Podcast appearances and mentions of jon elster

Hello Interactors,The land on which we stand can demand where we politically stand. But what happens when that land shifts, shakes, burns or blows away? Recent Southern U.S. floods displaced thousands. Disasters don't just destroy — they can redraw political lines. With second round of Trumpster fires deepening divides, geography and ideology matter more than ever. As climate crises, economic upheaval, and political struggles intensify, the question isn't just where people live — but what they'll fight for. History shows that when the ground shifts, so does power.SHIFTING LANDS AND LOYALTIESFrom fertile fields to frenzied financial hubs, geography molds the mindset of the masses. Where people live shapes what they fear, fight for, and find familiar. Farmers in the Great Plains worry about wheat yields and water rights, while coastal city dwellers debate rent control and rising tides.But political geography isn't just about climate and crops — it's about power, privilege, and the collective making of place. No space is neutral; as evidenced by the abrupt renaming of an entire gulf. History and the present are filled with examples of territories being carved and controlled, gerrymandered, and gentrified.The recent floods in the South serve as a stark reminder of how geography has historically upended political identity. Especially during Black History Month. The Mississippi River Flood of 1927 was a devastating deluge that displaced thousands of Black sharecroppers, washing away not only homes but also old political loyalties. The Republican-controlled federal government, led by President Calvin Coolidge, took a hands-off approach, refusing to allocate federal aid and instead relying on Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover to coordinate relief efforts through the Red Cross.However, aid distribution was dominated by white Southern landowners, who withheld resources from Black communities. They forced many into quasi-forced labor camps under the guise of relief. Hoover, later touting his role in disaster response to win the 1928 presidency, was ultimately seen by many Black voters as complicit in their mistreatment. This failure accelerated Black voters' gradual shift away from the Republican Party, a realignment that would deepen under FDR's New Deal in the 1930s. The flood was not just a natural disaster — it was a political reckoning. Who received help and who was abandoned shaped party loyalties for generations to come.Yet, history proves that political realignments are rarely one-sided or uniform. While Black voters were shifting toward the Democratic Party, another Southern political identity crisis was brewing. Southern white conservatives — longtime Democrats due to the party's historical ties to segregation — began their own political migration in the mid-to-late 20th century.The Civil Rights Movement and desegregation led many white Southerners to feel alienated from the Democratic Party, pushing them toward what was once unthinkable — the Republican Party. This shift cemented a racialized realignment, with Black voters backing Democrats and Southern white conservatives reshaping the GOP into today's right-wing stronghold.Both political shifts were responses to crisis — one to environmental disaster and racial exclusion, the other to social change and perceived status loss. The fact that geography remained constant but political identities flipped highlights a crucial truth: where people live matters, but how they respond to change depends on identity, history, and power.The political path of any place isn't just shaped by its space — it's who claims the land, who crafts the law, and who casts a crisis as chaos or cause.SORTED, SEPARATED, AND STUCKGeography shapes political identity but doesn't dictate it. Human agency, economics, and psychology influence where people live and how they vote. Over time, self-sorting creates ideological enclaves, deepening polarization instead of fostering realignment.Psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner's Social Identity Theory explains why people align with in-groups and see out-groups as threats, as identity shapes self-esteem and belonging. This leads to in-group favoritism, out-group bias, and polarization, especially when power or resources feel like a zero-sum game.But Optimal Distinctiveness Theory (ODT) adds another layer to this understanding. Developed by Marilynn Brewer, building on Social Identity Theory, ODT proposes that people need to feel a sense of belonging to a group while also maintaining individuality within it. This balancing act between assimilation and uniqueness explains why political identities are not just about partisanship — they encompass culture, lifestyle, and even geography. Individuals self-sort both by community and distinction within their chosen political and social environments.Modern political sorting has made partisanship an all-encompassing identity. It aligns with race, religion, and even consumer habits. This process has been amplified by geography, as people increasingly move to communities where they feel they “fit in” while also distinguishing themselves within their political faction. ODT helps explain why urban progressives might distinguish themselves through niche ideological positions (e.g., Socialists in Brooklyn vs. Tech libertarians in San Francisco), while rural conservatives in swing states may lean into Christian nationalism or libertarianism (e.g. Christian nationalists in rural Pennsylvania vs. Tea Party libertarians in rural Wisconsin).American political power is unevenly distributed. The Senate majority can be won with just 17% of the population, and the Electoral College inflates rural influence. The 10 smallest states hold 3% of the population but 20% of Senate seats and 6% of electoral votes. This imbalance amplifies rural conservative power, giving certain regions outsized political sway.ODT also helps explain why political polarization has deepened over time rather than softened with economic shifts. Historically, political realignments occurred when crisis moments forced cross-cutting alliances — like when poor white and Black farmers joined forces during the Populist Movement of the 1890s to challenge banking and railroad monopolies.However, these coalitions often fell apart due to racial and regional pressures. The Populist Party was ultimately absorbed into the Democratic Party's white Southern wing, leaving Black farmers politically stranded. They still are. Around 1890 Black farmers made up an estimated 14% of farmers in America, now it's fewer than 2% due to racist lending practices, discriminatory federal policies, land dispossession, and systemic barriers to credit and resources.Today, realignments are rare because identity-based partisanship satisfies both belonging and distinctiveness (ODT). Rural conservatives see themselves not just as Republicans but as defenders of a distinct way of life, reinforcing identity through regional pride, gun rights, and religion. Urban liberals, meanwhile, develop sub-identities — progressives, moderates, democratic socialists — within the broader Democratic Party. This illusion of uniformity masks deep internal ideological divides.This sorting shapes where people live, what they watch, and which policies they support. The false consensus effect deepens political silos, as rural conservatives and urban progressives assume their views are widely shared. When elections defy expectations, the result is shock, anger, and further retreat into ideological camps.This explains why U.S. political alignments resist economic and geographic shifts that once drove realignments. Where hardship once built coalitions, modern partisanship acts as a psychological refuge. The question is whether climate change, automation, or mass migration will disrupt these patterns — or cement them. Will today's anxieties redraw party lines, or will political sorting persist, turning geography into a fortress for the familiar, deepening division and partisan pride?FROM REALITY TV TO ALTERNATE REALITYIf geography and identity sketch borders of polarization, then media is the Sharpie darkening the divide. The digital age hardens these political divides, where confirmation bias runs rampant and algorithms push people to one side of the ideological line or the other.In a recent interview, political psychologist and polarization expert Liliana Hall Mason, known for her research on identity-based partisanship and rising affective polarization, recalled a 2012 TiVO study that analyzed TV viewing habits of Democrats and Republicans. The study found that among the top 10 most-watched TV shows for each party, there was zero overlap — Democrats and Republicans were consuming completely separate entertainment. Cultural, and presumably geographical, divergence was already well underway in the 2010s.Republicans favored shows like Duck Dynasty while Democrats gravitated toward satirical cartoons like Family Guy​. While it predates TiVO, I was more of a King of Hill fan, myself. I thought Hank Hill humanized conservative rural life without glorifying extremism while critiquing aspects of modernity without being elitist. Hulu has announced its return sometime this year. But Republicans and Democrats today don't even consume the same reality — they don't watch the same news, follow the same influencers, trust the same institutions, or even shop at the same grocery stores. Will both tune into watch Hank Hill walk the tight rope of a pluralistic suburban American existence?This media-driven fragmentation fuels geographic sorting, as political preferences influence where people choose to live. A person might leave a liberal city for a conservative suburb, or vice versa, based on what media tells them about their “kind of people.” Over time, partisan enclaves harden, reducing exposure to opposing viewpoints and making political shifts less likely.When political identities are so deeply entrenched that losing an election feels like an existential crisis, the risk of political violence rises. Mason's research on rising authoritarian attitudes and partisan animosity shows that political opponents aren't just seen as rivals anymore — they're seen as enemies.January 6th, 2021, wasn't an anomaly — it was the inevitable explosion of years of identity-based sorting and status-threat rhetoric. The rioters who stormed the Capitol weren't just protesting an election loss; they saw themselves as defenders of a nation slipping from their grasp, fueled by a deep-seated fear of demographic change, progressive policies, and shifting cultural power.Studies show that people who feel their group is losing influence are more likely to justify violence, particularly when they perceive existential threats to their way of life. Right-wing media reinforced these fears, political leaders legitimized them, and geographic and social sorting further entrenched them. In an era where partisan identity feels like destiny, and grievance is turned into a rallying cry, the potential for future political violence remains dangerously real.History teaches us that political geography isn't destiny — alignments shift when necessity forces cooperation. As the world faces climate crises, economic instability, and mass migration, new political realignments will emerge. The question is whether they will lead to solidarity or further strife.At the end of the Mason interview, she mentions the role anger and enthusiasm play in political motivations. This concept is part of the Norwegian philosopher and social theorist, Jon Elster, who is best known for his work on rational choice theory, emotions in politics, and historical institutionalism. He has written extensively on how emotions like anger, enthusiasm, resentment, and hope shape political behavior and social movements, especially in historical contexts like the French Revolution and modern populist movements.Anger mobilizes movements, making people willing to fight for change or push back against it. The Populist farmers of the 1890s, the labor activists of apartheid South Africa, and the displaced communities of Partition-era India all channeled rage into resistance. At the same time, enthusiasm — a belief in the possibility of transformation — is what sustains coalitions beyond crisis moments. The formation of the EU, the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, and Brazil's leftist labor movement all survived because hope outlasted grievance.Political movements often begin with anger, but only survive through enthusiasm. This is why some burn out quickly (Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party) while others reshape history (the Civil Rights Movement, Brexit, Trump's populism). Looking ahead, the political geography of the future will be shaped by whichever emotion proves stronger. Will fear and resentment deepen polarization, or will shared enthusiasm for economic justice, environmental sustainability, and democratic resilience create new cross-cutting alliances? The past suggests both are possible. But if history has one lesson, it's that the lines on the map are never as fixed as they seem — and neither are the people who live within them.Bibliography This is a public episode. 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Most history books explain the details of events and provide well-researched context to these events. But history isn't just about what happened, it's often about why. The root of any social change is often complex, human emotions.In his new book, France before 1789, Jon Elster explores the circumstances leading up to the French Revolution and the limits of rational choice theory in explaining collective action. In this episode of unSILOed, Greg and Jon talk about how human emotions like fear, anger, jealousy, and hope can motivate entire populations of people to change history.Jon Elster is a professor at Columbia University and the author of a wide range of books exploring Marxism, Social Science, Choice Theory, Constitutions, and Addiction.Episode Quotes:What can we still learn about Aristotle about emotions?35:04: Many social scientists, even today, talk about emotions as if it were one great category, but emotions do their work by virtue of their specificity, that is, by their cognitive antecedents and action tendencies that are also very specific or different from the different emotions. So if you are angry, you want to make the other person suffer. If you hate, then you want other person to disappear from the face of the earth.11:43: Emotions have a short half-life and various other features that don't actually form a formal model but form a complex of features that we can find in many situations where emotions are at work.Self-interest and rationality are not the same thing10:04: Self-interest and rationality are not the same thing, but people act against their rational self-interest under the influence of emotions with respect to vengeance, revenge is often a pointless, sterile act, but it's undertaken under the impulse of very strong emotions.What's the problem with studying leadership?13:55: The problem about studying leadership is that you can identify good leaders only by their results. There's no way of identifying good leaders ex ante to pick them. That would be good. Of course, if we could, but we can't.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Rebellion FrancaiseGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Columbia UniversityHis Work:Jon Elster on Google ScholarAmerica Before 1787: The Unraveling of a Colonial RegimeFrance before 1789: The Unraveling of an Absolutist RegimeSour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality (Cambridge Philosophy Classics) Reissue EditionSecurities Against Misrule: Juries, Assemblies, ElectionsReason and RationalityUlysses Unbound: Studies in Rationality, Precommitment, and ConstraintsStrong Feelings: Emotion, Addiction, and Human Behavior (Jean Nicod Lectures)Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the EmotionsNuts and Bolts for the Social SciencesExplaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences

Have you ever found yourself surprised by someone's behavior? Perhaps a friend who had always shown you kindness betrayed you by disclosing private information. Maybe old classmates at a high school reunion felt unrecognizable from when you last saw them. Maybe you surprised yourself when you acted in a manner that was out of character.Don't Judge a Book by Its CoverWe often make assumptions about other people, but human judgment is extremely prone to fundamental attribution error, the tendency to ascribe traits to individuals based on behaviors we observe.If someone donates to a food bank, we may assume that person is generous. If someone with a stutter has trouble expressing themselves during a job interview, we might erroneously assume that person is incompetent in other areas. Conversely, excellence in one discipline is not always transferable.Folklore suggests that human behavior should be relatively easy to predict. Norwegian philosopher Jon Elster writes in his book Explaining Social Behavior:People are often assumed to have personality traits (introvert, timid, etc.) as well as virtues (honesty, courage, etc.) or vices (the seven deadly sins, etc.). In folk psychology, these features are assumed to be stable over time and across situations. Proverbs in all languages testify to this assumption. “Who tells one lie will tell a hundred.” “Who lies also steals.” “Who steals an egg will steal an ox.” “Who keeps faith in small matters, does so in large ones.” “Who is caught red-handed once will always be distrusted.” If folk psychology is right, predicting and explaining behavior should be easy.This assumption of stable character traits also underlies the aphorism, “Once a cheater, always a cheater.” But singular actions cannot be used to determine character. Personality is an evolving, fluid entity, not a concrete constant. If we develop expectations of people based solely on what we observe, we are working with limited information and setting ourselves up for disappointment.Turn, Turn, TurnIf past behavior isn't a good predictor, then what is? Freakonomics by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt might provide a possible answer. The central tenet of the book is that if you understand someone's incentives, you can predict their behavior.We can see this playing out on the world stage. Why would a large democracy like India refuse to take a stand against the atrocities committed in Ukraine? For the very same reason that China is maintaining its diplomacy.India's allegiance with Russia stems back to the 1950s when the Soviet Union supported Indian sovereignty over the disputed territory of Kashmir. China's leader seeks a future in which Taiwan is reunited with the motherland and would expect Russia's support should that goal be accomplished by means of military invasion. Neither country wants to anger an ally, so both are maintaining silence out of convenience.The same principle of incentivization applies to individuals, as personality traits are highly context-dependent. Your personality around your boss on a Monday morning is likely different than your behavior on a Friday night spent with your close friends. Elster explains, “Behavior is often no more stable than the situations that shape it.”He describes a social psychology experiment in which theology students were asked to prepare for a brief presentation in a nearby building. Half the group was told to discuss the Good Samaritan parable while the other half was assigned a neutral topic. Each group was further subdivided into two more where half believed they were late and half were told they had plenty of time.On their way to the other building, subjects came upon a man in apparent distress. Among students who believed they were late, only 10 percent offered assistance, but in the other group, 63 percent tried to help. In other words, preparing a talk about the Good Samaritan did not make students more likely to behave like one.All the students involved in the experiment considered themselves good people, but the desire to avoid the judgment of a crowd seemed to override goodwill instincts. We need to understand character as the result of specific interactions between people and situations. We should pay attention to the interplay between the situation, incentives, and the person instead of ascribing broad character traits.Let me share a personal example. The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator discriminates between judging and perceiving personalities. As a scientist, I frequently evaluate the quality of evidence by making judgments about reproducibility, methods, and study design. But around people, I tend to adopt the role of a wallflower or “transparent eyeball” (to borrow from Emerson), inconspicuously making observations devoid of any attempt to parse the data or draw conclusions.MetamorphosisWhile personality certainly changes with situations, it also changes considerably across your lifespan. The longest-running personality study of all time, published in 2016 in the journal Psychology and Aging, found that personality undergoes profound transformations between the ages of 14 and 77.The study began in 1950 with the recruitment of 1200 teenagers in Scotland, and teachers were asked to fill out surveys to assess their students on six distinct personality traits: self-confidence, perseverance, conscientiousness, emotional stability, originality, and desire to excel.Researchers then reduced these six characteristics into a single dimension, which they termed dependability. Six decades later, the participants evaluated themselves using the same personality inventory and also nominated a close friend or family member to do the same. Researchers found no significant stability of any of the measured characteristics over the 63-year period.Several confounding variables limit the utility of this study. The people answering the questions differed between the two time points. Teachers tasked with evaluating their students may have been prone to fundamental attribution error, and individuals asked to evaluate themselves were likely subject to the reference-group effect, the tendency to measure ourselves against our peers.An outgoing introvert who is more sociable than his other introverted friends might describe himself as an extrovert, but his judgment is relative to his circle rather than an objective measure. While the 2016 study had several limitations, one noteworthy trend emerges across studies: “The longer the interval between two assessments of personality, the weaker the relationship between the two tends to be.”The idea that you can become a completely different person over the course of your life could be comforting or frightening depending on your perspective. But maybe we're missing the point. Attempts to assign personality traits are restrictive in some ways. We're all a lot of things, walking contradictions, messy, imperfect, beautiful amalgamations. Maybe Sara Bareilles captured it best in her song from the musical Waitress:She's imperfect but she triesShe is good but she liesShe is hard on herselfShe is broken and won't ask for helpShe is messy but she's kindShe is lonely most of the timeShe is all of this mixed upAnd baked in a beautiful pieShe is gone but she used to be mineThanks for reading. Until next week!

We continue our social history with a look at the Psychology of Peasants and Nobles, with Jon Elster as our guide.For nobles we track some of the thornier problems of noble identity, the cult of ancestry, its implications for personal behavior and its sometimes self destructive nature.   We also have a lighter look at the obsession over wit and the bon mot.   "The best lands require manure."  And the relevance of Amadis of Gaul.For peasants we are mainly looking at the difficulties of life and the sources of the 10,000 documented incidents of peasant violence.  

In Edmund's farewell episode, we discuss the September Group, including G.A. Cohen, Jon Elster, and Philippe Van Parijs. We discuss theories of history, the influence of Darwinian evolution on Marx, the differences between analytic and continental political theory, and the possibility of bridging that divide. Edmund and Benjamin will do one last Patron Q&A episode, and then Political Theory 101 will continue with a new student co-host.

“Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster.” It took a moment of epiphany on a Brooklyn park bench, and becoming a father, for my guest today, recovering productivity hacker and Guardian journalist Oliver Burkeman, to see the truth. We're all going to die. And soon: in fact, after about four thousand weeks. That's the animating idea of his new book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. But facing our finitude frees us to give up on the myth of a stress-free future, embrace the discomfort of failure, focus on the present, and make more thoughtful trade-offs. Maybe even start to allow time to use us, rather than the other way round. We talk about parenting, the role of religion, to-do lists, the regulation of time by states and churches, the pleasures of hiking, the Northern Lights, the sabbath, and much more. Oliver Burkeman Oliver Burkeman is a writer and recovering productivity hacker. His new book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, is about making the most of our radically finite lives in a world of impossible demands, relentless distraction and political insanity (and 'productivity techniques' that mainly just make everyone feel busier). More Burkeman  Oliver is also author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking (2012) and Help! How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done (2011), a collection of his Guardian columns. Follow Oliver on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/oliverburkeman. Sign up for his twice-weekly newsletter, The Imperfectionist, and check out his website here: https://www.oliverburkeman.com/ Also Mentioned  See Krista Tippett's project, On Being I mentioned Jon Elster's work on “willing what cannot be willed”, this appears in his chapter on “Sour Grapes”, available here.  Oliver referred to Alison Gopnik's book The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children We mentioned Time and Despondency: Regaining the Present in Faith and Life by Nicole Roccas Oliver referred to the book Personal Kanban by Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry We discussed research on vacations in Sweden, for more see Terry Hartig's work on “restorative environments” The Dialogues Team  Creator: Richard Reeves Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)

Bjørnsons Magnhild, Jon Elster om Holbergprisen, Dagbladets nye kritikerretningslinjer og Lawrence Ferlinghettis gamle ubåtjager. I Hagesalongen diskuterer Erlend Liisberg og Erik Bjerck Hagen tidens litteraturdebatter, aktuelle bøker og andre hendelser i landets litterære liv. Månedens gjest er Olaug Nilssen.

La Fool challenges the definition of patriot, touches on the Trump administration's “tactical unit” in U.S. cities, and looks at how past presidents have set the stage for an Irrational Actor. Plus we look at the idea that Trump is a malignant narcissist as referenced in a recent Chauncey DeVega podcast.--Additional Notes, Corrections, and Context for this Episode--La Fool suggested Pelosi could be impeached for embezzlement: It would have been more accurate to say, instead of embezzlement, "fishy business dealings in San Francisco in the mid-2000's" which could lead to charges including corruption and insider trading.We use the term Irrational Actor as associated with Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics and further discussed by Jon Elster, J.J. Mearsheimer, Alen Shadunts, and others.--The Podcast We Reference--Chauncey DeVega's The Truth Report, Ep. 54: Dr. John Gartner Warns That Donald Trump is Using the Pandemic as a Biological Weapon Against the American Peoplehttps://thetruthreportwithchaunceydevega.libsyn.com/ep-54-dr-john-gartner-warns-that-donald-trump-is-using-the-pandemic-as-a-biological-weapon-against-the-american-people"I do solemnly affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely;" Get 17 Minutes sound bites and episode notes on Facebook.  

In this podcast you will learn - 1. How to choose a career in social sciences? 2. What might politics without politicians look like 3. Practical ways to make democracy more inclusiveHélène Landemore is Associate Professor of Political Science, with Tenure. Her research and teaching interests include democratic theory, political epistemology, theories of justice, the philosophy of social sciences (particularly economics), constitutional processes and theories, and workplace democracy.Her first book (in French) Hume. Probabilité et Choix Raisonnable (PUF: 2004) was a philosophical investigation of David Hume’s theory of decision-making. Her second book (in English) Democratic Reason won the Montreal Manuscript Workshop Award in 2011; the Elaine and David Spitz Prize in 2015; and the 2018 APSA “Ideas, Knowledge, and Politics” section book award. Hélène’s third book–Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the 21st Century (under contract with Princeton University Press)–develops a new paradigm of democracy in which the exercise of power is as little gated as possible, even as it depends on representative structures to make it possible. In this version of popular rule, power is equally open to all, as opposed to just those who happen to stand out in the eyes of others (as in electoral democracies). The book centrally defends the use of non-electoral yet democratic forms of representation, including “lottocratic,” “self-selected,” and “liquid” representation.Hélène is also co-editor with Jon Elster of Collective Wisdom: Principles and Mechanisms (Cambridge University Press 2012), and is currently working on a new edited volume project on Digital Technology and Democratic Theory, together with Rob Reich and Lucy Bernholz at Stanford.

Hélène Landemore is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University. Her research and teaching interests include democratic theory, political epistemology, theories of justice, the philosophy of social sciences (particularly economics), constitutional processes and theories, and workplace democracy. Her first book (in French) Hume. Probabilité et Choix Raisonnable (PUF: 2004) was a philosophical investigation of David Hume’s theory of decision-making. Her second book (in English) Democratic Reason won the Montreal Manuscript Workshop Award in 2011; the Elaine and David Spitz Prize in 2015; and the 2018 APSA “Ideas, Knowledge, and Politics” section book award. Hélène’s third book–Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the 21st Century (under contract with Princeton University Press)–develops a new paradigm of democracy in which the exercise of power is as little gated as possible, even as it depends on representative structures to make it possible. In this version of popular rule, power is equally open to all, as opposed to just those who happen to stand out in the eyes of others (as in electoral democracies). The book centrally defends the use of non-electoral yet democratic forms of representation, including “lottocratic,” “self-selected,” and “liquid” representation. Hélène is also co-editor with Jon Elster of Collective Wisdom: Principles and Mechanisms (Cambridge University Press 2012), and is currently working on a new edited volume project on Digital Technology and Democratic Theory, together with Rob Reich and Lucy Bernholz at Stanford. Her articles have been published in, among others, Journal of Political Philosophy; Political Theory; Politics, Philosophy, and Economics; Political Psychology; Social Epistemology; Synthese; the Swiss Review of Political Science: and the Journal of Politics. Her research has been featured in the New York Times, the Boston Review, Slate, and L’Humanité. Before joining Yale, Hélène lectured at Brown University and MIT. She is also an alumna from the Sorbonne, the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Ulm), and Sciences-Po in Paris. In the past Hélène has taught various courses, including “Introduction to Political Philosophy,” “Justice in Western Thought,” “Directed Studies,” “Beyond Representative Government,” “Deliberative Democracy and Beyond,” “Political Epistemology,” and “Political Authority.” In 2014 she won a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for her interdisciplinary lecture course “How Do We Choose, and Choose Well.” To learn more about liquid democracy visit http://liquid.us

What can social scientists tell us about the world? How do psychology and history enrich economics? In this episode of the Governance Podcast, Jon Elster sits down with Mark Pennington to discuss the essential tasks and limitations of social science. Subscribe on iTunes and Spotify Subscribe to the Governance Podcast on iTunes and Spotify today and get all our latest episodes directly in your pocket. Follow Us For more information about our upcoming podcasts and events, follow us on facebook or twitter (@csgskcl). The Guest Jon Elster is the Robert K. Merton Professor of the Social Sciences at Columbia University. Before coming to Columbia, he taught in Paris, Oslo and Chicago. His publications include Ulysses and the Sirens (1979), Sour Grapes (1983), Making Sense of Marx (1985), The Cement of Society (1989), Solomonic Judgements (1989), Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences (1989), Local Justice (1992) and Political Psychology (1993). His research interests include the theory of rational choice, the theory of distributive justice and the history of social thought (Marx and Tocqueville). He is currently working on a comparative study of constitution-making processes from the Federal Convention to the present and on a study of retroactive justice in countries that have recently emerged from authoritarian or totalitarian rule. Research interests include Theory of Rational Choice and the Theory of Distributive Justice. Skip Ahead 0:57: You're giving a talk at our Centre called ‘Emotions in History.' Can you explain the argument? 3:54: A lot of your work in the past has been engaged with rational choice models or economic models applied to various social phenomena in one form or another. You're now mentioning the role of psychology. What role should psychology play in relation to the kind of rationality-oriented work you've done in the past? 6:04: So you're saying that common sense rationality can play a role in understanding political institutions or economic institutions, or individual behaviour within them? 7:38: You say that about some of the Chicago-school understandings of institutions which imply that the institutions that are chosen are efficient in some sense—because if they weren't, rational agents would change them. Then it's hard to account for any sort of institutional change because equilibrium is built into the model. 8:50: If we don't explain the origin of institutions through a rational choice model, or at least if that model has quite serious limitations, is there any way in which a model that focuses on the psychological dimension or the emotional dimension provides a better explanation? 10:38: Would your view of institutions be more along the kind of model that recognizes that institutions are often the products of accidents that arise from conjunctions of all kinds of eventualities that really don't necessarily have more universal implications? 11:32: What can we say—or can we say anything—about whether certain kinds of institutions have beneficial properties relative to other kinds of institutions? 13:54: If we go back to this role of emotion: if emotion is an important factor in shaping institutions, the way they're formed and perhaps even the way they persist, that strikes me to imply that… people, because of emotion, create certain institutional structures that could be inefficient or malfunction in various ways… 16:49: What I was wondering was whether you were working with a model where emotional choice influences the way in which institutions are originally created, but then within that set of rules, is that the level at which a more rational choice type model kicks in? Or is it emotions all the way down? 18:26: I want to come to some of what you've written on the role of prediction within social science… but what I take from what you've just said there about the importance of specific cases and not generalizing too much is that you would be against the idea that even if we recognize the role of emotions in forming institutions, we can have a notion of institutional design to deal with the effects of emotional decision making … 21:52: Would it be fair to say that we might not know necessarily what are good decisions – certainly not in some optimizing sense, but can we say about what might be bad decisions? 23:23: So the next question I wanted to ask you is, given the role of indeterminacy, can you say a bit more about what you think are the excessive ambitions of contemporary social science? This is a theme that you've developed in your recent work: a lot of social science is about prediction… much of what you're saying is pushing back against that. 26:50: If prediction is limited, can we nevertheless have a model of social science which is based on understanding in very context-specific circumstances? 28:38: I think that one of the interesting things to think about regarding uncertainty is that there are different views within political economy about this. As I understand, Keynes' view was that uncertainty was very much with us and that the role of statecraft is to manage that uncertainty in a creative way… 30:25: Can we speak a little more about the importance of history? One of the pieces that some of our students read in one of our courses on political economy has some criticisms that you made of the analytic narrative model in political economy—and that's often an attempt to use rational choice type models to understand particular historical episodes. And the argument you made there, as I understand it, is that they are sort of retrofit models. People are picking the history to fit the rational choice type explanation. 34:46: So that sounds very much to be part of what I take of what you're saying here, which is that there needs to be a lot more humility from various analysts about what they claim for their particular models, given the nature of the subject matter. 36:28: One of the authors we're studying at our research centre is Elinor Ostrom and her account of common pool resource management. She is famous for challenging some of the implications that came from one simple model of rational choice: the idea that there is a commons problem—that whenever you don't have ownership rights of some kind, you have a tragedy of the commons. 40:23: Earlier, you were reflecting on areas where you think you've been wrong over what's been a very distinguished career… 42:41: One of the areas where you've applied this notion is giving micro-foundations to Marxist-style explanations. You're one of the influencers behind the analytical Marxist movement. Did that turn out to be a fruitful research paradigm or not? 43:48: In what sense does the early part of Marx remain with us? What's the residual power of the insight? 46:28: Are there any other areas you'd like to talk about where you think what you were writing about in the past wasn't right? 47:40: What are you working on at the moment?

En este seminario, Martha Sañudo analiza el libro “El desinterés. Tratado critico del hombre económico” de Jon Elster. En este libro se aborda la pregunta filosófica de si el hombre es genuinamente desinteresado o si se interesa por el otro en base a sus beneficios. Además analiza las razones por las que aparentemente el hombre está desinteresado.

En esta sesión el investigador, Oscar Contreras, pretende analizar los cuatro conceptos pilares del pensamiento de Jon Elster para las ciencias sociales: implicación causal, individualismo metodológico, decisión racional y mecanismos.

En esta primera sesión del seminario, José Carlos Vázquez revisa la formación intelectual de Jon Elster, sus tendencias políticas, estudios y finaliza haciendo una revisión de los libros relevantes del filósofo noruego.

En esta conferencia magistral, Jon Elster aborda el tema del desinterés, que explora en su obra más reciente, relacionándolo con la teoría de la decisión racional. Explica también su forma de entender los logros y límites de la teoría de opción racional, las relaciones entre interés, razón y pasión, las tres formas del desinterés y finalmente da una explicación filosófica del egoísmo y el egocentrismo.

Revista Campus Cultural / Núm. 30 Noviembre 1, 2012 En portada: Homenaje a Carlos Fuentes