Here’s Adam Ozinek:

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is running this extremely ugly and xenophobic ad against Pat Toomey, who is the Republican U.S. Senate candidate for Pennsylvania. The ad includes all the classic racist Orientalism touches, from gong sounds to fortune cookies.  The goal of the ad to slander Toomey with a quote of his where he says “It’s great that China is modernizing and growing”. Gasp! Oh the horror!

The economic growth and modernization in China over the last 30 years has lifted literally hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and if you don’t think that’s an unmitigated great thing then fuck you, I hope a Chinese person does “steal your job”.

I know campaign ads shouldn’t affect us. We should vote based on policies and expected welfare impacts of those policies. But at some level these political ads become pollution, a pure negative externality. And I can’t look past it when a party or politician is willing to spew pollution to get elected. If you’ve got to denigrate a whole nation of people and one of the greatest economic miracles of the last 50 years, and stir up a hornets nest of ugly xenophobia in order convince people you’re the man for the job, then you’re demonstrably not the man for the job.

When Jeanne Safer met the historian and political journalist Richard Brookhiser, he disclosed straightaway that he wrote for National Review. Her initial reaction was, Uh-oh. “I thought of conservatives as the John Birch Society,” said Dr. Safer, a psychotherapist in New York City. “I’d heard of William F. Buckley but certainly never thought he’d be at my wedding.”

That wedding was 30 years ago. “His politics is of his essence, but not the fundamental part,” Dr. Safer said of her husband. “It’s his character, his emotions, his appreciation of me that are important. And he is coherent in his own way. He has legitimate reasons for all the repellent ideas he holds.” [TCD: my italics]

I especially liked the last line. As social psychologists Lee Ross and Andrew Ward note, conflicts are often amplified as a result of our “naive realism.”

The central tenet of naive realism is that “I see things as they are.” An implication is that “other well-informed, well-intentioned, reasonable people will see things the same way.” When we find we disagree with someone, we face an attribution problem. “Perhaps they are uninformed; they are unaware of the very good arguments that I know!” We share our arguments. They are unconvinced. Drat! We infer that they are stupid, evil, or greedy.

Whatever the intensity of conflict would have been between two sets of well-intentioned, reasonable people, it is now more intense, as it is between us well-intentioned, reasonable people and the coalition of the stupid, the evil and the greedy.

Cross-partisan marriages may put some speed bumps on the path to “inferring” the other side is stupid, evil or greedy.

My take: The key to ending polarization in this country is for all well-intentioned, reasonable people to start marrying across party lines.

HT: Tyler, who — like a cross-partisan marriage — puts speed bumps on the path to inferring that one or the other side is stupid, evil or greedy.

Here’s where Schumpeter ends up:

“[T]he typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests…”

Here’s the full run-up (my italics):

“In the ordinary run of often repeated decisions the individual is subject to the salutary and rationalizing influence of favorable and unfavorable experience. He is also under the influence of relatively simple and unproblematical motives and interests which are but occasionally interfered with by excitement. Historically, the consumers’ desire for shoes, may, at least in part, have been shaped by the action of producers offering attractive footgear and campaigning for it; yet at any given time it is a genuine want, the definiteness extends beyond ‘shoes in general’ and which prolonged experimenting clears of much of the irrationalities that may originally have surrounded it. Moreover, under the stimulus of those simple motives consumers learn to act upon unbiased expert advice about some things (houses, motorcars) and themselves become experts in others. It is simply not true that housewives are easily fooled in the matter of foods, familiar household articles, wearing apparel.  And, as every salesman knows to his cost, most of them have a way of insisting on the exact article they want.

“This of course holds true still more obviously on the producers’ side of the picture. No doubt, a manufacturer may be indolent, a bad judge of opportunities or otherwise incompetent; but there is an effective mechanism that will reform him or eliminate him. Again, Taylorism rests on the fact that man may perform simple handicraft operations for thousands of years and yet perform them inefficiently.  But neither the intention to act as rationally as possible nor a steady pressure toward rationality can seriously be called into question at whatever level of industrial or commercial activity we choose to look.

“And so it is with most of the decisions of daily life that lie within the little field which the individual citizen’s mind encompasses with a full sense of its reality. Roughly, it consists of the things that directly concern himself, his family, his business dealings, his hobbies, his friends and enemies, his township or ward, his class, church, trade union or any other social group of which he is an active member — the things under his personal observation, the things which are familiar to him independently of what his newspaper tells him, which he can directly influence or manage and for which he develops the kind of responsibility that is induced by a direct relation to the favorable or unfavorable effects of a course of action…

“However, when we move still farther away from the private concerns of the family and the business office into those regions of the national and international affairs that lack a direct and unmistakable link with those private concerns, individual volition, command of facts and method of inference soon cease to fulfill the requirements of the classical doctrine.  What strikes me most of all and seems to me to be the core of the trouble is the fact that the sense of reality is so completely lost. Normally, the great political questions take their place in the psychic economy of the typical citizen with those leisure-hour interests that have not attained the rank of hobbies, and with the subjects of irresponsible conversation.  These things seem so far off; they are not at all like a business proposition; dangers may not materialize at all and if they should they may not prove so very serious; one feels oneself to be moving in a fictitious world.

“This reduced sense of reality accounts not only for the reduced sense of responsibility but also for the absence of effective volition. One has one’s phrases, of course, and one’s wishes and daydreams and grumbles; especially, one has one’s likes and dislikes.  But ordinarily they do not amount to what we call a will — the psychic counterpart of purposeful responsible action. In fact, for the private citizen musing over national affairs there is no scope for such a will and no task at which it could develop. He is a member of an unworkable committee, the committee of the whole nation, and this is why he expends less disciplined effort on mastering a political problem than he expends on a game of bridge.

“The reduced sense of responsibility and the absence of effective volition in turn explain the ordinary citizen’s ignorance and lack of judgment in matters of domestic and foreign policy which are if anything more shocking in the case of educated people and of people who are successfully active in non-political walks of life than it is with uneducated people in humble stations. Information is plentiful and readily available. But this does not seem to make any difference. Nor should we wonder at it. We need only compare a lawyer’s attitude to his brief and the same lawyer’s attitude to the statements of political fact presented in his newspaper in order to see what is the matter.  In the one case the lawyer has qualified for appreciating the relevance of his facts by years of purposeful labor done under the definite stimulus of interest in his professional competence; and under a stimulus that is no less powerful he then bends his acquirements, his intellect, his will to the contents of the brief. In the other case, he has not taken the trouble to qualify; he does not care to absorb the information or to apply to it the canons of criticism he knows so well how to handle; and he is impatient of long or complicated argument.  All of this goes to show that without the initiative that comes from immediate responsibility, ignorance will persist in the face of masses of information however complete or correct. It persists even in the face of the meritorious efforts that are being made to go beyond presenting information and to teach the use of it by means of lectures, classes, discussion groups.  Results are not zero. But they are small. People cannot be carried up the ladder.

“Thus the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests…”

– Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, p. 258-262

COMMENT (10/11): Welcome to folks from Marginal Revolution. Have a look around! Blogging here at the Spirit of Moderation is a mix of my wild-eyed utopian manifestos and my narrow-eyed skeptical responses to other reformers. In other words, it is a political economy blog like any other.

In the coming weeks, I will be blogging more about causes and consequences of the “reformer’s double standard,” and a reform that might channel it to do good. You will have decide whether that reform is too utopian or no… Stay tuned.

Speaking of fights, here’s a Herb Block political cartoon from the 1946 mid-term elections (hat tip: the Library of Congress). The big fellow, “the campaign,” is knocking the sense out of the scrawny fellow, “voter’s intelligence.” The play-by-play, which is the caption on the cartoon, is that: “He’s taking an awful beating.”

Here is the description offered by the LOC: “Herb Block believed that voters were the real losers in the 1946 off-year election in which Republicans accused Democrats of being Communists and the Democrats equated their Republican counterparts with Hitler. Voter discontent with rising food prices and shortages of such staples as meat and sugar, as well as the growing fear of the spread of communism from Europe, led to a Republican majority in both the House and the Senate.”

Sound at all familiar?

Unfortunately, it is a mistake to think that a low-quality discourse is foisted by politicians on an unwilling populace. If only it were so! The problem would practically fix itself! This “take” ignores the demand-side of the problem. The supply follows the demand. Politicians are barometers; they ain’t the weather. We get low-quality discourse because that is what voters respond to.

At first pass, this seems like a rather condescending position to take. But it’s not. More to come…

– Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg, 1995 – present

What refreshing candor! Hail Jean-Claude Juncker!

Juncker’s Dictum originally appeared in an article in The Economist in 2007: “The quest for prosperity” (March 15th). It is featured again in the most recent issue (July 10th-16th, 2010), not once (“Can anything perk up Europe?”) but twice (“Staring into the abyss”).

The claim in both articles is that impending fiscal crises make reform coalitions more viable than they are in normal times. I doubt Juncker would disagree. A modified variant of Juncker’s Dictum might go like this:

“We all know what to do, but we won’t get re-elected for doing it until it is hard to do it well, if at all.”

This reminds me of Jon Elster’s two paradoxes of constitution-making.*

First, when we have the capability to make effective constitutional changes (i.e. in normal, non-crisis times), we typically lack the desire. Second, when we have the desire to do so (i.e. in a crisis), we typically lack the capability. When we can, we do not want to; when we want to, we cannot.

My take: From a design perspective, the trick is to increase the desire to implement reforms in normal times. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. The trick could be turned by giving voters and policy-makers immediate and on-going incentives to form, enforce and adapt mutually beneficial conventions, as they would have with the turn-taking institution.

* The two paradoxes are summarized in the conclusion of a 1995 article: “Forces and Mechanisms in the Constitution-Making Process,” Duke Law Journal 45: 364 – 396.

The Chair Not Taken from Zach Cohen on Vimeo.

I would happily pile on Will’s coinage, and include more figures that have influenced the way I understand the policy-making process. In addition to Rawls and Hayek, I would want to include James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, Doug North, Thomas Schelling, Russell Hardin, Jon Elster and Tyler Cowen. But that increase in truth too would come at too great a cost in beauty.

“Rawlsekananullockostromorthellinghardinelsterowenian” makes “Rawlsekian” look downright catchy.

A side note on terminology. Though in the previous post I used Brink’s portmanteau “liberaltarian” (that is, liberal + libertarian), here I am going to use Will’s term “Rawlsekian” (that is, Rawlsian + Hayekian). Both terms are esoteric (for now!), but Rawlsekian is more illuminating so long as our focus is on the policy-making process.

Here are the three paths I want to consider (see Figure 1):

Path #1: From Rawlsekian ideas through status quo policy-making institutions to Rawlsekian policies.

Path #2: From Rawlsekian ideas to Rawlsekian policy-making institutions to Rawlsekian policies.

Path #3: From non-Rawlsekian trigger conditions to Rawlsekian policy-making institutions to Rawlsekian policies.

Figure 1. Three paths from here to the Rawlsekian there.

To preview my conclusions:

Conjecture #1. The first path would not work because it is too hard to initiate and maintain Rawlsekian policies within status quo policy-making institutions. Step 1a is trivial — no institutional change is required — but step 1b is hard. Moreover, step 1b would have to be made (to “initiate”) and re-made on an on-going basis (to “maintain”).

Conjecture #2. If a Rawlsekian policy-making institution — e.g. a turn-taking institution — were adopted, Rawlsekian policies would follow. But Rawlsekian ideas would not lead a turn-taking institution to be adopted with status quo constitution-making forces as they are. Step 2a is hard, but step 2b is easy. If step 2a were taken, step 2b would take care of itself.

Conjecture #3. A Rawlsekian policy-making institution could be adopted as a result of non-Rawlsekian “triggers“, but then generate Rawlsekian policies as a bonus or by-product. The difficulty of step 3a is “moderate.” If step 3a were taken, step 3b would take care of itself.

Longer comments on each path.

On path #1. In this path, the big picture Rawlsekian vision is articulated by idea-entrepreneurs first. Opinion-leaders (academics, editorial writers, public intellectuals, policy wonks) find the vision compelling. Opinion-leaders influence both pivotal policy-makers and pivotal voters to some degree. Pivotal policy-makers and pivotal voters support more Rawlsekian policies. These policies deliver the goods. More policy-makers and voters see the light and the policies stick around for the long haul. The key point is that Rawlsekian policies are to be adopted and maintained within status quo policy-making institutions.

Challenges on path #1. There are three challenges to taking step #1b one time. And it would have be taken many, many times.

The first challenge is that — unfortunately — artfully chosen illiberal policies are often politically advantageous. Policy-makers can typically improve their chances of winning elections by delivering potentially pivotal participants *a little something extra,* even if it means off-loading costs on the non-pivotal (i.e. those in the other coalition, immigrants, foreigners, future generations, etc.).

The second challenge is voter ignorance, irrationality and impatience. In the political arena, citizens are relatively weakly motivated to rein in sloppy or myopic thinking. Problems are readily pinned on scapegoats (the opposition, the immigrants, the foreigners, the rich, the poor, etc.). Hopes are pinned on snake-oil solutions. The Dunning-Kruger effect runs amok. H. L. Mencken should have said: “For every difficult and complicated question there is an answer that is simple, easily understood, inspiring and wrong.” Or maybe  “…simple, easily understood, flattering and wrong.” Economic and political liberalism bring about positive social change in a way that is impersonal, diffuse, complex, slow and boring.

The third challenge is that elite partisans suffer from confirmation bias and groupthink. Professional opinion-makers and amateur activists who want to seem relevant must coordinate around helping the “better team” win office. The “better team” becomes “our team.” Our naive realism dictates that “we see the world as it is.” A corollary is that “reasonable, smart, good people will see things the same way.”  Upon discovering that someone sees things differently, we first suppose they are uninformed. So we try to inform them. If they find our information less than compelling, we *infer* that they are stupid, evil, greedy, crazy, etc. “Yikes!”, we think. This amplifies the importance of winning control by whatever means necessary.

On path #2: In this path, once again, the big picture Rawlsekian vision is articulated by idea-entrepreneurs, but with a focus on Rawlsekian policy-making institutions rather than policies. Opinion-leaders again find the vision compelling. Opinion-leaders influence both pivotal policy-makers and pivotal voters to some degree. Pivotal policy-makers and pivotal voters support more Rawlsekian policy-making institutions. Once they are chosen, they are hard to change, even if voters and policy-makers “forget” why they were chosen in the first place. These policy-making institutions pick policies that deliver the goods.

Challenges on path #2. The challenge on this path at “step a” is the same as the challenges on the first path at “step b.” It is hard get the Rawlsekian policy-making institutions adopted in the first place, but if they are, then the on-going choice of Rawlsekian policies is relatively easy.

On path #3. In this path, the ideas don’t have to drive the reform. The Rawlsekian policy-making institutions are adopted for non-consequentialist reasons, or at least reasons that have little to do with the Rawlsekian consequences. Decision-makers in the status quo implement Rawlsekian policy-making institutions for selfish, myopic reasons. Citizens at large support them because they have appealing procedural fairness properties. It’s a “bootlegger and baptist” coalition for good. Once they are chosen, policy-making institutions are hard to change, even if voters and policy-makers did not or do not appreciate the full benefits of choosing them. These Rawlsekian policy-making institutions pick policies that deliver the goods.

Challenges on path #3. The challenge at “step a” is to build a coalition of selfish term-limited incumbents, fairness-minded moderates, and those who — temporarily at least — expect to lose a winner-take-all election.

I need to do another post on why I think the turn-taking institution would lead to the choice of Rawlsekian policies, though this post and this post offer some preview of that…

In the long term, this may lead to a centrist reform coalition coordinated on coupling a dynamic market economy AND a robust but affordable social safety net; on coupling a strong military AND strict rules of engagement; and on coupling more negative AND positive individual liberties in social policy.

But for now, the focus is on articulating the modern and classical liberal common ground.

In this post, I supply some background links. In my next post, I discuss one path from here to there, where “there” is “a centrist reform coalition initiating and sustaining policy.”

Some descriptions of the project:

1. Brink’s initial article on the idea, “Liberaltarianism“, originally published in The New Republic online December 4th, 2006.

2. Some of Will’s blog commentary on the idea: “Is Rawlsekianism the Future?“, December 2006;  “Liberaltarianism Back to the Future”, May 2008; and “Liberaltarian Reactions”, February 2009.

3. Brink’s review — “Another Culture War? No Thanks” — of the new Arthur Brooks book, The Battle: How the Fight between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future, published in the American Prospect last Friday, July 2nd, 2010.

Some criticisms of the project:

1. Libertarians don’t see compromise with liberals as advantageous. Most libertarians are focused on economic policy (where they align better with Republicans) than on social and foreign policy (where they align better with Democrats). This point is made by Bruce Bartlett in “Liberaltarians?” Forbes, May 28th, 2009; and by Jonah Goldberg in “Whither Liberaltarianism?” NRO, February 11th, 2009.

2. Liberals don’t see compromise with libertarians as advantageous. Liberals and libertarians could rally around their dislike of the Bush administration. But liberals didn’t need libertarians to win (and couldn’t count on them anyway), and so they prudently cater to their base. This point is made by Matt Welch in “The Liberaltarian Jackalope“, Reason, April 2009; and by Ed Kilgore in “It’s You, Not Me: Liberals and Libertarians Finally Break Up,” in The New Republic, February 12th, 2010.

3. Liberals and libertarians have no way to enforce mutually advantageous policy compromises. This is a point made by Brink himself. Here is Bryan Caplan’s account of that: “What I Told the Liberaltarians“, July 22nd, 2009.

Some responses to these criticisms:

The project is about articulating the liberal common ground, not about forming a short-run tactical alliance. Will Wilkinson: “Missing the Point of Liberaltarianism.” February 11th, 2009. Also: “The Hope and Horror of Liberaltarian Alignments.” February 16th, 2009. Also: “Could Liberaltarianism Matter?” April 8th, 2010. As I understand it, Brink and Will are working on a book-length treatment of the idea, which will include a refined proposal as well as a reply to critics. Look for it!

My take: Liberaltarians are crafting policy compromises that could be broadly advantageous if initiated and sustained, but we lack institutional means to do that. In my next post, I lay out why I think turn-taking institutions offer a potential pathway to quasi-liberaltarian outcomes…

While there are triggers conducive to reform in general (e.g. “crisis”), here I focus on two triggers that are particular to the transition into the turn-taking institution.

Trigger #1: A term-limited incumbent. A term-limited incumbent who is popular enough to win reelection but not popular enough to repeal term limits could form a supermajority coalition around at once (a) repealing term limits AND (b) adopting the turn-taking institution. The incumbent gets the chance to stay on in alternate years, the opposition gets greater assurance they will have their turn.

Consider U.S. cities. As a back-of-the-envelope calculation, (i) there are roughly 20K cities; (ii) suppose all have mayors; (iii) roughly 10% or 2K have term limits; (iv) of these, suppose all are limited to eight years, and (v) that all elected mayors make it to the limit but would want to run again. That would mean roughly 2,000/8 = 250 triggers per year. Take 25 triggers per year as a more conservative estimate. High profile examples would include New York, Atlanta, and New Orleans.

Consider the U.S. states: (i) roughly 70% or 35 U.S. states have gubernatorial term limits; (ii) of these, suppose all are limited to eight years, and (iii) that all elected governors make it to the limit but would want to run again. That would mean roughly 35/8 = ~4 triggers per year. More conservatively, there might be one trigger every two or three years. High profile examples would include California, Florida, Virginia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, etc.

Internationally, (i) roughly 50 countries have presidential term limits, (ii) of these, suppose all are limited to ten years, and (iii) that all elected presidents make it to the limit but would want to run again. That would mean roughly 50/10 = ~5 triggers per year. High profile examples would include the U.S., Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Nigeria, Kenya, Afghanistan, and Iran.

Trigger #2: Top two candidates in dead heat or deadlock. Candidates from the top two opposing parties could form a supermajority reform coalition either (i) as *insurance* before a close election, or (ii) as a way of resolving a deadlock after an election.

In the run-up to a close election, the risk-averse on both sides may prefer a guarantee of half of the term rather than a 50-50 shot at winning all of the term. Unfortunately, partisans tend to be excessively optimistic about their chances of winning. If both sides feel almost certain they will win the whole term if there is no reform, then a guarantee of half of the term will not have the same appeal.

If the election is still too close to call after election day, there is relatively less scope for partisan optimism. Either side could win the recounts, and the side that does win still won’t have the same mandate or legitimacy that they would have had from a clear victory.

Consider U.S. cities again. As a back-of-the-envelope calculation, (i) there are roughly 20K cities; (ii) suppose all have mayors; (iii) suppose the elections are, on average, four years apart; and (iv) roughly 1% of these are deadlocked up to and through election day. That would mean roughly (20,000/4)*.01 = 50 triggers per year.

And so on and so forth.

Recent deadlocks at the presidential level would include the U.S. (2000), Mexico (2006), Kenya (2007), Zimbabwe (2008), Iran (2009), etc.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Many reformers try to sell reforms entirely on the basis of their long term benefits. This is like trying to start a fire by setting the spark directly to the log, without tinder or kindling. A good reform (e.g. the turn-taking institution) solves immediate problems for decision-makers in the status quo. This is the trigger for the transition. Longer term benefits emerge as a by-product or bonus.

1. This video is a thing of beauty.

2. I want Larry to make another video that addresses the problem upstream of this one. That is, why do people spend so much money (and time, attention, blood, sweat and tears) on politics? The simple answer is: “Because there is so much at stake.”

3. A wise man would ask: should we hack at the branches or strike at the root?

4. Striking at the root (i.e. lowering the stakes) often means restricting the scope of power. But many restrictions on the scope of power don’t work. Constitutions are not self-enforcing.

5. The trick is to find a simple, fair procedure that lowers the stakes and makes it easier to enforce broadly beneficial self-restraint.

For now, I want to share a thought about the myth that inspired the title of Beinart’s book: that of Daedalus and his son Icarus.

Quick review. King Minos hires the brilliant Daedalus to design the labyrinth that would house the Minotaur. Once the labyrinth is complete, the ungrateful Minos imprisons Daedalus and his son Icarus so as to keep Daedalus from sharing the secret of its design. To escape, Daedalus fashions two pairs of wings made of feathers, wax and wood. Daedalus warns Icarus not to fly too high (lest the sun melt the wax that holds the feathers to the wood), nor too low (lest the sea foam soak the feathers and weigh them down). The two successfully take flight. Icarus is overcome by the exhilaration of flight, and climbs higher and higher, ignoring his father’s counsel. Sure enough, the sun melts the wax that holds the feathers to the frame, and he plunges to his watery grave. Daedalus sadly flaps off to his freedom. The end.

The standard reading is that the hubris of Icarus led to his downfall. A different take would be that Daedalus drowned Icarus. Not intentionally, of course. Still, Daedalus is foolish for expecting Icarus to heed his counsel even as Icarus is foolish for ignoring his counsel. At least Apollo tried to dissuade his son Phaethon from taking the Chariot of the Sun for a spin.

My take: The moral of the story is not only that hubris is typically bad, but also that persuasion typically does little to dampen it. When it comes to making policy (foreign policy or otherwise), we should be thinking of ways of harvesting the hubris that inevitably sprouts up, rather than hoping to salt the ground by imploring people to be humble. Economists have thought a lot about harvesting self-interest, but only a little about harvesting self-love…

The old way was to have partisan primaries and a general election open only to winners of a partisan primary and to independents. The new way is to have a single open primary, from which only the top two vote-getters advance to a general election run-off. The figure below (source here) displays the differences.

I find it encouraging that those who proposed and passed Prop 14 have traced California’s recent political problems back to the electoral process itself. This is a cut above “throwing the bums out.” We need to throw out the way we throw the bums out.

But the idea is to replace it with something better. Even with Prop 14, the stakes of winning the general election will remain high, and candidates will discover the best way to win is to appeal fiercely to their partisan base and activists, to special interests, and to swing voters. Prop 14 is a step in the right direction, but it is a very small step.

For all the sound and fury of its proponents and detractors, you wouldn’t know so. Jesse McKinley’s article on Prop 14 in the New York Times begins like this: “The time for tinkering is done. / That was the message Californians sent when they voted Tuesday to radically rejigger elections in the nation’s most populous state.”

My take: The time for tinkering is done, but the tinkering goes on anyway…

Coming soon: A post on why those who are “pro” and those who are “anti” Prop 14 over-perceive and over-state their differences.

Survival-oriented politicians (a la Anthony Downs, Donald Horowitz, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and co-authors, etc.) seek to appeal to roughly three groups: (i) special interests (a la Mancur Olson, Gordon Tullock, Anne Krueger, etc.), (ii) voters who are often ignorant and irrational (a la Anthony Downs, Geoff Brennan, Loren Lomasky, Bryan Caplan, etc.), and (iii) dogmatic and ideologically divided elites (a la Philip Converse, Jeff Friedman, etc.). Moreover they do so in a world where policies have complex, lagged, interdependent, diffuse consequences (a la F.A. Hayek, Robert Jervis, Jeff Friedman, etc.), and where there is no third party enforcer to make it easy to credibly commit to reform (a la Doug North, Barry Weingast, Russell Hardin, Jon Elster).

So initiating and sustaining reform from the inside is tricky.

As a result, I am very, very sympathetic to the ideas of Paul Romer, Patri Friedman, Lant Pritchett, and others who think the most important thing we can do to improve human well-being in the immediate future is to create low-cost “exit options” out of failing states and into better governed alternatives. There are important differences between each of them, but the common thread is the most important! All hail the exit option!

I will try to celebrate the different ways in which these thinkers propose we bulk up “exit options” in later posts…

Meanwhile, however, I STILL think there are under-appreciated ways to reform the Pyramid of Misrule…

Of course, even if there were a magic button on top of the Pyramid that — if pressed — would dissolve the Pyramid in favor of on-going good government happily ever after, there would still need to be a reason why survival-oriented politicians would want to press it in the first place. Even if reform were workable, would leaders be willing and able to choose it in the status quo? My answer is “yes, willing and yes, able.” More on this point to come…

That’s an outtake from today’s Washington Post article, “In Africa, 50th anniversary of independence is an occasion to celebrate, lament.” Read the whole thing…

Hat tip to Michael Weintraub.

Anyway, here is the abstract for the working paper that applies divide-and-choose to electoral politics:

High stakes winner-take-all elections provide incentives for both teams of office-seekers to engage in socially costly behavior. Variants of the “divide and choose” mechanism can be applied to zero out the stakes in sufficiently close elections. The Divider divides the term into two pieces; the Chooser picks which piece he prefers. In the baseline model, the Divider divides the term into two turns of equal value to him, and the Chooser picks the turn he values more. The paper compares three rules: the first-place team (1) is assigned the Divider role, (2) is assigned the Chooser role, and (3) gets to choose its role. Applications to the consolidation of democracy and the extent of distributive conflict within consolidated democracies are discussed.

Disclaimer. Simply taking alternate years in office is much simpler, more predictable and more conducive to cooperation in policy-making. These divide-and-choose mechanisms may be too clever by half. But they nonetheless illustrate the principle that it is possible to zero out the stakes of electoral conflict as they are perceived by the office-seekers themselves.

Extensions. It’s easy to imagine hybrids between these divide-and-choose mechanisms and the alternate-year mechanisms. The Divider divides the first two years into two pieces. It is stipulated that the third year goes with the first piece, and the fourth year goes with the second. The Chooser picks whether he prefers to go first or second. And so forth…

That last part is important. People are fond of pointing out that — as the decades roll by — winner-take-all elections can lead to a kind of proportional representation through time. This is true but irrelevant. The trick is to create proportional representation through time within the time-frame that does most to shape our hopes and fears.

As a toy example, if people bracket off everything that is more than four years out in the future as too inscrutable to matter, then winning or losing a four-year election means winning or losing for as far as the eye can see. In this case, electoral victories should bring ecstasy and electoral defeats should bring agony.

By contrast, with a turn-taking institution the first-place team could take the first and third years, and the runner-up the second and fourth years. Roughly equal parties get roughly equal shares of time in office. Here citizens should be relatively indifferent between first and second place, even if they intensely prefer to be “in” rather than “out” of office.

Why is this desirable? Three reasons.

1. It lowers the stakes of electoral conflict going INTO the election. The stakes = the marginal benefit of being in first place rather than second place. The higher the stakes, the more intense the conflict over winning control. When office-seekers perceive the stakes  to be high, they target “spoils” at well informed pivotal supporters, and “symbols” at poorly informed pivotal supporters. When citizens perceive the stakes to be high, they are more likely to suppress their doubts and dissent, and march in step to defeat the common enemy. A good institution encourages equals who disagree to chill out.
2. It sustains cooperation AFTER the election. Trust arises where there is trustworthiness. Trustworthiness arises where there are on-going opportunities for reciprocity and mutual adjustment. A team who expects to be in office for a disproportionate amount of the immediate future loses more than it gains from cooperation. Other things equal, the gains from cooperation are greatest when each side expects to be in the “in” and “out” role in equal amounts in the immediate future. A good institution encourages equals who disagree to treat one another as they want to be treated.
3. It fosters a culture of self-restraint among citizens at large. In Federalist #10, Madison warned that “enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” And for this reason we should be interested in limits on the scope of power. But ask the co-partisans of any recently elected executive, “Will we have an enlightened statesman at the helm for the near future?” and you will hear some variant of, “You should have seen the self-serving idiot he beat out.” Of course, you would hear a very different account from the opposition. On the margin, we are all more self-serving and idiotic than we would like to believe. Our enemies see us better than we see ourselves. Even if they err on the too-negative side, their error is smaller than our error on the too-positive side. A good institution encourages equals who disagree to balance out their overly-positive self-assessments with the overly-negative assessments of the other.

The standard criteria in electoral systems design focus on *how to get people to reveal their preferences with their votes,* and *how to aggregate votes to pick the best candidate.* This is a fine place to start the inquiry, it seems to me, but a bad place to stop it. More on this point to come…

“[Two girls] have a cake yet undivided, which was given between them: that each of hem therefore might have that which is due, ‘Divide,’ says one to the other, ‘and I will choose; or let me divide, and you shall choose.’ If this be but once agreed upon, it is enough; for the divident, dividing unequally, loses, in regard that the other takes the better half. Wherefore she divides equally, and so both have right. ‘Oh, the depth of the wisdom of God.’ And yet ‘by the mouths of babes and sucklings has He set forth His strength;’ that which great philosophers are disputing upon in vain is brought to light by two harmless girls, even the whole mystery of a commonwealth, which lies only in dividing and choosing.”

When I was ten, a man who worked with my dad, Brad, told me a story related to the “divide and choose” mechanism. When Brad was roughly my age (at the time), a new girl had moved in across the street. On their first play date, he refused to let her to use any of his Lincoln Logs, and she ran home crying. His mother, embarrassed by his behavior, made him give her half of his collection of Lincoln Logs. He kept his Lincoln Logs in two big buckets. He was supposed to give her one full bucket. He went angrily back to his room. He filled one bucket with the less desirable one or two notch pieces, but sprinkled some of the *choice* three and four notch pieces on top. His mother caught him at this, and made him keep the worse bucket for himself and give the better bucket to the neighbor!

This was the same trick (i.e. the “trick at Mecone”) that — in Hesiod’s Theogeny – first got Prometheus in trouble with Zeus. The rest is history. Prometheus tricks Zeus => Zeus takes fire from humankind as punishment => Prometheus steals it back => Zeus has Prometheus chained to the rock where the eagle comes very day and eats out his liver. Moral of the story: don’t try to game “divide and choose.”