question of justice versus survival makes me want to show you a video the residents called in Tagalog attorney we just should not do that gales sweeping down the narrow set of uncontrollable undulation and the bridge collapsed into the water was it a bad bridge in some sense the answer is obviously yes because bridges shouldn't do that but it actually was both a beautiful bridge it had One Design Awards and it was easily able to hold the amount of trucks and weight it was designed to hold what was happening was 40 mile an hour winds coming down the Tacoma Narrows we're going across it at a constant rate if you ever put a guitar or a stringed instrument outside on a windy day sometimes the strings will vibrate sympathetically because they have found the wind is going across them at the correct frequency so it turns out that this bridge had a frequency the wind blowing across it created damped harmonic oscillations and those oscillations were more strong than what the strength of the bridge could withhold Egypt during Arab Spring created a new constitution and had elections what happened next military coup why would that be because the Constitution which is nothing but a political bridge was designed in a way that didn't protect against the constant new energy coming into the system the disagreement a constitution has to take disagreement and render a consensus that is legitimate a constitution has to take disagreement and render a consensus that is perceived as legitimate if it's not the parties that expect to lose are likely to revolt the question is why don't all nations revolt all the time this should be the political state of nature and in fact that is the Hobbesian political state of nature Hobbes said the covenants without the sword are but words he thought that you needed an all-powerful military leader to be able to control these constant undulations of disagreement that eventually will break the system so when you think of the problem of political science that broken bridge is what you should think of those are constitutions many many nations fail one of my great the people that I admire and a mentor of mine was named James Buchanan he won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1986 when the European Union was formed he said that one of the great disappointments of his life was the failure of European leaders to listen to what constitutional design theorists such as himself had suggested the United States has a constitution is it our first constitution no we had one called the Articles of Confederation it looked like the European Union and it broke and it for the same reasons it turns out the European Union is designed to be at exactly the wrong level of aggregation so when we encouraged Egypt to have elections before they had a completely institutionalized Constitution when we encouraged the European Union to have the level of aggregation that they chose with the currency and trade union but lacking any sort of fiscal controls we doomed them to that predictably it was the fact that people didn't study political science that caused these predictably caused these bridges to fall and that the reason is we always think this is going to be different I had many Europeans friends who said oh you have to understand Europeans are more cooperative maybe physics is physics and the physics of politics transcends individual cultures our understanding of institutions goes across time and space so studying political science means that with Aristotle you'll be looking at the Constitution's of the different these days of Greece and you'll be wondering about Wrexham that's all part of the same historical and institutional conversation you

Channel: Duke University Department of Political Science

Views: 271,458

Keywords: political science, college major, undecided, political philosophy, public policy, college admissions, university admissions, university major, field of study, choosing a career, career path, pre law, law school, political theory, international relations, comparative politics, study politcs, study public policy, college study, Michael Munger, Duke University, majoring, college class, poli sci, polsci, Department of Government, Department of Politics

Id: xfwUott_xxk

Length: 17min 44sec (1064 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 30 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/thewildsora]

Amazing video.

[u/smackedjesus]

Man I wish I had that professor