New article in History of Political Thought

My most recent article, "Melchizedek as Exemplar for Kingship in Twelfth-Century Political Thought", is now published in the latest issue of History of Political Thought.  Following is the abstract:

This article examines the use of Melchizedek as an exemplar for kingship in the twelfth century, considering interpretations offered in the Norman Anonymous, Bernard of Clairvaux’s de Consideratione and John of Salisbury’s Policraticus. While the Norman Anonymous provides a Christological and royalist reading of Melchizedek’s roles as king and priest, de Consideratione offers a more nuanced explanation of papal power without significant regard for disputes of secular and ecclesiastical liberties. The Policraticus, on the other hand, advances a theory of divinely elected, non-hereditary kingship on the basis of Melchizedek’s being ‘without genealogy’. The interpretation of the Policraticus stands in tension with a prominent rabbinic teaching that Melchizedek is identical to Shem, the son of Noah, and so possessive of a lineage that raises interesting (though not insurmountable) challenges for the non-hereditary kingship theory advanced in the Policraticus.

Please email me if I can help you by sending a PDF of the article.



Also published in this issue is an article by Vasileios Syros, "Linguistic Contextualism and Medieval Political Thought: Quentin Skinner on Marsilius of Padua".  I wrote my Melchizedek article for a seminar with Prof. Syros in 2009, and at the time Prof. Syros was working on this article.  I had the opportunity to read a draft and offer some thoughts on it, and he's kindly acknowledged me in the published version.

1920-21 Depression Article is on Online First at the Review of Austrian Economics!

You can find it here. It's gated, but if you subscribe you can read it. I'm not sure how long it takes articles to migrate from "Online First" to the journal itself. Yay! Working with the Review of Austrian Economics has been a very good experience - I'm grateful to Steve Horwitz for encouraging me to submit here.

EJW Testimonial Puzzle

My reply to Buturovic and Klein is coming out any day now at Econ Journal Watch, so I've been checking the website fairly regularly in anticipation of the new issue. One thing they have on the right side of the screen is a series of what they call "testimonials". Basically readers gushing about Dan Klein and EJW. This one stood out as a little odd to me:

"David Hume once said “Truth springs from argument among friends.” For too long economics has been without serious challenge from without and within. Econ Journal Watch is important because it provides a mechanism for open and honest debate. Without serious debate, serious science is simply not possible."

— David C. Rose, Professor and Chair, Department of Economics, University of Missouri-St. Louis

Really? Are we thinking of the same discipline? I think of economics as being notoriously argumentative. One thing it does not suffer from is a lack of introspection (or external critique for that matter). I think EJW represents an attempt to elevate critiques that other economists don't see as particularly in need of raising - and that is all well and good. But to say that "for too long economics has been without serious challenge from without and within" seems quite divorced from the reality of the discipline.

I'm still chewing on what I think of EJW. It has some decent points to make, but then I read articles like Buturovic and Klein and it strikes me that EJW is not at the cutting edge of good economics at all. I don't think there's any need to sugar coat it - I don't think Buturovic and Klein could have been accepted to any journal that the author himself wasn't an editor for. Also in that issue there was an article with some pretty base, easily addressed, and quite thinly veiled Krugman bashing like what you'd read on any number of libertarian blogs.

There are good articles too, though, which makes thinking about it tough. There are some fantastic methodological critiques. There are good retrospectives on things like the euro. I'm still forming my opinion on it - I would not provide the gushing testimonials that some people do. But this one struck me as particularly odd-ball.