User:Zraerobertson/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Joseph Schumpeter

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
Having presented on Schumpeter's democratic theory, I felt equipped to assess the theory section of this page. Because Schumpeter's thoughts can have strong negative normative implications, I wanted to ensure that his theory was presented in an objective manner and that his role as a political theorist was acknowledged.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The lead appears to be missing information about Schumpeter's role as a political theorist despite his conception of democracy being included later in the piece. This seems to be an important addition because there is no article focusing only on Schumpeterian democracy, and a reader glancing on the page may assume that there is no information concluded on this topic. Additionally, though the article contains extensive information on both creative destruction and entrepreneurship, only creative destruction is featured in the lead and only entrepreneurship is written about in detail later.

Content

The content of the political theory section is strong and includes a highly streamlined summary of the book. For example, though Schumpeter challenges the notion of the common good on several fronts, the current article reads "even if the common good was possible to find," astutely summarizing Schumpeter's point of view in just the first clause of a sentence. Thus, all of the current content is good, but much could be added. For instance, in the first paragraph, the article outlines the theory of classical democracy that Schumpeter goes on to disprove; in this section, it is important to include that this depiction of the classical theory of democracy is often criticized as being a straw-man that artificially strengthens his argument. Additionally, Schumpeter's ideation on why the classical theory of democracy has continued to survive is poignant, and I imagine that this article could benefit from a partial quote on his "flag" of democracy analogy. There is also very little space given to discussing Schumpeter's support for his own theory. Though he included seven reasons in the text, none of these supports are included in the article and more time is spent discussing his theory in relations to others. A final brief suggestion would be to include the reasons why other political philosophers disagreed with Schumpeter-- the article as of now only briefly mentions Dahl but not the specific grounds they disagree on.

Tone and Balance

The tone of the article is not persuasive and features several challenges to Schumpeter's proposed ideology. For example, it includes that his theory has been called "elitist" while providing evidence that Schumpeter had expressed disdain for elites. Moreover, the article has an encyclopedic tone and does not appear to be biased.

Sources and References

The sources I examined for the democratic theory portion are all credible and from well-regarded journals including Cambridge University Press and Johns Hopkins University Press.

Organization and Writing Quality

The writing quality is exceptionally good, perhaps to the point of reading more like a scholarly article, with the sentence "He argued this was unrealistic, and that people's ignorance and superficiality meant that in fact they were largely manipulated by politicians, who set the agenda" which has a more complex sentence structure and vocabularly.

Images and Media

An image of Joseph Schumpeter is included as well as an image depicting his proposed economic waves. Both of these contribute to the article well and should be kept.

Talk Page Discussion

There is very little communication on the talk page outside of commentary on a rather strange quote included in Schumpeter's personal life section. I added the suggestion to include more on Schumpeter's politic theory.

Overall Impressions

My overall impression is that the article is well-written, but could benefit from some further explanations in support of his theory as given in his text. Seven specific arguments for his theory are provided, including a particularly salient one on leadership, and the article is devoid of these specific references. I propose adding additional information to the democratic theory section as to include more of Schumpeter's own ideation rather than comparisons to others.