Lesson Report:
Title
Proxy Politics and the State: Designing Indirect Measures and Revisiting Statehood
Synopsis: Students first completed a rapid icebreaker to solidify name recall and re-formed their Thursday working groups. The core of the session focused on designing an indirect survey (using proxy questions) to predict student support for a hypothetical “student support� grading policy, anchored to a simplified left–right political framework. The class then revisited political state theory, applying the five criteria of statehood to India and flagging the final criterion (monopoly on legitimate force) to finish next session.
Attendance
– Students mentioned absent: 0
Topics Covered (chronological, with activity/topic labels)
1) Icebreaker: Cumulative Name Game
– Objective: Commit student names to memory for smoother future group work.
– Mechanics: One-by-one name repetition around the room, with each person repeating all prior names; instructor attempted full recall at the end.
– Outcome: Most names recalled; instructor noted two similar names (two students named Medina) and some uncertainty over spellings/pronunciations (e.g., Tolkunbek, Ali Nur).
2) Group Reconstitution for Applied Activity
– Re-formed the Thursday groups into five groups (1–5); seating assigned by zone to cluster groups; small groups were topped up (e.g., Erhan moved to balance group size).
– Purpose: Use stable groups to produce and defend a two-question predictive instrument.
3) Framing the Applied Task: Indirect Measurement via Proxies
– Policy scenario: AUCA is considering a new university-wide grading rule: 10% of every course grade would come from “student supportâ€� (e.g., participation in group work, willingness to share notes, in-class participation, general contribution to the course community).
– Charge to groups: The President’s Office hires you to predict who would support vs. oppose the rule. Constraints:
– You may not ask directly: “Do you support the policy?â€�
– You may not ask about group work/note-sharing/assisting peers explicitly.
– You may not ask, “Are you left or right?â€�
– Minimum instrument: at least two questions that allow reliable inference.
– Conceptual cue: Use a simplified left–right heuristic:
– Left: prioritizes the social/collective good, community outcomes, common welfare.
– Right: prioritizes individual rights, liberty, individual choice.
– Note: Acknowledged oversimplification; many people lie between poles; “traditionâ€� and “nationalismâ€� flagged as cultural/related but handled later.
– Inference logic: If support for the policy correlates with stronger collective-good orientation, then questions that reveal collective vs. individual orientation can serve as proxies to predict support/oppose.
4) Gallery of Student-Generated Proxy Questions (with instructor evaluation)
– Q1: Would you share your homework/notes on a platform where uploading your own grants access to others’ materials?
– Value: Strong proxy—willingness to share for communal benefit suggests collective orientation (more likely pro-policy); reluctance suggests individual orientation.
– Caution: Phrase in general terms of attitudes toward sharing academic materials rather than “group workâ€� to respect constraints.
– Q2: Do you prefer to work alone or in groups?
– Issue: Too close to forbidden content (group work); needs reframing to avoid direct mention of group work or peer support.
– Suggested reframes: Preference for collaborative knowledge environments vs. individually curated learning resources; or comfort with interdependent vs. independent task structures (without saying “groupâ€�).
– Q3: How often do you have problems with homework?
– Evaluation: Not a left–right discriminator; measures need or difficulty rather than value orientation. Could predict desire for help (and thus incidental support for the policy), but does not map clearly to left/right.
– Use: Possibly as a secondary control item if instrument expands; not ideal as a core proxy.
– Q4: How often do you visit advising/office hours?
– Evaluation: Frequency doesn’t reliably map to left/right. Instructor proposed a better version:
– “Should a larger share of tuition be allocated to expanding advising and peer-support services?â€�
– Rationale: Resource allocation toward common services taps collective vs. individual preferences more directly and stays within constraints.
– Q5: Should grades primarily reflect your own mastery vs. also how you improved others’ learning?
– Evaluation: Intuitively left–right flavored, but empirically most students prefer grades to reflect their own mastery; low discriminative power. Keep as a supplemental item at best.
– Q6: Is the goal of a class to maximize individual achievement or to raise the overall class level/improvement?
– Value: Clear collective vs. individual framing; stronger discriminative potential if phrased neutrally and without mentioning “group work.â€�
– Q7: Do you consider yourself a nationalist?
– Evaluation: Possibly informative in later units; link to the specific policy is indirect and culturally loaded. If used, combine with other items; interpret with care.
– Q8: Preference trade-off: more homework for lower grade weight vs. less homework with higher stakes?
– Evaluation: This taps tolerance for workload and risk preference more than collective vs. individual orientation. Weak mapping to the target latent trait; de-prioritize.
– Q9: “Do you like capitalism?â€�
– Evaluation: Too broad and ideologically loaded; postpone to future sessions on political economy; not appropriate for this constrained instrument.
– Meta-note: Introversion/extroversion came up; instructor flagged it for later discussion as a potential confound rather than a target construct.
5) Instrument-Building Takeaways
– Strong candidates (core proxies):
– Attitude toward sharing academic materials for mutual access.
– Class objective framing: prioritize individual achievement vs. lift the cohort’s overall level.
– Tuition allocation preference toward common advising/peer-support vs. other uses (e.g., more electives/choice).
– Weak/needs reframing:
– Work alone vs. with others (too close to prohibited “group workâ€� language).
– Advising frequency and homework difficulty (do not map cleanly to left/right).
– Grades reflecting impact on others (low variance; most choose “reflect my masteryâ€�).
– Next methodological step (implied): Combine at least two strong proxies, predefine a coding scheme (e.g., collective-leaning answers = +1), and set a threshold to classify predicted support vs. opposition.
6) Lecture: What is the State? (Recap and Application)
– Why revisit: Separate powerful organizations (e.g., AUCA, Google) from states; we can see outputs (passports, police authority, currency), but the state itself is an abstract institution.
– Five criteria for statehood (the working checklist):
1) Territory: Defined geographic boundaries.
2) Population: People residing within those boundaries who identify with/are governed by the state.
3) International recognition/legitimacy: Other states and key international bodies (e.g., UN) recognize its statehood.
4) Sovereignty: Supreme authority to make and enforce rules within its territory (no higher earthly authority).
5) Monopoly on the legitimate use of force: The state alone is authorized to use/coerce force legitimately within its territory.
– Case Study: India
– Territory: Mapped borders widely recognized; readily visible on maps and atlases.
– Population: Large resident population; identity as Indian; demographic data corroborated by authoritative sources.
– International recognition: UN membership; diplomatic relations; consulates/embassies abroad indicate mutual recognition.
– Sovereignty: India makes and enforces its own laws and policies; no external power can routinely override them.
– Instructor’s counterexample thought experiment (Lagmanistan, room 406): Declaring a “new stateâ€� without capacity to enforce rules would be shut down by Kyrgyz authorities—illustrating that sovereignty requires enforceable authority, not merely written rules.
– Monopoly of force: Flagged as next class’s focus (not fully addressed due to time); students previewed that “monopolyâ€� refers to exclusive legitimate coercive power (e.g., police, military), not absence of violence by others.
– Key distinction reinforced: Organizations can be large and powerful without meeting state criteria (AUCA, Google) because they lack sovereignty and the monopoly of legitimate force.
Actionable Items
Urgent: Before next class
– Finish the State unit
– Complete criterion 5: Monopoly on the legitimate use of force (clarify “legitimate,â€� private security, militias, and state delegation vs. abdication).
– Prepare brief examples and counterexamples (e.g., private security under license, cartels, breakaway regions) to test understanding.
– Close the proxy-inference activity
– Publish a clean, allowed phrasing of 2–3 validated proxy questions (e.g., sharing materials; class objective; tuition allocation).
– Provide a simple scoring rubric and plan a quick in-class pilot for classification (support vs. oppose).
– Administrative
– Finalize group rosters (Groups 1–5) and verify correct spellings/duplicates (two Medinas; Tolkunbek; Ali Nur). Consider a phonetic name list to support recall.
Short-term
– Clarifications requested by students
– Define “volunteerâ€�/“student supportâ€� criteria with concrete examples (what counts, what doesn’t).
– Distinguish advising/office hours/peer-support services for the tuition-allocation item.
– Materials distribution
– One student requested emailed materials; check departmental policy/permissions and send if approved.
– Post a 1–2 page handout: Left–right heuristic used in class; five statehood criteria; India case summary.
Planning Ahead
– Outside activity mentioned as “laterâ€�: schedule and specify learning goals/logistics if still intended.
– If moving toward a real survey
– Draft ethics/consent language, sampling plan, coding scheme, and a debrief on limits of proxy-based inference.
– Consider potential confounds (e.g., introversion/extroversion) and how to mitigate or measure them.
Homework Instructions:
NO HOMEWORK
The entire session focused on in-class activities (“we have three things that we must do today… icebreaker… prediction activity… return to the state�) and ended with “we will return next week and we will work with this more,� with no mention of any out-of-class tasks, readings, or due dates.