Category: Political Science

Move on — this isn’t true here

by  Tyler Cowen in

I have a simple model of how some people — but by no means all — process political issues.  Occasionally the real force behind a political ideology is the subconsciously held desire that a certain group of people should not be allowed to rise in relative status.

Take the so-called "right wing."  I believe that some people on the right do not like those they perceive as "whiners."  They do not want these whiners to rise in relative status.  That means they must argue against the whining and also they must argue against the presuppositions behind the whining.

If the whiners say that times are bad, the rebuttal is that times are pretty good or times will become better again.  But if the whiners want to increase government benefits (perhaps there is a victim to whine about), we hear about the need to tighten our belts and all the talk about good times is, at least temporarily, muted.  Fiscal discipline is now in order.

Take the so-called "left wing."  Some of these people favor a kind of meritocracy.  They feel it is unfair that money so determines access in capitalist society and they do not want the monied class to rise in relative status, certainly not above the status of the smart people and the virtuous people.  It is important to fight for the principle that the desires of this monied class have a relatively low priority in the social ranking.  Egalitarianism is the rhetoric of the day, and readjusting the status of other Americans to the status of this monied class often receives more attention than elevating the very poorest in the world to a higher absolute level.

So when happiness research indicates that money brings more happiness only up to a point, this is a popular result.  That perspective lowers the status of this monied class by showing they really aren’t that happy.  When happiness research indicates that conservatives are relatively happy, however, or that many redistributions don’t make the beneficiaries much happier (in some accounts the money-happiness relationships flattens out at a pretty low level), suddenly happiness research isn’t talked up so much.  Inequalities which do not raise the status of this monied class, such as inequalities in the sphere of beauty or teenage sex, don’t come under so much criticism.

Some on the right wing will stress "individual responsibility" as a value when it lowers the status of the whiners (why whine when it was the victim’s own fault?).  Some on the left wing will stress "individual responsibility" when it is time to punish corporate wrongdoers and thus lower their status.  Not everyone applies (or rejects) this value consistently.

Given this difference in rhetoric, the right wing will be identified with the monied class, even when the left often has more money.  And the left wing will be identified as the whiners, even though the right at times whines as much or more.  You might say that both sides are monied, high human capital whiners, on the whole.  And if you compare them to Burmese rice farmers, the two sides seem somewhat alike.

For the people caught up in these intellectual traps, it all boils down to which groups of whiners they find most objectionable.  And once they choose sides, the wisdom of that choice becomes increasingly clear with time.

Fortunately not everyone has these subconscious motivations.  But even if more people did, it’s not something I would want to whine about.

Where should you cast your vote?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Jonah Berger, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of
Business, conducted a terrific study where he demonstrates that where people vote affects how they vote.
Essentially, people whose voting booth is located in a church are more
likely to put more weight into social issues, people voting in fire
houses care more about safety, and people voting in a school tend to
put more weight on things like education.

Admittedly there is a problem here of isolating causation.  Perhaps you go to the polls whose location you know, and if you have kids you know how to find the school, if you are religious you know how to find the church, and so on. 

Auren Hoffman, whom I will see next week in Quebec City, concludes:

Your gut might be much better at telling you what not to do than giving
you good direction on what to do. If your gut tells you something is
wrong with someone, than you probably do not want to entrust your kid
with her. But a positive gut-check often does little good (at least for
me).

Robin Hanson on the belief in religion and government

by  Tyler Cowen in

A stunning hypothesis from the latest Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:

High
levels of support often observed for governmental and religious systems
can be explained, in part, as a means of coping with the threat posed
by chronically or situationally fluctuating levels of perceived
personal control. Three experiments demonstrated a causal relation
between lowered perceptions of personal control and … increased
beliefs in the existence of a controlling God and defense of the
overarching socio-political system.  A 4th experiment showed … a
challenge to the usefulness of external systems of control led to
increased illusory perceptions of personal control. … A
cross-national data set demonstrated that lower levels of personal
control are associated with higher support for governmental control.

It
seems we hope a stronger and more benevolent God or State will protect
us when feel less able to protect ourselves.  I’d guess similar effects
hold for medicine and media – we believe in doc effectiveness more when
we fear out of control of our health, and we believe in media accuracy
more when we rely more on their info to protect us.  Can we find data
on which beliefs tend to be more biased: confidence in authorities when
we feel out of control, or less confidence in authorities when we feel
more in control?

I would say "read the whole thing" except that is the whole thing.  Here is evidence from California that voters are more likely to prefer conservative candidates (not exactly what the above study is testing) when economic times are good.

Why might Israel attack Iran

by  Tyler Cowen in

According to this line of thinking, which has adherents…focusing on the tactical questions surrounding such an operation — how much of Iran’s nuclear program can Israel destroy?  how many years can a bombing campaign set the program back? — is a mistake.  The main goal of a hit would not be to destroy the program completely, but rather to awaken the international community from its slumber and force it to finally engineer a solution to the crisis…any attack on Iran’s reactors — as long as it is not perceived as a military failure — can serve as a means of "stirring the pot" of international geopolitics.  Israel, in other words, wouldn’t be resorting to military action because it is convinced that diplomacy by the international community cannot stop Iran; it would be resorting to military action because only diplomacy by the international community can stop Iran.

That is Shmuel Rosner in the 30 July The New Republic.  Personally I do not think that Israel will attack Iran, but since I had never heard this argument before I thought I would pass it on.

What if the candidates pandered to economists?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Do read Greg Mankiw on this topic.  The list of policies favored by economists includes support free trade, oppose farm subsidies, leave oil companies and speculators alone, tax the use of energy [does he mean carbon-based energy?], raise the retirement age, invite more skilled immigrants, liberalize drug policy, and raise funds for economic research.

I don’t disagree that there is a consensus on retirement age but it was news to me to read that.  My informal impression had been that many economists on the left felt this would place undue burdens on people with physically demanding jobs.  And personally I would sooner subsidize hard science than economics; I don’t think we’ve earned our keep lately!

Or maybe Greg is just saying that it would win economists’ votes.  Like Alex, I wonder if economists vote on a more rational basis than do other people.  If I meet a French economist, I suppose that his views are more shaped by his being a Frenchman than by his being an economist.  I’d like to see a poll of Canadian economists on health care reform.

The Liberal Hour

by  Tyler Cowen in

The authors are G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot and the subtitle is Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s.  Everyone interested in social change, or for that matter American political history, should read this book.  It doesn’t unearth new material but it is a good summary of what is known.  The jacket flap sums it up:

For a brief period in the 1960s, more progressive legislation was passed in Congress than in almost any other era in American history.  Demands that had lingered for decades on the political agenda finally entered the realm of possibility.  Reform has seldom come with such speed, such sweep, and such consequence.  What drove this political sea change?…[the authors] argue that the primary force behind it was not the counterculture, but those in the traditional seats of power.

If you study the history portrayed in this book, you are more likely to believe that an Obama victory would not bring radical change to American economic policy.  It’s hard to find the comparable "shock troops" in Washington right now.

Geo-engineering to cure global warming?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Robin Hanson summarizes one case for it.  I don’t know much about the technologies but my worries are mainly political.  Won’t the Russians benefit greatly from a warming world, both because they are a bit cold and because they will access a warmer Arctic?  Would the UN Security Council approve climate engineering?  Probably not.  If the United States did it on its own, could that be perceived as an act of war?  If geo-engineering is cheap (which is part of its very promise), and unilateral action is acceptable, don’t other countries also get to take their shot at influencing the environment and moving us toward an optimal climate?  What does the resulting equilibrium look like?  Who moves last?  How would we feel if someone changed the U.S. climate to make many parts of the country colder?

Grand New Party

by  Tyler Cowen in

The authors, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, invited me to their book party at Borders — and I wanted to meet them — but no I must stay home and read and blog their book!  (I wrote this post last night.)  If there was rush hour road pricing, as indeed they propose, I would have been there in a flash but no I am munching on cherries on my sofa.

The subtitle is "How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream" and the Amazon link is here.  Their favored policies include the following (with varying degrees of enthusiasm/utopianism on their part):

1. Family-friendly tax reform.

2. Sprawl is OK or at least it could be with rational traffic management policies.

3. Government reinsurance for catastrophic health care expenses, plus they consider the Brad DeLong health care plan.

4. Abolition of the payroll tax for many lower-income earners.

5. Allocate money to public schools on a student-weighted basis, as is done in San Francisco.

6. Reallocate funding toward lower-tier state universities and away from flagship schools.

7. Don’t expect old-style unions to come back.

That is only a sampling.  The broader vision is that the Republicans can and must find a way to be more friendly to the non-rich.  Personally I don’t see any reason to tie all of this to the Republican Party but I agree with most of their proposals.  There’s a great deal of common sense here and it stands as one best general policy books in a long time.

The deep question is why something like this hasn’t already happened.  You’ll find the superficial "Republicans are just pro-corporate crooks" answer from bloggers like Kathy G.  Another possibility is that Republicans don’t get much electoral credit for pro-poor initiatives (just as many voters simply won’t believe that "Democrats can be tough").  The more competitive political messaging becomes, the more this constraint binds and so the policies of upward redistribution are more likely to be enacted by Republicans in the resulting political equilibrium.  If the authors are to get their way somehow this dynamic must be reversed.

Addendum: I’ve met Reihan only in passing and I have not had substantive correspondence with either of the authors.  Nonetheless the authors thank me in the conclusion for having saved them from "all manner of errors"; maybe this is another instance of the influence of blogs.

Second Addendum: You’ll find links to video and audio on the book at Ross’s blog.

Is there anything new to say about Barack Obama?

by  Tyler Cowen in

I, for one, have nothing new to say about Barack Obama, even though I am exposed to more news about him than any other single person.  I wish I did, but I don’t.

Do you?  Does anyone?  Comments are open, the stipulation is that you must believe what you write about him genuinely represents new insight; it’s OK if it’s already appeared on your blog, provided it is not a major one, or you can link to the thoughts of others.  Please respect our usual standards of politeness.

Will anyone have anything to say?  Should I hope you do or don’t have anything new to say about him? 

Why do lefties dominate Presidential politics?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Ford, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Gore, and now Obama and McCain are all left-handed.  Call it chance or availability bias, but I’m still wondering.  Read more here, and thanks to Martin Weil for the pointer.  Here’s one on-line discussion.  Here is a brief survey on Wikipedia.  It is my general view that left-handers have higher genetic variance in a number of dimensions, so they should be over-represented in many different kinds of extreme situations, including the Presidency. 

What does campaign finance do?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is Ed Lopez’s survey article, here is the survey from Thomas Stratmann.  Overall the academics who work on this issue tend to see the practical ramifications of campaign finance restrictions as very often constituting less than meets the eye.  It’s also well understood that most campaign finance reform benefits incumbents, who already have name recognition.

The pointer is from Ed Lopez, who notes:

Consider two ratios.

1. In 2000 the federal government spent about 1.8 trillion (~18% of
GDP), and total campaign expenditures on all federal elective offices
was about $1.85 billion (about $1b on congressional races, $0.35b on
presidential, and $0.5b in soft money). So federal public sector
advertising was 1/1000th of federal public spending. Ratio 1 = 0.001.

2. In 2000 the private sector share of GDP was about $7.5 trillion
(after federal, state and local spending net of intergovernmental
transfers), and total private sector advertising, according to
Advertising Age, was $240 billion (Statistical Abstract Table 1251). So private advertising was 3.2% of private spending. Ratio 2 = .032.

By this comparison, private sector advertising is more than thirty times greater
than the amount we spend on federal elections trying to make sure we
get the right person for the job. Given how much we expect from our
federal government, isn’t it surprising that campaign spending isn’t
twice, or even ten times, more than it is right now?

Ed thinks that campaigns need more money flowing through them, not less; I don’t have a personal view on this issue.  Reihan Salam offers interesting comment on recent controversies surrounding Barack Obama.