Category: Political Science

Depressing article from the Washington Post on the rise of lobbyists.

The number of registered lobbyists in Washington has more than doubled
since 2000 to more than 34,750 while the amount that lobbyists charge
their new clients has increased by as much as 100 percent…The lobbying boom has been caused by three factors, experts say: rapid
growth in government, Republican control of both the White House and
Congress, and wide acceptance among corporations that they need to hire
professional lobbyists to secure their share of federal benefits…

Lobbying firms can’t hire people fast enough. Starting salaries have
risen to about $300,000 a year for the best-connected aides eager to
"move downtown" from Capitol Hill or the Bush administration. Once
considered a distasteful post-government vocation, big-bucks lobbying
is luring nearly half of all lawmakers who return to the private sector
when they leave Congress, according to a forthcoming study by Public
Citizen’s Congress Watch.

No doubt this will create more calls for reform but the truth is we will never get the money out of politics until we get the politics out of money.

In the study, three political scientists – Dr. John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska, Dr. John R. Alford of Rice University and Dr. Carolyn L. Funk of Virginia Commonwealth – combed survey data from two large continuing studies including more than 8,000 sets of twins.

From an extensive battery of surveys on personality traits, religious beliefs and other psychological factors, the researchers selected 28 questions most relevant to political behavior. The questions asked people "to please indicate whether or not you agree with each topic," or are uncertain on issues like property taxes, capitalism, unions and X-rated movies. Most of the twins had a mixture of conservative and progressive views. But over all, they leaned slightly one way or the other.

The researchers then compared dizygotic or fraternal twins, who, like any biological siblings, share 50 percent of their genes, with monozygotic, or identical, twins, who share 100 percent of their genes.

Calculating how often identical twins agree on an issue and subtracting the rate at which fraternal twins agree on the same item provides a rough measure of genes’ influence on that attitude. A shared family environment for twins reared together is assumed.

On school prayer, for example, the identical twins’ opinions correlated at a rate of 0.66, a measure of how often they agreed. The correlation rate for fraternal twins was 0.46. This translated into a 41 percent contribution from inheritance.

As found in previous studies, attitudes about issues like school prayer, property taxes and the draft were among the most influenced by inheritance, the researchers found. Others like modern art and divorce were less so. And in the twins’ overall score, derived from 28 questions, genes accounted for 53 percent of the differences.

But after correcting for the tendency of politically like-minded men and women to marry each other, the researchers also found that the twins’ self-identification as Republican or Democrat was far more dependent on environmental factors like upbringing and life experience than was their social orientation, which the researchers call ideology. Inheritance accounted for 14 percent of the difference in party, the researchers found.

Here is the nasty clincher:

The researchers are not optimistic about the future of bipartisan cooperation or national unity. Because men and women tend to seek mates with a similar ideology, they say, the two gene pools are becoming, if anything, more concentrated, not less.

Here is the full story.

Andrew Sullivan has two excellent posts, here and here.  Last but not least is Alina Stefanescu on the same topic.  As an admirer of Hume and Madison, I feel increasingly out of place in today’s political world…

Psychologist Alexander Todorov of Princeton University
had volunteers look at black-and-white photographs of House and Senate
winners and losers from elections in 2000 and 2002, and the competing
candidates prior to the 2004 contests. The faces had to be unknown to
the participants; images of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., John
McCain, R-Ariz., and John Kerry, D-Mass., for example, were immediately
eliminated.

“It was just on facial appearance, it could not be influenced by any other information,” Todorov said in an interview.

The study (reported here) found that the candidate perceived as more competent was
the winner in 72 percent of the Senate races and 67 percent of the
House races.

The primary distinguishing factor appears to be that voters do not like babyfaced men (a round face, large eyes, small nose, high forehead and small chin).
Competency appears to be associated with facial maturity.  But are the voters correct in their biases?  It would appear not:

In fact, studies by Zebrowitz and others have shown that
babyfaced men are actually more intelligent, better educated, more
assertive and apt to win more military medals than their mature-looking
counterparts.

Research in the area of facial impressions has implications for
political marketing, social decision-making and even the democratic
process, Zebrowitz believes. "The data we have suggest that we’re not
necessarily electing better leaders – people who are actually more
competent, though we are electing people who look the part."

Randall Parker at FuturePundit opines:

Democracy is flawed because humans are shallow and superficial.
Maybe blind voters make better decisions. Anyone up for restricting the
voting franchise to the blind only? Ugly talented candidates would fare
much better. Think about it.

"There is no other country in Europe that will be as deeply affected by the ‘No’ as Germany," said Ulrike Guérot, senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. "The French are no longer in a position to lead as part of a tandem… but Germany, because of its history, cannot claim leadership in Europe on its own."

Here is further discussion.  I’ve long thought that a "no" vote would be a very serious event.  Read Timur Kuran on preference falsification, not to mention Malcolm Gladwell on tipping points.

My next question: What does equilibrium look like when you have two major currencies, each of which must fall in value vis-a-vis the other?

A correspondent writes to Brad DeLong, Why do the Chets of the world get on top?  You know the type, she writes,

Chet is a hail-fellow-well-met sort, cracking jokes all the time… Chet is tall, probably tan, and has big white teeth like a mouthful
of chiclets…. Chet is a member of country clubs, and has a thin wife, and two
adorable kids…Chet has an incredibly high opinion of himself. He is confident to
the point of arrogance, but friendly, outgoing. There is one thing Chet is not,
ever, in my experience, and that is particularly bright.

I like Brad’s answer:

… there are four relevant human capabilities here: the ability to master
details, the ability to quickly grasp what the salient issues are and follow
them through to their conclusion, the ability to work like a dog, and the
ability to size up people–figure out quickly who will actually produce
something useful and who will not, who will hang tough and who will easily bid
more, who will soften if wooed and who will stay hard-nosed. Next to nobody has
all four or even three of these capabilities in world-class measure. Fewer
people than you think have even two. And for someone who has one of the other
three–mastery of detail or skill at analysis or the ability to work like a dog
for ungodly periods of time–mastery of Chet-hood is a very valuable and
lucrative skill.

The correspondent is asking about investment bankers but the discussion applies equally well if not better to politicians.

Pushing the model a bit further I suggest that detail mastery, analytical thinking and working like a dog are more open to meritocracy than sizing people up because to size people up it helps to get them to like you and that is more culturally bound than the other skills.   Minorities may rise to the top more quickly in fields that emphasize the first sets of skills than in those that emphasize the latter.  Birth in general, connections etc. are also more important for the latter set of skills.  Thus in America, it’s Chet not Vijay even though Indian Chets surely exist in just as high a proportion as WASP Chets. 

Cato examined the 101 biggest government
programs that the GOP promised to abolish in 1995. Under unified
Republican rule, those programs have seen their budgets grow by 27
percent.

That is from Andrew Sullivan, and here is the cited link and the Cato study.
 

Right now the betting market says the chance is a bit more than forty percent.  The site, with regular updates, is here.  Here is Lynne Kiesling on whether France should ratify. 

My take: The Constitution violates many of my political ideals, if only by further cementing a non-accountable Brussels bureaucracy.  Nonetheless the EU is a godsend for Eastern Europe, if only by making democracy permanent there.  We cannot take that for granted, mostly because Russia has not yet achieved political equilibrium.  The benefits for Eastern Europe dwarf any impact on the in-any-case sluggish Western Europe, so let’s root for a smooth constitutional process.  The EU will have plenty of time to fall apart later on.

Addendum: Here is a better (more permanent) link, thanks to Chris Massey for the tip.

Mr. Ravalomanana became president [of Madagascar] and quickly became a favorite for his businesslike style [TC: he was earlier a dairy tycoon].  The president grades his cabinet members, granting the best ministers bonuses far greater than their measly government pay and firing the worst.  The economy, which shrank 13% during the turmoil in 2002, has begun to recover although inflation has been a worry recently (WSJ, 18 April, p.A6).

I doubt if this kind of bonus scheme can work more generally, although it remains an interesting question why not.  I suspect that it requires an honest and disciplined president, combined with questionable cabinet members who otherwise will not do the right thing.  How often do you see that exact combination? 

Over time I expect the payments to shift to cabinet members who support the president.  Even a benevolent leader will see reason to make the payments in this fashion, but I fear the move toward outright corruption.   A private business, in contrast, gains more simply by having subordinates march in tune with the CEO.  But we have never worked through all the relevant differences in the two cases.  Surely some MR readers would like to see a bonus for Timothy Muris (former FTC head) and a fine imposed on…well…take your pick.

By the way, Madagascar is now the number one poster child for Bush’s Millennium Challenge Account.  I know they have wonderful and highly underrated music, but didn’t they have a civil war just a few years ago?  I am not yet ready to be bullish on this one.