Milestone

4 hours writing, 0.5 hours emailing / administrivia

I finished revising the LASA paper and sent it to the professor who had offered to take a look. Hooray! I think ultimately it was a helpful exercise, in that I had to pull together the data I have and look at how it does or does not speak to each other, in a way that was useful for building the chapter on Colombia in comparative perspective.

Well, it's now been two months since I embarked on this blog, and it's time to take stock. I'm up to 90 pages, which means I added another 35 this month, after adding 35 last month. I drafted a chapter on the police in Latin America this month; gathered data for the chapter on the police in comparative perspective; identified three states for a subnational comparison (although I'm still just a little bit on the fence about carrying it out); and completed a conference paper.

Areas that still need significant work include the literature review on institutional design, and the chapter on the 19th century in Colombia that sets up the critical-juncture argument in the chapter on institutional design. I'm not sure now if I really need a whole chapter on the period between the critical juncture and La Violencia. I do need to characterize that period, but it may not require a whole chapter to do so.

This coming month, I'll be on vacation or traveling (to APSA) a lot, so I'll want to make the most of my days in the office. I'll be in Berkeley in two weeks, meeting with my advisor and plundering the library, so that'll definitely be productive. Here's to two fun and enjoyable months!

And now, the honor roll: thanks to all the Villagers who have been blog monitors these first two months!

Steve Boland
Kristin Donnelly
Diana Kapiszewski
Marco Mojica
Dan Faltz
Laura Ascenzi-Moreno
Rafael Mazer
Geordan Drummond
Jay Seawright

Mil gracias a todos!