Alexei Navalny is dead, murdered by the man whose corruption and brutality he dared to contest. — How is it, I sometimes hear from friends or relatives here, that in a country of 300 million we cannot find some more talented person to run for president? This, I believe, misunderstands the nature of politics. True political talent is extraordinarily rare. It is some combination of charisma, empathy, leadership, courage…I think of people like Barack Obama or Bobby Kennedy. You may think of others. Whatever one’s perspective, the list is short. Alexei Navalny had that talent. He was, in fact, a g ..read more

Cross-posted from Broadstreet, a blog devoted to historical political economy. Broadstreet readers may know that Jeff and Jared are editing an Oxford Handbook of Historical Political Economy. Tracy and I have committed to writing a chapter on “HPE in History and the Social Sciences” that elaborates on various earlier contributions on the relationship between these two component parts of the field. A particular focus is the possibility of collaboration between historians and social scientists—a theme that Tracy took up in a recent post. Let me confess at the outset that I have never myself writ ..read more

My remarks (slightly edited) last night at Ukrainathon, a 24-hour educational marathon benefiting displaced students and scholars from Ukraine. Thanks to the PONARS leadership for this great initiative. For my fifteen minutes, I would like to talk about domestic politics in Russia, which is obviously central to this conflict. Let me begin by revisiting some claims I made a week before the invasion, in a piece at the Monkey Cage blog that I wrote with my Chicago colleague Zhaotian Luo. Zhaotian and I wrote then that: The war was more likely to be hard than easy. That if the war was h ..read more

My Chicago colleague Zhaotian Luo and I weigh in over at the Monkey Cage blog: Putin is Gambling His Future—and Russia’s ..read more

Cross-posted from Broadstreet, a blog devoted to historical political economy. A few years ago, in reflecting on the annual meeting of the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics, I wrote: What makes for a good conference? The opportunity to see old friends and make new ones. Quality panels with work that challenges and crosses intellectual boundaries. Outstanding plenary sessions. Pleasantly situated receptions and dinners. Such was the ambition of the third annual Summer Workshop in the Economic History and Historical Political Economy of Russia, held last month (summer somewh ..read more

Cross-posted from Broadstreet, a blog devoted to historical political economy. The following remarks were prepared for a roundtable discussion at the annual meeting of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. I am a co-editor of the Broadstreet blog by virtue of a serendipitous discovery: a multivolume chronicle of the “peasant movement” in nineteenth-century Russia that I discovered in the Memorial Library at UW Madison while looking for something else. I initially perceived the historical work that followed as a sort of post-tenure luxury: something I did to scratch a ..read more

Cross-posted from Broadstreet, a blog devoted to historical political economy. As Volha mentioned in her post on Monday, she, Eugene Finkel, and I are working on something—a review of the field of historical political economy for an audience of political scientists. As part of that process, I have been thinking about the role of theory in HPE. Sean Gailmard’s recent guest post is a useful starting point, as is his more extensive discussion in Jeff’s new Journal of Historical Political Economy. So is Scott Ashworth, Chris Berry, and Ethan Bueno de Mesquita’s excellent Theory and Credibility, wh ..read more

Cross-posted from Broadstreet, a blog devoted to historical political economy. Pavi had a great post recently on the different ways that historical political economists have conceptualized and measured state capacity. I want to follow up with a small point that doesn’t have anything directly to do with historical political economy, but that I believe is important for historical political economists and anyone else thinking about state capacity. As Pavi discusses, one component of state capacity is “bureaucratic capacity,” which following Michael Mann she conceptualizes as “the ability of the s ..read more

Cross-posted from Broadstreet, a blog devoted to historical political economy. The spring quarter at Chicago starts in a week. I will be teaching a course on the political economy of communism and the postcommunist transition. I love this class, which I taught at Wisconsin for many years, and not just because it is an opportunity to subject a captive audience to my repertoire of Soviet-era jokes. State socialism was the great social experiment of the twentieth century. Understanding why it failed, and understanding why the transition from state socialism was not always successful, teaches us m ..read more

Joint with Eugene (Evgeny) Finkel. Cross-posted from Broadstreet, a blog devoted to historical political economy. Climate change, racial equity, immigration, healthcare: Joe Biden has a lot on his plate beyond bringing the pandemic to an end. In possession of the narrowest of majorities in the House and a ten-seat deficit in the Senate on all business that can be filibustered, the temptation will be to bypass the legislative process and rule by executive order. With a restive Democratic base pushing for action, such a strategy would seem to offer the best hope of notching some quick wins. But ..read more