Political Risk
Ian Bremmer of Eurasia Group is writing a weeklong diary about what it's like to be a political scientist in a political risk consulting firm: “A political scientist in the private sector is bound to make some mistakes. As the company grew, we made more than our share, some of them pretty funny: Doing the corporate books in Microsoft Word, with a calculator; individually faxing 3,000 invitations to an event—two of us, until about 4 in the morning. I almost cried when I learned there was an automated program that faxed for you.”
I'll be most interested in this series, of course, having studied political science in college. Particluarly interesting, in Tuesday's entry, is the notion that an outsider's view can be valuable as well: “Let's say you're looking for a specialist on China. Most of the people that know China really well come from China. They have spent their lives focusing on this country, speak the language fluently, are intimately familiar with the situation on the ground. Needless to say, they tend to be pretty passionate about their area of interest—which usually means they either strongly support the government or they are fiercely opposed to it.”
The series, so far, has focussed on those with their PhD's in the field. I don't even have interest in taking a masters in political science much less a PhD, but that's not to say that any of the entries for the next few days would change my mind on the matter. It may at least spur me to read a book on political risk sometime this year, to get a sense for the academic treatment of the subject. I do have plans to make my weblog on China a little more academic in nature, since most of the Sinobloggers focus on current events without really looking at the country's history or broader themes associated with it.
