Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits [?]

Ian Bremmer: “It's important to remember that the links between politics and economics can create a vicious circle. Thus it is crucial for a political scientist to have experience in both the private and public sectors. Some political actions may not directly affect a country's stability, but they can shift market sentiment, causing severe economic dislocations … which in turn can create political instability.”

Ian Bremmer: “There are always a lot of economists in the meetings but never a fellow political scientist. Political scientists don't work at banks—which is a problem. As political issues become more important for the markets, analysts at banks are asked all sorts of questions they don't have the ability to answer. And if you're getting paid to answer questions—as analysts at banks are—you never want to be in the position of saying you don't know. ¶ Whenever I'm speaking with a group of investors, I love to start with a disclaimer about my background. If they ask me where the dollar should be pegged against the euro, I say I don't know and I won't tell them. I'm not an economist. On the other hand, if they ask a global economist on Wall Street the impact of the upcoming Iraqi elections on stability in the Middle East, the economist doesn't know ... but will tell them. ”

Which is too bad, really, because sometimes "I don't know" is a perfectly good (and truthful—and useful!) answer.

Ian Bremmer: “One of our clients, a banker based in Frankfurt, didn't buy my take. He figured that in spite of all indications to the contrary, the absence of attacks was because Bin Laden had been killed, a fact that President Bush is unwilling to disclose until just before November elections, when it would be of maximum political benefit to him. I tried reasoning with him for a while, to no avail. Then I suggested that Mercury had also been in retrograde and that this was likely disrupting al-Qaida communications on the ground. Evidently astrology isn't as big in Germany.”

Third of five in a series.

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.