What kinds of features would a legislative or pseudo-legislative situation need to have before would we expect the emergence of parties (or pseudo-parties)? The organization of political parties is usually argued to be a response to the collective action problem inside legislatures (Aldrich 1995) or outside legislatures (Cox and McCubbins 1997). But is the mere presence of one or both of these problems enough to trigger the development of organizations that look like parties? I’m thinking particularly of a setting that many of us are probably familiar with – faculty governance. Different colleges and universities have different institutions, but are there any that have given rise to faculty party organizations? Would such a development be possible, and would it improve efficiency?
So You’re on the Job Market, Part I: Preparation (Repost)
Editor’s Note: This is a reposting of a post I wrote up a couple of years ago. Given that we’re at the beginning of April, it seemed like it would be useful to rebroadcast potentially useful information for folks starting to think about the market in the fall. This is the first of three posts … Read more