A pair of high-powered scholars are pioneering the use of a blog for structured commentary and dialogue on current issues in public policy – the Becker-Posner Blog. I think their approach offers a great model for policy-focused groups who want to play an important role in discussions of current policy issues.

I find this eight month-old blog interesting for:
-Who are the bloggers: noted scholars who already have many other outlets to write, speak, teach, and make their views heard.
-What they are writing: detailed, thought-provoking analyses of contemporary policy, legal, and economic issues.
-How they are using the blog: for a structured weekly commentary on specific issues.
-And, the public engagement they have enabled: a sizeable audience of readers and commenters who respond to Becker and Posner – but also actively debate with each other.

Richard Posner is a Judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and professor of Law at the University of Chicago. He’s the author of books and numerous articles on a range of issues, including antitrust, intellectual property, and current issues like national security, impeachment, and contested elections. He’s also a leading thinker and writer in the field of “law and economics.” (bio)

Gary Becker is a Nobel-prize winning economist best known for his work on “nonmarket economics” – covering topics like the structure of families, discrimination against minorities, crime and punishment, the development and accumulation of human capital, and others. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1992. He is currently a Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He wrote a regular column for Newsweek for 12 years. (bio)

Posner got a taste of blogging when he guest blogged in August 2004 for Lawrence Lessig. Posner wrote about issues as diverse as intellectual property, terrorism and global warming, and on the challenge of managing uncertainty across these issues.

Becker and Posner started their blog in December 2004 with the introduction:

Blogging is a major new social, political, and economic phenomenon. It is a fresh and striking exemplification of Friedrich Hayek’s thesis that knowledge is widely distributed among people and that the challenge to society is to create mechanisms for pooling that knowledge.

We have decided to start a blog that will explore current issues of economics, law, and policy in a dialogic format.

Posner was generous enough to answer a few of my questions about their blog, including how they got started:

(Starting the blog) was professor Becker's idea. He had been writing a monthly column for Business Week for 18 years and thought that a blog might be a better way of communicating his ideas. I felt and feel similarly.

Their blogging pattern is to alternate posting a weekly commentary on a specific policy issue – often around 1500 words in length, detailed and thought provoking pieces. The partner typically adds a shorter reflection on the commentary.

Some examples:

Grokster and the Scope of Judicial Power-BECKER

I basically do not trust the ability of judges, even those with the best of intentions and competence, to decide the economic future of an industry.

The Sexual Revolution – POSNER

To the extent that as a result of economic and technological change, sex ceases to be considered either dangerous or important, we can expect it to become a morally indifferent activity, as eating has mainly become (though not for orthodox Jews and Muslims).

The Failure of the War on Drugs-BECKER

Our study suggests that legalization of drugs combined with an excise tax on consumption would be a far cheaper and more effective way to reduce drug use. Instead of a war, one could have, for example, a 200% tax on the legal use of drugs by all adults-consumption by say persons under age 18 would still be illegal.

There would be no destruction of poor neighborhoods- so no material for “the Wire” HBO series, or the movie “Traffic”- no corruption of Afghani or Columbian governments, and no large scale imprisonment of African-American and other drug suppliers.

Wal-Mart and Employee Health Insurance--Posner

It is entirely rational for a subset of employees, especially low-income employees, to prefer not to be covered by their employer's group health insurance policy even if they have no other health insurance.

Social Security--Posner Response to Comments

Some of these excellent comments put me in mind of the following crude but suggestive way of stating the difference between liberals and conservatives: liberals think that the average person is good but dumb, conservatives that he or she is "bad" (in the sense of self-interested) but smart.

Since December they’ve posted about 115 entries, and received more than 3000 comments – with some posts (e.g. “Sexual Revolution”) getting more than 200 comments. I asked Posner how he would characterize the comments they receive:

The quantity is impressive, but so is the quality. They are not all good, but most are. Also, I am impressed by how the commenters debate among themselves. That makes me think that our blog is almost like a university lecture, which stimulates debate among the students who hear it.

They often post a reply each week to some of the comments they receive, while acknowledging that they cannot respond to all. It's obvious that many of the commenters relish the opportunity to engage with Becker and Posner:

Getting replies from distinguished scholars and judges on comments is a real treasure, and I thank Becker and Posner for their efforts, as I'm sure most who read this blog do. One wonders whether they sleep with the amount of work that they seem to put out.

I asked Posner what he would say to the researcher/academic who wonders "why on earth a fellow researcher/academic would ever have a blog!?"

Blogging can't take the place of academic writing, which blogging decidedly is not. But it can supplement it by giving the blogger a chance to try out ideas and obtain useful feedback from the commenters. Moreover, academics do not spend all their time doing research--I mentioned teaching, which blogging, as I suggested, resembles.

Posner responded with a list of blogs that he said he reads regularly:

Andrew Sullivan, Instapundit, Underneath their Robes, Mickey Kaus, and sometimes Volokh Conspiracy, Global Security, Arts & Literature, and How Appealing. Sometimes others as well, e.g., ones to which Instapundit links.

Finally, I asked Posner for any predictions about the use of blogs in the research/academic community?

Only that as I said it is a way of trying out ideas, and getting feedback, which might help with an academic project. I do not know whether blogs will become research tools, though they may--there is some tendency to this in law.