His Command of the Literature is Punditastic.

A while ago Matt Yglesias was all interested in forging links between academia, specifically PoliSci, and journalism. A member of the political science community suggested that the problem was

The overwhelming theme from the journalists on the panel (Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, Mark Blumenthal, Mark Ambinder, and Mark Schmitt) was that they didn’t have enough time to do their work. Constant time pressures prevent adequate reflection on the subject of their work (i.e. politics) and prevents them from getting the best sources for their stories, and so they go with the most accessible.

And concludes that for a variety of reasons

So, I’m not sanguine about the prospects of better collaboration and less stupidity [among journalists]. Especially when one considers that journalists are about competition among themselves for market share, and they do so by being entertaining and conflictual. They’re not motivated — or if they are only at the margins — by informing people.

Why do I bring this up?  Recently Yglesias read, or claimed to read, an academic paper on political dynasties, that he found here. The paper's abstract offers this conclusion:

On the contrary, using two instrumental variable techniques we find that political power is self-perpetuating: legislators who hold power for longer become more likely to have relatives entering Congress in the future. Thus, in politics, power begets power.

Yglesias isn't buying and argues:

I think we should probably understand political dynasties in democracies as part of the larger story of the importance of elite signaling in democratic politics. Most people have stronger views about individual figures than they do about “the issues.” So the question becomes how do you extend the brand? Most voters are most effectively reached via partisan branding—something like 80 percent of people are robotic party-line voters—but “swing voters” by definition don’t work this way. Family relationships then become an effective means of extending a positive brand that’s doesn’t involve parties.

If he had bothered to read the paper he would have discovered that  authors "find that dynastic legislators are less common in more competitive environments."  Branding is supposed to work in a competitive environment because the brand does the decision making for you. Like John Prine's Grandpa who voted for Eisenhower 'cause Lincoln won the war. Signaling likewise.  He's a Kennedy: he's got to be good.  In this case, neither works as Yglesias asserts; the authors suggest that

[o]ne possible explanation is that when a party safely controls a state, those in control of a party can afford to favor candidates to whom they are connected by family or social ties, suggesting that the dynastic transmission of political power may be more related to superior contacts with party machines —for example— than to features valued by voters, such as higher human capital.[footnote number removed]

This is why there is no links between academics and journalism.  Yglesias can't be bothered to read because he already has a series of pat answers to complicated question: branding, signaling, union bashing, and Neoliberalism more generally.