The Duck of Minerva

Phil Arena

I am an assistant professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. I mostly write here about "rational choice" and IR theory. I also maintain my own blog, fparena.blogspot.com.

Recent Posts

Win Phil’s Money

by Phil Arena | 7 September, 2013 |

My views on the role of assumptions are no secret.  Nor are they without detractors.  In hopes of advancing the debate, I invite anyone who disagrees with me to enrich themselves while proving me wrong. Pick any scholarly paper you have written, published or not.  If I cannot identify three patently false or fundamentally unfalsifiable assumptions in the paper, as judged by a mutually agreed upon third party, I will pay you $1000.  If I can, I ask only that you admit publicly that your view about the role of assumptions is untenable.  You won't owe me any money. I'm completely serious about...

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Does it Pay to Divide and Conquer?

by Phil Arena | 4 September, 2013 |

The intuition behind the maxim divide et impera is clear.  If they're busy fighting each other, they not fighting you.  And that's obviously in your interest (assuming, that is, you are some sort of occupier or metropole seeking to extract rents from a local population.)  Devious and underhanded?  Sure.  Morally repugnant?  If you're inclined to view politics through such a lens.  But effective?  Self-evidently. Or so you might think. Brenton Kenkel, a University of Rochester doctoral student currently on fellowship at Princeton, argues otherwise in this fascinating working paper. To...

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Are Weapons Inspections about Information or Inconvenience?

Are Weapons Inspections about Information or Inconvenience?

by Phil Arena | 20 August, 2013 | ,

Editor's note: this is a guest post by William Spaniel, a doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester.  See this previous Duck post describing some of his work, and this post at his own blog providing more information about the research discussed here. Spurred by a new International Organization article by Alexandre Debs and Nuno Monteiro (DM), the Duck of Minerva has recently hosted a debate on the cause of the Iraq War (see here, here, and here). To sum, DM argue that the United States’ imperfect knowledge of Iraq’s weapons programs led to a rational war. In contrast, speaking...

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Bayes, Stereotyping, and Rare Events

by Phil Arena | 26 July, 2013 |

Sadly, many people do not realize that even if the majority of those who engage in behavior X belong to category Y, that does not mean that the majority of people in category Y engage in X.  This point is often made, rightly, with respect to race and violent crime and religion and terror.  But most treatments I've seen either imply that anyone who doesn't understand is a moron, or manage to scare away the target audience by throwing in a pile of math without explaining it.  In this post, I'll try to actually explain why we can't conclude that most members of Y are prone to acts of X even if...

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Should We Keep Hidden the Way People Behave When their Actions are Hidden?

by Phil Arena | 5 July, 2013 |

In his most recent post, PTJ argues that "things like Freakonomics are basically corrosive and should be opposed whenever practicable".  While he repeats in that post (and the comments section) a number of dubious claims about what sorts of behavior are possible within a decision-theoretic framework, I think we're past the point in the conversation where it is useful to argue about the possibility of writing down a decision-theoretic model whose actors are capable of moral behavior and belonging to communities.1 In this post, I'd like to discuss the moral argument PTJ makes against...

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Rational Choice and Selfishness

by Phil Arena | 19 June, 2013 |

In his latest post, PTJ moves us past the worst critiques of "rational choice theory" and focuses on a few more nuanced concerns.1  I'm glad to see the conversation progressing, and this type of exchange is one of the things I love most about academic blogging.  However, I find some of PTJ's arguments problematic. I argued last week that most criticisms of "rational choice" amount to attempts to persuade graduate students not to learn a language because its speakers don't often discuss the right topics.  That's worrisome, because insofar as concerns about the narrow focus of those who speak...

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What Exactly is Rational Choice?

by Phil Arena | 12 June, 2013 |

I sometimes surprise people when I say that I have no idea what rational choice is.1  How can a game theorist say such a thing?  Especially one who spends so much time on the internet arguing about rational choice? Well, of course I have some idea what it is.  The point is that there is no coherent body of work which possesses the properties so frequently attributed to "rational choice." Approximately 99% of all statements I've seen made about rational choice are demonstrably false.  About half assert that rational choice leaves no room for things I've seen incorporated into...

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Bargaining, Capabilities, and Crisis Outcomes

by Phil Arena | 28 March, 2013 |

I have enjoyed the recent exchange between Kroenig and Sechser & Fuhrmann (see here, here, and here).  One interesting point that came up regards the role of conventional military capabilities in determining crisis outcomes.  Kroenig says that the MCT data S&F analyze must be flawed because their results indicate that conventional military capabilities don't matter whereas we have good reason to believe that the strong do what they will while the weak suffer what they must.  S&F reply that there's nothing odd about their non-finding because this is precisely what bargaining...

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In Defense of Homo Economicus

by Phil Arena | 14 March, 2013 |

In this post, I seek not to defend the actions or priorities of a non-existent misanthropic being, but to defend the practice of analyzing models that assume human behavior mirrors that of Homo Economicus.  (I hope you'll forgive me for choosing a slightly misleading title in order to preserve space.) It's easy to criticize those who assume that human beings are ultra-materialistic, narrowly self-interested, willing to collect all available information (and perhaps in possession of information that isn't available), and immune to mistakes.  I have never met such a creature and hope that I...

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Rodrik’s Paradox is No Paradox

by Phil Arena | 4 March, 2013 |

Last month, Dani Rodrik wrote a piece for Project Syndicate that went all kinds of viral.  In it, he explains why he no longer views himself as a political economist.  The upshot: because if he believed the stuff he used to believe, he'd have to accept that there's not much room for improving the world through op-eds, and that's not something he's prepared to accept. Consider this passage: But there was a deep paradox in all of this. The more we claimed to be explaining, the less room was left for improving matters. If politicians’ behavior is determined by the vested interests to which they...

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