I've spent a lot of time working for think tanks, working with think tanks, and consuming the output of think tanks both while in government and outsiI've spent a lot of time working for think tanks, working with think tanks, and consuming the output of think tanks both while in government and outside it. And I still learned an enormous amount from this book. The overall story is familiar to people who have paid a lot of attention: as government grew the demand for expertise grew, for a while this was satisfied by ostensibly "neutral" and "non partisan" sources like universities, RAND, Brookings, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Congressional Research Service (CRS), etc. But then the conservative movement decided these were all actually liberal sources so it set up the Heritage Foundation as a counterweight, the first think tank that was explicitly partisan as well as emphasized communications and relations on Capital Hill. This was the creation of an alternative conservative "knowledge regime." Then progressives set up the Center for American Progress as a counterweight to Heritage, in part mirrored on its rapid response, easily digestible information and relations with Congress and the media. The book also intensively studies two other think tanks it considers "partisan," the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). It considers a range of others as well.
What makes the book novel is how much original data and analytics it brings to bear on a range of questions as well as a little bit more political and international context. For example, the American system is contrasted to many other countries which have explicit party think tanks that serve the party. Here the think tanks that work on a range of issues have both spare capacity to devote to the topic of the day (rather than narrower think tanks) as well as can help parties prioritize and set the agenda. One of the books more audacious claims is that partisan think tanks have played a meaningful role in polarization by supplying each side with different facts and interpretations. That the difference between the parties is less normative than the way they read the positive analysis and data.
There was some intriguing data that coded the distribution of policy papers by think tanks showing that they are skewed towards partisan topics when measured against the CRS. For example, think tanks do little on public lands, agriculture, transportation and science relative to CRS but they do a lot on health, civil rights and macroeconomics. The book also shows empirical evidence that issues partisan think tanks devote more attention to (as measured by white papers, citations by members of Congress, and testimony) are more polarized--although it is unclear what is cause and what is effect.
Other intriguing data documented the decline of witnesses at Congressional hearings from universities and "non-partisan" sources and the increase in witnesses from partisan think tanks.
The book differentiates between the think tanks. Left ones are more inclined to cite university research and accept/interpret/repackage CBO numbers. Right ones are less inclined to cite university research and do more of their own modeling. In his case studies Fagan finds that both Heritage and CAP produce biased estimates of policy but CBPP does not. He is particularly scathing on the role that money has played in shifting conservatives on the topic of climate change.
One of the weaknesses of the book was that it implicitly assumed that think tanks were the exogenous, independent variable causing lots of stuff as opposed to taking more seriously the ways in which they were reflecting and internalizing changes in the political system. How much were they driving politicians or supplying what they wanted? The book does provide some time series evidence on this issue but for a variety of reasons I was not completely convinced. Perhaps a bigger one is that it probably does too much to accept the neutrality of universities, Brookings, and the "non partisan" knowledge regime. While Heritage dramatically overstated their case against all of this they were not completely wrong. Which also means that CAP citing academic research more than Heritage does is partly a reflection of CAP being more scientific but also partly because scientists are more liberal.
I also would love to read Fagan's thoughts and analysis on what has happened more recently. In effect the book is about the period the data covers, from the 1970s through about five years ago. But since then the Roosevelt Institute has, for example, played a big role in staffing the Biden administration on economic policy. Other groups, like Groundwork Collaborative, are challenging the approach of more traditional progressive think tanks. These are barely, if at all, mentioned in the book which does give a little more attention to the alternative right-of-center think tanks like Niskanen. But hopefully this is not Fagan's last word on this topic....more
This comparative study at the intersection of history, sociology and politics seeks to understand why unions workers, specifically Steelworkers in WesThis comparative study at the intersection of history, sociology and politics seeks to understand why unions workers, specifically Steelworkers in Western Pennsylvania, have shifted from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party over the last seventy years, with most of the shift concentrated in the last two decades. Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol tell a rich and nuanced story while bringing lots of new data to the fore, including systematic cataloging of changes in union newsletters/newspapers over time, tallies of bumper stickers in a Steelworkers parking lot, extensive interviews, as well as synthesizing other scholarship.
Their argument in part rests on the familiar story of deindustrialization and the effects it had on employment and communities. The novel twist, which they develop and emphasize, is that this ended up shifting unions from being at the center of a rich social network that fostered social events and ties to unions being simply about collective bargaining. For example, when everyone lived in one town the local could organize bbqs, sporting events and the like--but with sparser employment people started commuting much longer distances to their jobs and were less likely to have social ties to co-workers or through the union. This vacuum ended up being filled by other associations, like the National Rifle Association, that often connected people to the Republican Party, particularly the ascendant populist strain under Trump.
Some of their argument is bolstered by an interesting contrast between the United Steelworkers (USW) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). People in the building trades move from job to job so the union plays an important role in allocating the jobs but also is more active in fostering ties because of what would otherwise be a very lonely way to operate.
A lot of social scientists are content with just documenting and explain but Newman and Skocpol seek to provide advice to labor leaders (who still support Democrats) about how to bring their rank and file along, most notably through trying to resuscitate some of the richer social ties. They also have a plea to Democrats not to give up on this group and instead more actively court and engage it.
Overall, this was a really enjoyable and enlightening read that brought a lot of new data into the world. Ultimately, however, it documents a series of associations and sequences of events so cannot settle questions of causation. The atomization of workers is a consequence of deindustrialization but is it itself a cause of shifting party affiliations? Or is the deindustrialization also the cause of that? And the advice to union leaders is worth a try but there are, as they document, very good reasons unions no longer serve the social functions they used to and so it may be fruitless to try to bring that back....more
There is so much not to like in this book that I feel like I need to write a well organized essay about it at some point rather than these quick slapdThere is so much not to like in this book that I feel like I need to write a well organized essay about it at some point rather than these quick slapdash notes. But for now all I have are these quick slapdash notes.
That is not to say the entire book is wrong, much of it is right and important--but none of what is right and important is particularly novel, it is in fact common fare on the oped pages of major publications, like inequality has risen, opportunity is not as high as many think, elite colleges do not live up to their stated meritocratic ideals and the increase in non-employment is a problem. At one point it had a novel framing of a familiar issue that I liked--which is the need to focus not just on distributive justice but also on contributive justice, particularly how to do justice to people's contributions. To some degree this was saying work should be in the utility function as a positive--and that we should reshape social attitudes so we think that way about our own work and others work.
But most of the book reads like the sophmoric ranting of a random person on Twitter going on about neoliberalism and globalization without seriously engaging with what either of them actually proposed or their consequences. You would think that Bill Clinton's and Barack Obama's only solution to our economic problems was to hector people into going to college without acknowledging they had much, much more to their agenda than that--including expanding wage subsidies (i.e., the EITC), an idea Sandel mistakenly claims is heterodox and attributes to Oren Cass. (To be clear, Cass has a bigger proposal--but it is reminiscent of Ned Phelps not to mention one that I developed with Phill Swagel, two people Sandel would consider "neoliberal").
Sandel goes on about the financialization of the economy which wastes resources and creates rents, crediting these ideas to heterodox thinkers when he could just have easily have cited leading mainstream economists publishing in leading journals like Jeremy Stein and Thomas Philippon. But then Sandel throws in legitimate issues (e.g., the wasted resources for high-speed trading) with ones where is probably wrong (e.g., objecting to Credit Default Swaps because people do not buy the actual company) and certainly wrong (e.g., objecting to stock buybacks). And, like most of the issues he identifies, he does not have a real solution (he proposes a financial transactions tax which would address a small subset of the issues he raises).
Sandel is completely obsessed with the very elite universities which are a much smaller part of the overall story of what he claims to care about. And he does not address the awkward fact that even if Harvard eliminated legacies, athletics and extracurriculars a pure merit-based admissions would still admit about 10% of students from the top 1%. At the very least this says that a lot of the solution to the issues he is worried about has to happen before students are 17 and apply to college, like preschool, school reform, and then the awkwardness of differential parental inputs and genes. (By the say, like so much else in the book, his discussion of SATs as exacerbating inequalities of opportunity does not seriously engage much of the research that finds the opposite).
Sandel over claims on the proposition that the elevation of a meritocracy means that people are blamed more for their failings today than they were in the past. He argues, "The providentialist notion that people get what they deserve reverberates in contemporary public discourse." He then cites as an example Jerry Falwell blaming 9/11 on America's sins like abortion, feminism and LGBT. But Falwell was widely reviled for that statement, if anything the reaction to it is the opposite of what Sandel is claiming.
Other anecdotes he offers (and yes, the evidence is almost all anecdotes), go directly against his thesis. He talks about when he was in high school (presumably the late 1960s) and how they sat people in his math class in order of their grades, with a resorting of the seating periodically after new tests. It is impossible to imagine that happening today in the "everyone gets a trophy" world.
Sandel is very negative on just about every consequentialist and person focused on distributive justice (e.g., Rawls is blamed for legitimating wealth and letting the wealthy feel good about themselves for creating jobs and reducing poverty). But then everything comes back to money for him. He talks a lot about "esteem" and "dignity" but for him it really does seem to come down to money. Which is fine, but then admit that distributive justice is an important part of the answer. But also the "common good" and shared project can't just be people discussing philosophy with each other but bonding over sports, Taylor Swift, a shared identity as Americans, and many other aspects of life that bring meaning, purpose, dignity and connection that are outside the economic sphere.
But perhaps what bothered me most was that the book jumbles up positive and normative claims with no clear delineation between them. I could not tell if he had a different moral philosophy than the people he criticizes (in many cases straw mans). Or a different reading of the data. Much of the argument is about Trump being elected means we need to change the way we talk about various issues. If Trump had lost would we have not needed to change? He makes sweeping (and wrong) statements about wages falling in inflation-adjusted terms over fifty years and (possibly wrong) statements like after-tax inequality continuing to rise. If those facts were the opposite would that change his philosophy? I wish I knew because there are some valid and interesting philosophical ideas but they are messily mixed together with a lot more that does not seriously engage with economics, economic policy, or the often messy and subtle facts about the world....more
The world is lucky that David Wessel devoted so much time, attention and open mindedness to one particular provision in the tax code, Opportunity ZoneThe world is lucky that David Wessel devoted so much time, attention and open mindedness to one particular provision in the tax code, Opportunity Zones, documenting their origin and impact. He has a reporters eye for detail, an ability to tell the story in an exciting way, but also blends in rigorous policy analytics and a certain degree of sympathy and open mindedness--while being willing to make the calls when they are obvious.
Opportunity Zones were a provision in the 2017 that allowed people to take capital gains and instead of paying taxes on them invest them in funds that invested in designated lower-income (sort of) areas with the gains deferred and (they hoped) permanently eliminated it. The idea was the brainchild of Silicon Valley billionaire Sean Parker who established a "think tank" (the Economic Innovation Group), drummed up bipartisan support, and got the idea enacted in record time in the 2017 tax cut. The bad press quickly mounted as many gentrifying and even rich areas were designated Opportunity Zones, connected people started profiting, and funds appeared to be going into expensive hotels, storage facilities and college dorms.
As someone that has worked on economic policy, both reporting and from within Brookings, Wessel brings a lot of insight into how ideas are fleshed out and defended. In some ways he is appropriately cynical, but in other ways he shows the ways in which the idea was, at least in part, well intentioned by its developers, promoter and legislators (and Parker himself does not appear to have profited at all from it). He does make the think tank policy industry sound a little more cynical than it deserves, I would also love to read a book on how the idea of a child allowance went from pipe dream to reality rapidly in part through think tanks and research in a manner that has some similarities but many differences from Opportunity Zones.
The first part of the book filled in a few holes in my knowledge (including some great stories, like Tim Scott in the Oval Office after Charlottesville using the opportunity to push President Trump on Opportunity Zones). But it got more interesting the second part where Wessel goes through the quirks of the process by which Treasury rapidly wrote rules on Opportunity Zones and the States implemented them with mixed results along with the many weirdnesses, quirks, accidents and malevolence that went into the process. Then he goes off to Portland, Baltimore and other places to examine project, finding that most of them would have happened anyway, did not appear to serve any particularly worthwhile goal, but in a few cases may have been consistent with the intention.
These anecdotes would be a wonderful complement to rigorous causal research, unfortunately there is none and given the paucity of data there may never be. But he cites evidence that Opportunity Zones have not raised housing prices, most did not get anything like the initial hype or even get anything at all, and most of the money went to gentrifying ones. All in all, the combination of anecdotes and evidence leaves one wondering whether a small fraction of the cost went to good or none of the cost went to good.
At the end of the day my own deep policy conviction is to be extremely skeptical of place-based policies and extremely skeptical of indirect policies that gives financial incentives to businesses or high-income people to do good things for others. The problem with place-based policies is they often do not benefit those in most need but property owners and in practice can be implemented in a highly politicized manner because nothing is more powerful for politicians than places. And then there is a parade of policies that are about indirectly giving incentives through corporations or high-income households to achieve goals (like the repatriation holiday), almost all of which beg the question of why not use the federal resources directly for whatever the purpose was.
A big advantage of giving money to people rather than places or high-income households is that it is hard to go badly wrong. If the government had spent the money on housing vouchers, for example, we might debate the finer points of whether they were optimally designed (e.g., whether and how to encourage mobility to high opportunity areas) but there would not be any doubt that the resources went to their intended purposes. Instead we are left with a triple bank shot of a policy that may have delivered a little to people who needed it while letting the most affluent take a huge cut.
Overall, a great case study in how Washington works, how tax policy works, and some of the challenges around promoting economic development through the tax code--highly recommended....more
Although ostensibly about the Twilight of Democracy, the strength of Anne Applebaum's book is that it focuses on one slice of this question and develoAlthough ostensibly about the Twilight of Democracy, the strength of Anne Applebaum's book is that it focuses on one slice of this question and develops it in a compelling and personal way: why do "clercs" (intellectuals or others who should know better) drift over to the becoming propagandists for authoritarian/populist/ultranationalist parties? The book begins with a party Anne hosted in Poland for the turn of the millennium and how twenty years later half of the guests are not speaking to the other half of the guests. The estrangement is over those who became propagandists for the Law and Justice party, becoming homophobic, anti-Semitic and getting lost in dishonest and vile conspiracy theories in the service of subverting democracy itself. This same parting of the ways happens over and over again to Applebaum--her scene in conservative British publishing where some go over to Brexit and some support the Orban in Hungary, her scene in conservative US publishing where some (e.g., Laura Ingrahm) go from mainstream-ish supporters of Reagan's vision to angry ranters.
Some of the conventional explanations for the rise of populism don't work in Eastern Europe, the heart of Applebaum's book, which was doing well economically and had very little immigration. She also argues against the idea that it is a revolt of the common people against the elites because all of the people she chronicles and is concerned with are and were elites. Instead she argues there is a "seductive lure" to authoritarianism (as in her subtitle) that appeals to people because it gives them simple, clear answers, good guys and bad guys, and gets rid of nuance and complexity. This combines with a nostalgia, which Applebaum argues can take the form of "restorative nostalgia," a pernicious notion of trying to recreate an imagined past. All of this is unleashed by social media, just like radio before it unleashed fascism.
The book moves between different countries. I learned a lot about Poland and Hungary, both because I only pay intermittent attention and because Applebaum knows so much. The Trump section (a lot of which focused on Laura Ingraham) mostly covered familiar territory. And the Brexit chapter was somewhere in between, and suffered a bit because however bad Brexit is it does not really mean the end of Democracy in anything resembling what is happening in Poland and Hungary.
The book does leaves me with a few questions:
1. Applebaum's story is asymmetric. David Frum and Laura Ingraham were at the same party and ended up in different universes, as did many others in the Polish right, the British right, etc. I can think of nothing comparable on the left (to be clear, I'm sure there are isolated examples, but not a party of leftists in 2000 where half of them are so extreme that they are not speaking to the other half). Does this mean that the polarization we are seeing is asymmetric? Is there something more about the right that leads to this mindset and authoritarianism? Needless to say, much horror in the twentieth century was perpetuated by people that came from the left (and chronicled in Applebaum's previous books), is it now the right that is slipping and if so why?
2. Relatedly, to what extent does the conservativism that Applebaum supports, that of Reagan and Thatcher, bear responsibility for what many of its successors morphed into? Was this an evolution or a repudiation?
3. Is Applebaum herself falling for the nostalgia and overly paranoid overstatements that she is so concerned about in others? I think probably not but one needs to worry when depicting a vision of past politics in which everything was (comparatively) wonderful.
4. Applebaum in some ways is a strange messenger because she lives in the US, UK and Poland and is a highly international elite. I mostly agree with her argument that populism is not a rebellion against elites (e.g., Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are not exactly men of the people), but I have a nagging worry that it does thrive on some concern about elites and their behaviors. Relatedly, Applebaum waxes nostalgic for what were essentially media controls forcing relatively conformity of the media, a narrow difference between political parties and the like, but doesn't this also have a downside?
5. What are they thinking? Applebaum tries to reach many of her former friends to understand why they are advancing crazy, patently false, conspiracy theories, that go against much of what they themselves used to believe. Almost none of them get back to her. One who does records it and publishes an edited version to show her defiance of Applebaum. Never do we learn what anyone was thinking beyond speculation by Applebaum or others close to those people (e.g., a pair of Polish brothers that go in different directions). I am not faulting Applebaum but this leaves me wanting more.
Overall, really well written, thought provoking, a learned a lot of specifics from her reporting, and also very thought provoking. My list of questions are not in the spirit of rebuttal, on many of them I think there is a good chance that Applebaum is right, but I am not certain and still want to learn more. Because after all, as she says, the world is a complex place and does not lend itself to overly simple explanations....more
David French's book contains an analysis a political polarization that shares a lot in common with Ezra Klein's Why We're Polarized, a speculative depDavid French's book contains an analysis a political polarization that shares a lot in common with Ezra Klein's Why We're Polarized, a speculative depiction of the United States breaking up in "Calexit" and "Texit", and a proposed solution which is maximum federalism limited only by States not having the right to override the Constitution and especially the First Amendment. This solution is motivated by "toleration," not for those what we celebrate and love but for those that we disagree with in a system with a greater degree of pluralism, viewpoint diversity, and to the degree collective choices are needed they are done closer to the level where people agree on them.
Much of the polarization story in this book has been told before but French tells it well and does it with almost complete even-handed sympathy for both sides in the culture and broader wars. One could debate whether both sides deserve even hands (e.g., French rightly says that both sides pick the worst of the other side and claim it is an exemplar, but a progressive picking Donald Trump as an exemplar of conservatives is not exactly cherry picking). But French is good at serving up some of his own's sides hypocrisies and inconsistencies too, for example pointing that while conservatives love to talk about the importance of free speech in the face of cancel culture it was a Republican President and the NFL that cancelled Colin Kaepernick. What makes French's analysis so distinctive--and also potentially a bit off--is how much he emphasizes geographical sorting, something that is also a key to motivating his analysis of the problem and the solution. Of course there is substantial sorting into "red" and "blue" America but it is not all along regional lines. Most everywhere cities are blue, even in the reddest states. And most everywhere rural areas are red, even in the bluest states. People with a graduate degree tend to be blue regardless of where they live and the converse for a high school degree or less. French is right that you can live in Brooklyn and never meet a Republican, but you don't have to travel to North Carolina to remedy this deficiency--you just need to go two counties over to Orange County which voted for Trump in 2016.
The regional divides lead to three enjoyable chapters imaging what a dissolution of the United States might look like. The first scenario is a gun massacre in California, they pass unconstitutional legislation, a series of conflicts between federal and state authorities lead them to want to succeed, and an embattled Republican President realizes he can cement his party's power if he lets them go. All is peaceful and relatively happy domestically. The second scenario is a clash over abortion that leads to a virtual economic embargo of the South by major corporations, a packing of the Supreme Court, and them leaving the union--enabled by the many military bases and assets they control, devolving in a Cold War situation as the competing nations face off. French follows these two chapters with one that follows from both depicting what a world with a U.S. power vacuum could look like, with an emboldened China trying to take over Taiwan, Russia expanding out, Germany and Japan remilitarizing, etc., all of which is a chilling reminder of what might happen if U.S. power wanes (see Matthew Yglesias's One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger).
In the final part of the book French makes an eloquent plea for "tolerance" which he defines as living with those you find disagreeable and repugnant, which is very different from the current liberal approach to "tolerance" of different groups that you actually like and celebrate (which is why, in fact, progressives have generally moved away from the word "tolerance"). Because he argues most differences are geographic he thinks that federalism is a solution. Let California take the money it currently channels to the federal government to set up a single payer health system. Let other states limit abortions. Keep things closer to what local people want and making national elections less important and Presidents much less important. French is very consistent in his advocacy (and in fact remarkably consistent throughout the book), he clearly is not using the "federalism" label to achieve whatever more fundamental goals he has. But I was not fully persuaded by this as a solution since there is still a lot of polarization within states, I have less of a belief in the limitations of the federal government, and a sneaking suspicion that as even handed as French is trying to be the limits on federal power are putting a thumb on the scale of more conservative solutions. That said, he made me take the idea more seriously and is better than the opportunists on both sides who inconsistently invoke their support or opposition to federalism as it best suits in the moment.
Overall, the U.S. political debate is lucky to have French's voice giving a sympathetic rendering to a large group of Americans that are ignored or marginalized in much progressive political analysis but without doing it in the combative and incoherent manner one too often sees in Fox News commentators and their ilk....more
Two excellent political scientists take on the topic of How Democracies Die--and specifically the question of whether the U.S. democracy will die. TheTwo excellent political scientists take on the topic of How Democracies Die--and specifically the question of whether the U.S. democracy will die. They argue we should be worried for three principals reasons:
(1) Democracies do not just die in violent coups, they also fade away into authoritarianism, often in a manner that is fully "legal" at every step as institutions get coopted and subverted, in many cases in the name of democracy itself.
(2) A constitution is not enough you need norms of mutual tolerance and restraint. The United States has always had demagogues. But previously these norms, enforced by the political parties, acted as a gatekeeper, including smoke filled rooms to keep the most dangerous demagogues from rising to the Presidency. That is no longer true.
(3) Extreme polarization preceded Donald Trump and won't end with him as the two parties are no longer big tents but much more homogenous not just in beliefs but also in culture.
All of this is punctuated with discussion and analysis of the experience of other usually non-violent ends to democracy, like the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, the rise of authoritarians in Latin America and more recent examples like Venezuela, Hungary and Turkey.
I do wish the book had a more political science and less recounting of the now familiar arguments about Trump and recent polarization, including better understanding what the broader lessons are about causes of Democratic decline. Some of it reads a bit too current and a bit too reactive to Trump in a way that will end up seeming dated (I hope). Relatedly, I think the idea of the U.S. democracy "dying" is deeply overwrought, although by the conclusion the "dying" scenario is defined down to mean something more like an unpleasant extension of the extreme polarization we have now.
But it is a relatively fast read on an important topic so would recommend it, just expect to have gaps in your knowledge filled in rather than an entirely new perspective on the issue....more
The mere existence of Ezra Klein’s outstanding and compulsively readable account of the rise and consequences of polarization is a paradox. Klein creaThe mere existence of Ezra Klein’s outstanding and compulsively readable account of the rise and consequences of polarization is a paradox. Klein creatively synthesizes a wide range of social science literature, mostly from political science and social psychology, combing it with his own extensive first hand observation of American politics in a book that is sympathetic to a wide range of perspectives without suffering from the traps of naked partisanship on the one hand or false equivalences on the other.
Klein is clear that our polarization problem does not stem from too little information or too little exposure to the perspective of the other side. In fact he cites a set of social psychology experiments that show that people are more rationalizes than reasoners, that smarter and more informed people turn their intelligence and information into more grist for their previous views, and that exposing people to opposing perspectives turns them off to them and strengthens their own views.
And that is why the mere existence of this book is a paradox. It reasons instead of rationalizing. It aims to persuade rather than mobilize. And Klein exposes himself and the reader to the other side of just about everything, including a relatively sympathetic account of everything form how whites feel their historic privileges threatened to Mitch McConnell’s decision to block Merrick Garland. It is almost like the very act of writing this book is a rejection of its thesis, or at least a loud protest against it—both explicitly and in form.
Many people will likely come to this book after reading the New York Times oped version. I liked the oped, but one thing I appreciated about the book is that, unlike the oped, it spent the first ~85% on the topic of polarization without talking much if at all about the different ways that it has affected Democrats and Republicans. I think this is intellectually honest and (perhaps a foolish hope) may bring along a wider set of readers. This presentational choice also makes the last part of the book that shows how the Republican Party has become more of an “insurgent outlier” that is captive to something more like one group and one set of highly partisan media, that much more compelling.
There wasn’t much in the book I disagreed with. My main complaint is that I wanted more. Klein calls for more democratization but does not discuss his view on whether that might conflict with protections for minorities and if so how it should be handled. He does not talk about the right way to balance democratic and technocratic control. And the relationship between polarization and the delegitimization of elites is largely missing from his account.
Finally, to expand something I said in the opening paragraph, I think Klein is a model for how to use social science. Too many political reporters ignore it entirely. Or if they like data analytics, think they can figure it out on their own. Ezra reads widely, books and articles. He talks to the authors. And he takes it seriously. But he also does something the social scientists cannot do: he has talked extensively to many of the leading political players over the last decade. Not everyone could pull it off as well as he does, but I certainly wish more people tried and even got half of the way there, it would be an improvement on a lot of the gut instincts of many of the people opining today....more
Yascha Mounk’s “The People vs. Democracy” is an outstanding analysis of the roots of our current political situation. It is a rare book that combines Yascha Mounk’s “The People vs. Democracy” is an outstanding analysis of the roots of our current political situation. It is a rare book that combines the best of the fox and hedgehog approach to organizing knowledge. The Fox is an animating thesis that Democracy (i.e., popular choice) and Liberalism (i.e., protections for minorities, freedom of expression, other rights) are two different concepts that only happen to have gone together but that either of them can also override the other. At the same time, Mounk does not offer a single explanation/solution but instead provides a thoughtful and nuanced argument for three of the major theories floating around: immigration, economics and social media. Finally, Mounk offers a range of solutions.
I cannot understate how well organized Mounk’s book is with a clear statement of its thesis, a roadmap to the chapters, and then all of them fitting together logically into different sections. In the course of this Mounk draws liberally from examples around the world, but especially from the United States and Europe, as well as from some of the political science literature.
Overall I found Mounk’s diagnosis of the problem original and compelling, his explanation of the causes of the problem sensible but not as convincing as I would have liked, his solutions also sensible but possibly not sufficient, and his predictions highly implausible. Let me take these in turn.
For the diagnosis, separating out the concepts of democracy and liberalism and describing how their coexistence has been more of a fortunate coincidence than an inevitable outcome is one way this book will change my perspective going forward, along with the ways that an excess of democracy can overcome liberalism (e.g., people voting for leaders who limit rights or even directly voting to limit rights, like Switzerland’s referendum that banned the construction of minarets). But also ways that liberalism can limit democracy, particularly through the expansion of the administrative state, judicial review, and international treaties—all of which come together in something like the European Commission. (Although I would note that Mounk talks about controversy over the Democratic legitimacy of bureaucratic rules or the Supreme Court, but it is not like everyone happily accepts the Affordable Care Act because it came to us through the democratic process.)
For explanation, I am personally sympathetic to Mounk’s argument that liberal Democracy thrived because it coincided with economic advancement, communications were limited to oligopolistic providers of news/information, and nation states were monotonic or had dominant ethnicities. The flip side of this is that economic slowdowns, social media and immigration all move the other way. But I wish that Mounk did more to prove this. He is right that you can’t just do simple data correlating presence of immigrants or income with votes, but that leaves him with less testable hypotheses. Moreover, what about earlier periods of slower growth in American history or the advent of radio which transformed communications or the different trajectories of immigration in different countries?
For cure, I liked just about all of Mounk’s ideas. But even if we adopted all of his economic prescriptions, for example, it would not radically transform growth/incomes. And some ideas might actually increase tensions, like expanding social supports which may exacerbate resentments.
Finally, on prediction, I wish Mounk would define what he means by ending liberal democracy and put a probability on it. I myself would put a probability close to zero on any of the following in the United States: the government shutting down major media publications or universities or think tanks or websites, elections being suspended and rule is continued without them, or a President remaining in office for 12 years, or even a single political party controlling the Presidency and both houses of Congress for 12 straight years. I’m not sure if Mounk is putting higher odds on one/all of these outcomes or else is defining the end of liberal democracy in a much less severe way than this, it would be worth being clearer on it so we can better assess whether or not the predictions have come true....more
The introductory chapter of this work of political science/philosophy was excellent, but the rest of the book added relatively little--even though it The introductory chapter of this work of political science/philosophy was excellent, but the rest of the book added relatively little--even though it was short. Jan-Werner Müller defines a populist not just as someone who rejects elites (which is common enough) but is believes they represent the unified "country" and rejects the pluralism that is associated with the belief in the legitimacy of alternative perspectives and ideas. He then explains how this attitude can make the transition to governing by appealing to a "silent majority" while hijacking the state apparatus, suppressing civil society, and engaging in corruption. He also talks about how to oppose populism, not by trying to exclude it--which is the same exclusionary identity politics that is the basis of populism--but instead by arguing against it and constructing an alternative, pluralist identity. The book's analysis is blended with some history and current events, including some European countries and, of course, recent events in the United States....more
This book is part of the "Columbia Global Reports" series. And it feels like a report. Not in a bad way. It is a reasonable comprehensive recounting oThis book is part of the "Columbia Global Reports" series. And it feels like a report. Not in a bad way. It is a reasonable comprehensive recounting of populist movements around the world today--including Trump and Sanders (it was written before the general election), left-wing European populists, and right-wing European populists. It argues all of these are descendants of a style (but not an ideology) that started in the late 19th century in the United States with the populist party, through Huey Long, and then George Wallace, Ross Perot, and Pat Buchanan.
John Judis notes that virtually all of these movements were predicted on non-reproducible charismatic leaders, that most of them failed to achieve success, or when they did rapidly became mainstream and "betrayed" their populist roots. Nevertheless, he traces the conditions underlying these in part resulting from the Great Recession and the Euro area crisis, plus the link between high unemployment and immigration, arguing we could see more in the future.
Overall a reliable guide, some interesting observations, but did not feel overly profound or original....more
"[A]t the end of the twentieth century the [American] Creed was the principal source of national identity for most Americans. Two factors enhanced its"[A]t the end of the twentieth century the [American] Creed was the principal source of national identity for most Americans. Two factors enhanced its importance. First, as ethnicity and race lost salience and Anglo-Protestant culture came under serious attack, the Creed was left as the only unchallenged survivor of the four major historical components o American identity. Second, the Creed had acquired renewed status, comparable to what it had in the Revolution, as the defining characteristic distinguishing America from the ideologies of its German, Japanese, and Soviet enemies. Hence many Americans came to believe that America could be multiracial, mutiethnic, and lack any cultural core, and yet still be a coherent nation with its identity defined solely by the Creed. Is this, however, really the case? Can a nation be defined only by a political ideology? Several considerations suggest the answer is no. A creed alone does not a nation make."
Samuel Huntington has been provoking me since I first read (and met) him in college. It's been a long time since I've read anything by him but this 2004 books is as or more relevant--and provoking--as when he wrote it. Some of the references are a bit dated (the aftermath of 9/11 looms large in the book) but overall the struggle over what American identity is and ought to be is even stronger today than it was when Huntington wrote.
Huntington's argument is that the United States as we know it was founded with Anglo-Protestant values that gave rise to a set of political beliefs. He does not sugarcoat America's history, writing about the pervasive racism and exclusion that helped created the country--for example pointing out that Irish, Italian, Slavic and Jewish immigrants all became "white" but by "accept[ing] the racial distinctions prevalent in America and embrace the exclusion of Asians and the subordination of blacks."
He chronicles the peak of those views as the period after World War II where the entire country came together but then their fragmentation when elites gave up on them and instead supported both a multiple-identity version of Americans divided by race and ethnicity at the same time that they embraced a transnational vision of either a cosmopolitan world where everyone shared the same values--either because America imported them or because it imperialistically exported them.
In the course of this Huntington discusses the rise of hispanic immigration, bilingualism, affirmative action, and many other hot button topics and how they changed rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s.
He also documents the increasing gap between elites who are unpatriotic, don't see America as special/different and the people who, according to the polls he cites, are more comfortable with basic patriotism and less comfortable with immigration, affirmative action, liberalism and cosmopolitanism. He argues that the decline in trust for government and other elites is because of this increasing disconnect.
He presciently warns about the rise of a Trump-like figure who tries to define America as literally about a particular ethnic group and argues that the antidote to this is to explicitly embrace more of the importance of religion in national life and the values of anglo-protestantism but not the group itself because he hopes "the WASPish descendants of the founders [will] become a small and uninfluential minority."
As someone who is not remotely religious but ethnically Jewish I find something off-putting about the notion that religion and culture should be the backbone of American life. I do not think Huntington himself intends to exclude anyone but it is hard to understand how his cultural vision could be implemented while retaining the subtlety that prevents that from happening. The America Huntington is worried about seems wonderful to me--cosmopolitan, diverse, welcoming of immigrants, and more.
But, I am also mindful of his warning that political ideologies are not enough to tie a people together. And that if people do not feel a sense of shared kinship and nationality they will lose any ability to work together, to support each other, to engage in redistribution and investment in opportunity and more. I am also mindful that I am more like one of the rootless cosmopolitan elites that Huntington is concerned about than the people as a whole.
I'm not sure of the solution. One part has to be a strong celebration of the American Creed, something that has been called more into question lately. This need not be triumphalism or naive acceptance, instead treating the creed as an incomplete, imperfect project that America is forced to live up to. Another part is a certain patriotism, like you feel in a baseball park when they sing the national anthem or do "hats off for heroes" celebrating a member of the military or honor nurses who were at the frontlines fighting COVID.
That may not be enough. I don't think Huntington's solution is viable but a lot of his data, evidence, history and challenges are definitely worth seriously reckoning with....more
Everyone should read The Righteous Mind. It is among the best works of social science I have read in a long time and also among the most important. ItEveryone should read The Righteous Mind. It is among the best works of social science I have read in a long time and also among the most important. It is mostly firmly grounded in social psychology research (I say mostly, see caveats below) but also traverses in an erudite manner across a number of disciplines. It is also really well written, with each part organized around a metaphor that is used really well to explain and persuade about the material. But underlying these metaphors is a serious amount of research.
The first part is about the intuitionist model of moral psychology, based on research that our morality is something we feel intuitively and then come up with rationales to explain it. The intuitions are the elephant and the rationales are the rider, also called our inner press secretary or inner lawyer. Haidt's research in this section appears very sound but it is also positive not normative. I don't fully relate to Haidt's critique of reason as a source or morality, in fact he himself seems to come back to reason as a basis for social morality at the end of the book, but he does introduce a number of interesting ideas, including the difference between harm-aversion moralities and moralities more concerned with protecting the sacred.
The second part of the book develops the theory that we have six different moral tastes. Haidt argues that liberals experience fewer of these tastes, mostly care, while conservatives have a richer palate that also includes loyalty, authority and the sacred. In the first part of the book Haidt describes himself as a moral relativist but in this part he seems to prefer the conservative approach to morality. Or at least argue that it helps them win elections. A lot of counterexamples come to mind (many of which Haidt himself acknowledges) like liberals treating the environment as sacred and expecting loyalty in opposition to what they consider bad. And some of it reads like something I have experience a lot where one side things it has better policies but is losing because it does not communicate as well, particularly communicate with values. Haidt is stronger when he is doing social science and describing than when he thinks he has an idea that would help tip the balance for a Presidential campaign.
The third part of the book strays the furthest from Haidt's research and is a little more speculative. He rejects the rejection of group selection in evolutionary theory, argues we have evolved at the group level over the last several thousand years to be "groupish", or at least 10% groupish (bees) and 90% chimps. This sociality, Haidt argues, is what allowed humans to evolve into the most successful mammals. In contrast, he quotes someone pointing out that no one has ever seen two chimps carrying a log together.
At the end, Haidt has a plea for everyone to understand each other better. In many ways I think he does a good job and is sympathetic towards many of the ideas in liberalism, conservatism, and libertarianism. At times he is more about policy specifics, but mostly it is grounded in the deeper moral motivations. He himself ends up arguing that we should use utilitarianism to evaluate public policies but not necessarily to motivate our own actions. And most importantly, he teaches us to understand that much of any rational conversation is not taking place on a rational level and how to understand and engage with the non-rational side....more
Democracy for Realists is a timely book of empirically and theoretically rigorous political science. It's strong suit is criticism--Christopher Achen Democracy for Realists is a timely book of empirically and theoretically rigorous political science. It's strong suit is criticism--Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels painstakingly amass evidence and arguments against what they describe as the two leading theories of democracy. The first is the "folk theory" that Democracy allows the will of the people to be expressed, something they dismantle with evidence on voters' lack of knowledge in both choosing their representatives and, especially, in referendums. They also throw in some Arrow Impossibility Theorem arguments around the indeterminacy of the "will of the people" even if everyone was well informed but had views that differed along multiple dimensions. The second theory they dismantle is the agency theory or "throw the bums out", where they show that much of the voting based on performance is actually about luck (e.g., natural disasters or shark attacks) not performance. I would note, however, that they may overstate their case--disasters shift votes by a few percentage points, which can tilt an election but only because the two sides were within a few percentage points of each other to begin with which, itself, merits an explanation--like the median voter theorem.
The book attempts to develop an alternative theory based on people's group identities and social psychology. They have some fascinating analysis--for example, the shift of white Southerners from the Democratic to Republican Party in the Civil Rights era was concentrated less among people who had specific issue preferences on racial issues and more among people who identified as Southern. They also find that Democratic and Republican men have views of abortion that line up with their political leanings, but that it was their views on abortion that changed to match their parties not the other way around. As interesting as all of this is, Achen and Bartels essentially admit is just an early attempt at an alternative normative and positive theory of democracy. And the policy recommendations in the book are limited to the last few pages, are relatively thin (e.g., less economic inequality and money in politics), and do not necessarily follow uniquely from the analysis itself....more
Political scientists David Shambaugh take on four possible future courses for China: neo-totalitarianism, hard authoritarianism (which he argues is thPolitical scientists David Shambaugh take on four possible future courses for China: neo-totalitarianism, hard authoritarianism (which he argues is the current practice), soft authoritarianism (which they had a decade ago, he argues), or neo Democracy. He considers the middle two options the most likely and works through the implications in the areas of economics, politics and foreign policy in separate chapters devoted to each. It demonstrates Shambaugh's lifelong study of China, thoughtfulness, and ability to change his mind as circumstances change....more
Loading...
