This was one of the most interesting titles I’ve seen on a LW post in a while. I look forward to reading further posts in the series.
Were any conclusions unsupported?
There were a lot of places where I wondered about the process which produced some model. For instance:
Mayoral candidates are often selected in an internal tribal election after which all tribe members vote for the candidate, or candidates may negotiate an alliance of tribes for the election. In turn, the tribal supporters expect family members will receive positions in the municipality. As a result, personnel costs dominate municipal budgets, averaging 60-65% of their budgets to the detriment of capital costs...
Did this model come from talking to people and asking how government processes work? If so, how many people, how were they sampled, who collected these reports, how much interpretation/simplification of the narrative went into it? Or, if the model is coming from some data, how much data and where did it come from—e.g. if mayoral candidates are “often” selected in an internal tribe election after which “all” tribe members vote for the candidate, what kind of numbers are those really, and where do those numbers come from? Or when you say “personnel costs average 60-65% of budgets”, what cities are we talking about, and during what time period?
In short: you’ve said what we think we know, but I’m unsure how we think we know it.
This doesn’t necessarily need to be a book-length description of the methodology of every cited study, but at least I’d like to know things like “<people> collected election data on <N> cities in Jordan and found <numbers>, which they interpreted to mean <...>” or “<people> surveyed <N> citizens in the city of <blah> in a free-form fashion to understand how the processes of government are understood locally; the following model is their summary...”. I’m not looking for rigorous statistics or anything, just a qualitative idea of where the information came from. For instance, the sentence “Mayors complain that they cannot accomplish objectives due to demands from their councils to hire relatives [Janine Clark]” is perfect—it tells me exactly where the information came from.
I’m greatfull for your helpful comments. I will surely add more citations (I have to do that anyway for the academics).
I need you to tell me if the structure of the argument works rhetorically. My struggle is in arranging the order of points, paragraphs and sentences such that the reader can connect each of them to my broader thesis. Historically, I tend to throw knowledge at the reader. The reader is left thinking “why did I learn this fact? how do they fit together? what was the point again”. If you assume I have a good citation for each sentence, would you actually understand the conclusion?
This was one of the most interesting titles I’ve seen on a LW post in a while. I look forward to reading further posts in the series.
There were a lot of places where I wondered about the process which produced some model. For instance:
Did this model come from talking to people and asking how government processes work? If so, how many people, how were they sampled, who collected these reports, how much interpretation/simplification of the narrative went into it? Or, if the model is coming from some data, how much data and where did it come from—e.g. if mayoral candidates are “often” selected in an internal tribe election after which “all” tribe members vote for the candidate, what kind of numbers are those really, and where do those numbers come from? Or when you say “personnel costs average 60-65% of budgets”, what cities are we talking about, and during what time period?
In short: you’ve said what we think we know, but I’m unsure how we think we know it.
This doesn’t necessarily need to be a book-length description of the methodology of every cited study, but at least I’d like to know things like “<people> collected election data on <N> cities in Jordan and found <numbers>, which they interpreted to mean <...>” or “<people> surveyed <N> citizens in the city of <blah> in a free-form fashion to understand how the processes of government are understood locally; the following model is their summary...”. I’m not looking for rigorous statistics or anything, just a qualitative idea of where the information came from. For instance, the sentence “Mayors complain that they cannot accomplish objectives due to demands from their councils to hire relatives [Janine Clark]” is perfect—it tells me exactly where the information came from.
I’m greatfull for your helpful comments. I will surely add more citations (I have to do that anyway for the academics).
I need you to tell me if the structure of the argument works rhetorically. My struggle is in arranging the order of points, paragraphs and sentences such that the reader can connect each of them to my broader thesis. Historically, I tend to throw knowledge at the reader. The reader is left thinking “why did I learn this fact? how do they fit together? what was the point again”. If you assume I have a good citation for each sentence, would you actually understand the conclusion?
I think you’re fine on that front, or at least plenty good enough for me.