Political Science

A few months ago, I posted a draft article on Politics and the Internet that was forthcoming in the _Annual Review of Political Science._ The final version is now out, and available (via a paywall passthrough: let me know if this doesn’t work for you) here – with acknowledgment to Crooked Timber readers for the helpful suggestions that you all gave me. Again, thanks.

bq. Political scientists are only now beginning to come to terms with the importance of the Internet to politics. The most promising way to study the Internet is to look at the role that causal mechanisms such as the lowering of transaction costs, homophilous sorting, and preference falsification play in intermediating between specific aspects of the Internet and political outcomes. This will allow scholars to disentangle the relevant causal relationships and contribute to important present debates over whether the Internet exacerbates polarization in the United States, and whether social media helped pave the way toward the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011. Over time, ever fewer political scientists are likely to study the Internet as such, as it becomes more and more a part of everyday political life. However, integrating the Internet’s effects with present debates over politics, and taking proper advantage of the extraordinary data that it can provide, requires good causal arguments and attention to their underlying mechanisms.

Let me begin with an apology—for two things, actually. First, for the fact this response to the seminar on my debt book was so long in coming. It happening that at the time the seminar was going on I was desperately trying to finish a book with a very firm deadline (not to mention I was also struggling with a flu, which added all sorts of interesting complications. I did finish it though. Only just.) Second, for the fact that, to make up for the delay, I seem to have overcompensated and the response became… well, as you can see, a little long.

Sorry.

Allow me also to remark as well how flattered I am by so much of this discussion. When I wrote the book it never occurred to me I would end up being compared with the likes of Polanyi, Nietzsche, or even Ernest Mandel. I shall try very hard not to let this go to my head. Now how shall I start? It would be ungracious not to respond to each in some way. But I think it might be best to start by clarifying a few issues that seem to crop up pretty frequently, both in this seminar and in other reviews and comments I’ve seen on the internet. Then I will take on the specific responses.
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I’ve just sent back the proofs for the new edition of Rousseau’s _Of the Social Contract and Other Political Writings_ (edited Bertram, translated Quintin Hoare) that Penguin Classics are publishing in September. One of the “other writings” is the _Constitutional Proposal for Corsica_ . Reading through, I suddenly alighted on an sentence and thought, “hang on, that makes no sense!” The relevant phrase in French (OC3: 936) is

bq. …quand le Prince hausse les monnoyes il en retire l’avantage reel de voler ses créanciers …

For which we had

bq. …when the Prince raises the value of a currency he derives the real advantage of stealing from his creditors …

But, but …. Surely what the prince needs to do to steal from his creditors is the exact opposite? You inflate. You inflate away the debt. You make the currency worth less, not more. Isn’t Rousseau just writing nonsense then?

It turns out not, and, thanks to the help of the estimable Chris Brooke I now understand. My thinking on this, and that of just about all modern readers I suspect, is formed by thinking of fiat currency. But if we have currency that (purportedly) derives its value from its metallic content (such as gold) then you can debase the coinage by raising its _face value_ whilst keeping the metal content the same. (Or alternatively, you could adulterate the metal or clip the coin to get the same effect.) Finding out this kind of thing really is great fun.

Here’s a nice profile in the Guardian of my colleague Dave Brady, who was in London recently talking about poverty and social policy:

Brady’s response is that we need to rebuild trust in a welfare state that everyone feels they benefit from. The problem he sees developing in Britain is similar to the situation that exists in the US, where welfare is now only for the very poorest people.

“The more [that] ‘welfare’ is a broad portfolio of social policy to help people across the life span, the more effective it is at reducing poverty,” he explains.

“If you create a small constituency of beneficiaries that doesn’t have broad-based political support, it’s harder to mobilise in support of those benefits.”

For evidence, Brady points out, look no further than the ease with which the welfare reform bill got through parliament compared with the ferocious fight the coalition government has had to get the health bill on to the statute book.

Unluckily for me, Dave will soon be heading off to Berlin to be a director at the WZB, despite the city’s near-total absence of quality baseball.

Since it’s starting to “filter”:http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/economics-in-the-crisis/?pagewanted=all into “debate”:http://modeledbehavior.com/2012/03/06/in-which-i-am-won-over-by-paul-krugman/, it’s probably time that the paper that John Quiggin and I have written on Keynesianism in the Great Recession be released into the wild. It’s currently under journal review, but still has some holes (we figured it was at the stage where it would be helpful to have reviewers point out what we needed to do rather than try to model their likely responses internally). So, it’s here for downloading – and criticisms, comments and suggestions for improvements will be gratefully received. NB that both John and I have participated in this debate – but we have tried, as best as we can, to look at what happened not from the perspective of whether the people who were winning at any one point in time _deserved_ to win or not according to our subjective criteria, but instead, whether there are general explanations (independent of the quality of the arguments on the one side or the other) for the influence of different arguments at different times. In short, we’ve tried to write a paper about what happened, and why, rather than what should have happened. NB also, that we are aware of some holes (e.g. the fit between some of the theory, and the practical application is not as tight as we would like), and would love to hear suggestions for improvements.

Update: It would be particularly interesting to hear from people with strong, divergent perspectives, so as to make sure that the piece reflects as much information and as many points of view as possible. People should also feel free to email me at keynespaper@henryfarrell.net if they would prefer to make criticisms or suggestions privately rather than in public.

David Graeber’s three social principles – hierarchy, exchange and communism – are useful devices to think about the world, particularly when you become sensitized to the way in which one can turn into or mask another. One site of human interaction that may be illuminated by Graeber’s principles is the modern university: perhaps especially the British version which has evolved from nominally democratic modes of governance to extremely hierarchical ones within a generation.
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David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years begins with a conversation in a London churchyard about debt and morality and takes us all the way from ancient Sumeria, through Roman slavery, the vast empires of the “Axial age”, medieval monasteries, New World conquest and slavery to the 2008 financial collapse. The breadth of material Graeber covers is extraordinarily impressive and, though anchored in the perspective of social anthropology, he also draws on economics and finance, law, history, classics, sociology and the history of ideas. I’m guessing that most of us can’t keep up and that we lack, to some degree, his erudition and multidisciplinary competence. Anyway, I do. But I hope that a Crooked Timber symposium can draw on experts and scholars from enough of these different disciplines to provide some critical perspective. My own background is in political philosophy and the history of political thought: so that naturally informs my own reactions as do my political engagements and sympathies. So mine is merely one take on some of the book’s themes.

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Last week’s nef event on shorter working week, which I blogged about a few days ago, is now available to watch via the LSE channel. Enjoy.

David Cameron’s use of the veto in the recent EU summit opens an era of deep uncertainty (and possible catastrophe) for British and European politics. Two things seem to be true: Cameron is an incompetent opportunist in thrall to his backbenchers and the proposed treaty is a disaster for the Eurozone countries themselves. The fact that it is a disaster (a fact recognized by Francois Hollande’s declared intention to renegotiate) might seem to give some support to Cameron. But of course it doesn’t, since the remaining 26 countries will just go ahead without the UK. All Cameron has done is isolate and exclude himself. As one MEP is reported as saying today, “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”

Cameron vetoed the proposed EU treaty on the basis, or pretext, that other countries wouldn’t agree to “safeguards” for the City of London. The reason he was asking for these was essentially just because his backbenchers had demanded he show the “bulldog spirit” and, since EU treaties need unanimity, he thought he could extract some symbolic gain to satisfy them. He didn’t clear this with Merkel or Sarkozy in advance and would have been inhibited in doing so because the British Tories withdrew from the mainstream Euro conservative grouping in order to hob-nob with a bunch of extreme nutters and anti-semites. Sarkozy, who wanted a more integrated core Europe without Britain in any case, took the opportunity to call Cameron’s bluff. All very good for Sarko in the run-up the the Presidential elections. Exit Cameron stage right, claiming to have stood up to the EU – and getting praised by the UK’s tabloid press and an opinion-poll boost – but actually exposing the City to further regulation under qualified majority voting. He’s also chucked away decades of British policy which favoured EU expansion with the new accession countries serving as a counterweight to the Franco-German axis. Where are the other countries now? Lined up with the French and Germans.

The Euro treaty itself, assuming it goes ahead as planned and is enforced, mandates balanced budgets and empowers the Eurocrats to vet national budgets and punish offenders. Social democracy is thereby effectively rendered illegal in the Eurozone in both its “social” and “democracy” aspects. Daniel put it “thus”:https://crookedtimber.org/2011/12/09/euro-kremlinology/comment-page-2/#comment-391547 :

bq. a takeover of Europe by the neoliberal “permanent government” who failed to get their way by democratic means. All of the nationalism and anti-German sentiment is a distraction from the real scandal here. The ‘technocrats’ (which is apparently what they want to be called, although frankly I am seeing a lot of ideology and not much technical ability) want to reorganise the whole of Europe on neoliberal lines (ironically, to basically replicate the Irish economic transformation

One might think, then, that the left should be happy to be well away from it and that Cameron has inadvertently done us a favour. However, the short-term consequences in British politics could well be awful. My worst-case fantasy scenario has Cameron calling a snap General Election on nationalist themes, getting a majority dominated by swivel-eyed propertarian xenophobes and dismantling the welfare state, the Health Service, the BBC etc. Riots and civil disorder would be met with force, and those driven to resistance or crime would be incarcerated in giant new prisons. The Scots would then, understandably, opt for independence, and England and Wales would be left at the mercy of the crazies for several decades. Texas-on-Thames, in short.

And Nick Clegg? Well I wonder if even Daragh McDowell will make a case for him now.

No, I’m not thinking about our Daniel. I’m working up to a proper follow-up to my conservative cognitive dissonance posts. This isn’t really it, alas, but it’s a start.

It makes no sense for conservatives like Jim Geraghty to express this sort of concern about the booing of Stephen Hill at the GOP debate. (Hill is, as you probably know, the gay soldier who asked about DADT):

Rereading the transcript of last night’s debate, I am struck that Rick Santorum did not thank Stephen Hill, a gay soldier in the U.S. Army currently in Iraq, for his service. Nor did anyone else on that stage.

Whatever you think of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” or homosexuality, Hill is risking his life on behalf of his country.

And for sure it doesn’t make sense for Santorum himself to have responded to subsequent questions about the booing, like so: [click to continue…]

It isn’t a good thing to have contradictory beliefs. Since I’ve notice what appear to be such beliefs in myself recently, I thought I’d share, both because I guess that there are others out there who also have them, and in the hope that Crooked Timber’s community of readers can tell either that I should discard some of them (on grounds of falsity) or that I’m wrong to think them contradictory. So here goes.

Belief 1: As a keen reader of Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong (yes, really), our own John Quiggin and other left-leaning econobloggers, I believe that most Western economies need a stimulus to growth, that austerity will be counterproductive, and that without growth the debt burden will worsen and the jobs crisis will get deeper.

Belief 2: As someone concerned about the environment, I believe that growth, as most people understand it, is unsustainable at anything like recent rates. Sure, more efficient technologies can reduce the environmental impacts of each unit of consumption, but unless we halt or limit growth severely, we’ll continue to do serious damage. There are some possibilities for switching to less damaging technologies or changing consumption patterns away from goods whose production causes serious damage, but the transition times are likely to be long and the environmental crisis is urgent.

Belief 3: Some parts of the world are just too poor to eschew growth. People in those parts of the world need more stuff just to lift them out of absolute poverty. It is morally urgent to lift everyone above the threshold where they can live decent lives. If anyone should get to grow their consumption absolutely, it needs to be those people, not us.

Belief 4: The relative (and sometimes absolute) poverty that some citizens of wealthy countries suffer from is abhorrent, and is inconsistent with the status equality that ought to hold among fellow-citizens of democratic nations. We ought to lift those people out of poverty.

If I were to attempt a reconciliation, I’d say that this suggests zero or negative growth in material consumption for the wealthier countries but a massive programme of wealth redistribution among citizens at something like the current level of national income, coupled with a commitment to channel further technological progress into (a) more free time (and some job sharing) or a shift in the mix of activity towards non-damaging services, like education (b) switching to green technologies (c) assistance to other nations below the poverty threshold. All of those things need mechanisms of course if they’re to happen — and I’m a bit light on those if I’m honest, outside of the obvious tax-and-transfer. What we don’t need is more in the way of “incentives” to already-rich supposed “wealth creators” and the like. What we certainly don’t need is a strategy that purports to assist the worst off in the wealthiest countries by boosting economic activity without regard to the type of activity it is, in the hope that this gives people jobs and, you know, rising tides, trickling down and all that rigmarole. The trouble is that Belief 1, which I instinctively get behind when listening to the austerity-mongers, is basically the same old tune that the right-wing of social democracy has been humming all these years. It is just about the only thing that will fly for the left politically in a time of fear, joblessness and falling living standards, but it seems particularly hard to hold onto if you take Belief 2 seriously.

Two weeks ago I made a post that was as comprehensively misunderstood, relative to my intent, as anything I have written in quite a while. So let me try again. I meant to assert the following:

1) Sometimes Republicans (conservatives) make loud, radical, extreme ‘philosophical’ claims they don’t really mean. Democrats (liberals), on the other hand, don’t ever really do this.

I was interpreted by some as asserting the following:

2) Invariably, whenever Republicans (conservatives) seem to say something crazy or radical, they don’t mean it. They are always moderates about everything. In fact, they are liberals. We can ignore any appearances to the contrary.

Well, I for sure didn’t mean 2. Crikey.

In general, the way to keep 1 clear of 2 is by applications of ‘some’, and appropriate cognates. (I’m saying that sometimes Republicans/conservatives do something that Democrats/liberals never do, not that Republicans/conservatives never don’t do this thing that Democrats/liberals never do.) It may be that my original post was insufficiently slathered with ‘some’. For present post purposes, if I should ever seem to be saying 2), add ‘some’ until it turns into some variant on 1). On we go. [click to continue…]

I’ve been buried in seclusion the last several days, trying to get a review article on the consequences of the Internet for politics (from a political science perspective) finished. Obviously, this is far too large an undertaking for a 12,000 word piece, so I’ve concentrated on two debates – arguments over the Internet and political polarization, and arguments over the putative role of the Internet in the Arab Spring. An initial draft is available here – comments and criticisms welcome (I’m already aware of, and planning to fix, the slightly ropy bibliography, the tendency to grossly over-use the word “plausibly” and the unexplained switch from discussion of ‘sorting’ in the opening section to ‘homophily’ in the main text). This is a topic where there are relevant literatures in political science, sociology, communications studies, and computer science that overlap without necessarily talking to each other that well. I’ve tried to gather as much as I can from across these disciplines, but am sure that there is plenty of material out there that I am unaware of.

Brief thoughts about that Bill Keller op-ed on candidates’ religions, and the kerfuffle that kicked up. But only by way of kicking off in the direction of what’s really going on here. The religion stuff needs a more general frame.

Keller is just being reasonable. If candidates say ‘my faith is a private matter and all that need concern the voters is how I will conduct myself in office,’ fine. But if candidates play up faith, for political advantage; if they announce that their religious views and values inform their political views and policy proposals, then obviously that makes religion fair game. Because in politics, your politics has to be fair game. Keller’s critics suggest that arriving at any such conclusion is tantamount to proposing something like a religious test for public office. Or worse! It’s an attempt to ban Christians from public life! But no. He’s only ruling out one or another of a couple possible norms that are so absurd that no one would ever advocate them explicitly. That you can’t fault politicians for concealing their policy objectives, so long as the politicians favor the policy on religious grounds. Or that you can’t fault politicians’ policy proposals, period, so long as they advocate the policy on religious grounds. Something like that. That’s nuts, so Keller is just being reasonable.

But, like I said, I don’t think this is the right way to think about this issue. For one thing, it misses that the religious case is just a special case of a more general phenomenon. Let me switch over to a question Kevin Drum asked last week: why do Republicans get a free pass? He’s absolutely right that they do. [click to continue…]