Posts Tagged 'political science'
"It's not an effective protest if it's not pissing people off"*…
In 1986, millions of Filipinos took to the streets of Manila in peaceful protest and prayer in the People Power movement. The Marcos regime folded on the fourth day.
In 2003, the people of Georgia ousted Eduard Shevardnadze through the bloodless Rose Revolution, in which protestors stormed the parliament building holding the flowers in their hands.
Earlier this year, the presidents of Sudan and Algeria both announced they would step aside after decades in office, thanks to peaceful campaigns of resistance.
In each case, civil resistance by ordinary members of the public trumped the political elite to achieve radical change.
There are, of course, many ethical reasons to use nonviolent strategies. But compelling research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, confirms that civil disobedience is not only the moral choice; it is also the most powerful way of shaping world politics – by a long way.
Looking at hundreds of campaigns over the last century, Chenoweth found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent campaigns. And although the exact dynamics will depend on many factors, she has shown it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change.
Chenoweth's influence can be seen in the recent Extinction Rebellion protests, whose founders say they have been directly inspired by her findings…
… despite being twice as successful as the violent conflicts, peaceful resistance still failed 47% of the time. As Chenoweth and Stephan pointed out in their book, that's sometimes because they never really gained enough support or momentum to "erode the power base of the adversary and maintain resilience in the face of repression". But some relatively large nonviolent protests also failed, such as the protests against the communist party in East Germany in the 1950s, which attracted 400,000 members (around 2% of the population) at their peak, but still failed to bring about change.
In Chenoweth's data set, it was only once the nonviolent protests had achieved that 3.5% threshold of active engagement that success seemed to be guaranteed – and raising even that level of support is no mean feat. In the UK it would amount to 2.3 million people actively engaging in a movement (roughly twice the size of Birmingham, the UK's second largest city); in the US, it would involve 11 million citizens – more than the total population of New York City.
The fact remains, however, that nonviolent campaigns are the only reliable way of maintaining that kind of engagement…
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change: "The '3.5% Rule': How a small minority can change the world."
* John Scalzi, Lock In
As we take it to the streets, we might send thoughtful birthday greetings to John Stuart Mill; he was born on this date in 1806. A philosopher, political economist, civil servant, and reformer, he was a founder of what we now call "Classical Liberalism" and a major contributor to the development of Utilitarianism. Mill reputedly learned Greek at the age of three, Latin and arithmetic at eight, and logic at twelve. He studied with Jeremy Bentham, and followed Bentham's Utilitarian lead, though Mill both extended and deviated from his mentor's thinking. His conception of liberty was– and remains– an oft-cited justification of individual freedom in opposition to unlimited state and social control.
Tagged with Erica Chenoweth, history, John Stuart Mill, liberalism, philosophy, political science, protest, social change, social movements, utilitarianism
"Authoritarian populism can be seen as a pushback of elements of human nature—tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, zero-sum thinking—against the Enlightenment institutions that were designed to circumvent them"*…
We live in the age of charismatic elected would-be despots. His — it is almost always a "he" — are the politics of fear and rage. It takes a certain sort of personality to be a master of such politics. In the right — that is, the wrong — circumstances, such leaders emerge naturally. That is not surprising after a violent revolution. What is far more so is that such leaders have been emerging in well-established democracies.
We now see elected "strongmen" — actual and would-be — everywhere. Leading examples are Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Narendra Modi in India, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, Matteo Salvini in Italy and Donald Trump in the US. These leaders differ in degrees of sophistication. The countries in which they operate also differ. Some are economically developed, while others are not. Some are longstanding democracies; others, again, are not.
Yet these men are all characters in a story powerfully told by the independent US watchdog Freedom House. Freedom in the World 2019, published in February, reported a 13th consecutive year of decline in the global health of democracy. This decline occurred in all regions of the world, notably in the democracies that emerged after the cold war. Above all, it occurred in western democracies, with the US — the most influential upholder of democratic values — leading the way…
People want to believe a powerful and charismatic leader is on their side in an unjust world. The estimable Martin Wolf unpacks the mechanism of "strong man" rule: "The age of the elected despot is here."
For a different angle on the phenomenon the Wolf unpacks, one that speaks directly to Steven's Pinker's quote in the title of this post, see "Dialectics of Enlightenment."
*"A very different threat to human progress is a political movement that seeks to undermine its Enlightenment foundations.
The second decade of the 21st century has seen the rise of a counter-Enlightenment movement called populism, more accurately, authoritarian populism. Populism calls for the direct sovereignty of a country's "people" (usually an ethnic group, sometimes a class), embodied in a strong leader who directly channels their authentic virtue and experience.
Authoritarian populism can be seen as a pushback of elements of human nature—tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, zero-sum thinking—against the Enlightenment institutions that were designed to circumvent them. By focusing on the tribe rather than the individual, it has no place for the protection of minority rights or the promotion of human welfare worldwide. By failing to acknowledge that hard-won knowledge is the key to societal improvement, it denigrates "elites" and "experts" and downplays the marketplace of ideas, including freedom of speech, diversity of opinion, and the fact-checking of self-serving claims. By valorizing a strong leader, populism overlooks the limitations in human nature, and disdains the rule-governed institutions and constitutional checks that constrain the power of flawed human actors.
Populism comes in left-wing and right-wing varieties, which share a folk theory of economics as zero-sum competition: between economic classes in the case of the left, between nations or ethnic groups in the case of the right. Problems are seen not as challenges that are inevitable in an indifferent universe but as the malevolent designs of insidious elites, minorities, or foreigners. As for progress, forget about it: populism looks backward to an age in which the nation was ethnically homogeneous, orthodox cultural and religious values prevailed, and economies were powered by farming and manufacturing, which produced tangible goods for local consumption and for export."
― Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
Consider also:
"Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view—one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction."
– Umberto Eco, "Ur-Fascism", New York Review of Books (June 22, 1995)
As we think for ourselves, we might recall that it was on this date in 1945 that Joseph Goebbels died. One of Adolf Hitler's closest and most devoted associates, Goebbels was a student of the shaping of public opinion; he served as Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. He was a gifted public speaker, who was particularly adept at using the relatively new media of radio and film for propaganda purposes, emphasizing antisemitism, attacks on the Christian churches, and (after the start of World War II) the boosting of public morale.
Hitler committed suicide in his bunker on April 30, 1945. In accordance with his will, Goebbels succeeded him as Chancellor of Germany, serving one day in this post. The following day, Goebbels and his wife committed suicide, after poisoning their six children with cyanide.
Tagged with authortarianism, Goebbels, government, history, Hitler, nationalism, Nazi, political science, politics, populism
"I do believe we have voter fraud in America"*…
North Carolina is redoing an election to decide who will represent its 9th Congressional District, after an investigation uncovered evidence of election fraud during the 2018 midterms.
According to a recently completed investigation by the North Carolina Board of Elections, a political operative working on behalf of Republican candidate Mark Harris carried out a "coordinated, unlawful, and substantially resourced absentee ballot scheme" that may have provided Harris with hundreds of fraudulent votes.
The political operative paid friends and family members in cash to collect uncompleted absentee ballots, fill them out and then mail them in to the polls. During the investigation, Harris' son testified that he had warned his father that the absentee ballot scheme was illegal.
Harris led by 905 votes on election day, but the Board of Elections never certified the result and soon began investigating. Speaking to supporters on Feb. 22, Dan McCready, the Democratic candidate, denounced the alleged fraud as perhaps "the biggest case of election fraud in living memory."
My research on voter intimidation and election fraud in the late 19th-century United States focuses on contested congressional elections much like this one. One of the most interesting cases I have researched took place in that very same district, the North Carolina 9th, in 1898…
The fascinating story– and what we can learn as history repeats itself: "A brief history of North Carolina's 9th District contested election – in 1898."
* Jeff Sessions
As we stare into the not-so-distant mirror, we might recall that it was on this date in 37, on the death of Tiberius, that his grandnephew Caligula became the third Roman emperor…. and poster-boy for excess. (The succession was formalized two days later, when the Roman Senate annulled Tiberius' will and confirmed Caligula.)
But Caligula ("Little Boots") is generally agreed to have been a temperate ruler through the first six months of his reign. His excesses after that– cruelty, extravagance, sexual perversity– are "known" to us via sources increasingly called into question.
Still, historians agree that Caligula did work hard to increase the unconstrained personal power of the emperor at the expense of the countervailing Principate; and he oversaw the construction of notoriously luxurious dwellings for himself.In 41 CE, members of the Roman Senate and of Caligula's household attempted a coup to restore the Republic. They enlisted the Praetorian Guard, who killed Caligula– the first Roman Emperor to be assassinated (Julius Caesar was assassinated, but was Dictator, not Emperor). In the event, the Praetorians thwarted the Republican dream by appointing (and supporting) Caligula's uncle Claudius the next Emperor.
Tagged with 9th Congressional District, Claigula, election fraud, elections, history, political science, politics, Roman history, Tiberius, voter fraud
"The reason I talk to myself is because I'm the only one whose answers I accept"*…
One of the stranger rituals performed by the media in the Trump era has been to keep an obsessive count of the president's lies since he took office. By September 2018, TheWashington Post reported, he had already passed the 5,000 mark, including a new one-day record of 125 on September 7. The Poynter Institute's nonpartisan fact-checking project PolitiFact keeps a running list, and The New York Times did likewise throughout 2017.
There is a certain pointlessness to these exercises. Anyone who has paid even the slightest attention to Donald Trump should recognize that, since long before his presidential campaign, he lies as easily as he breathes. He says whatever he thinks will get him what he wants, and whatever he thinks he can get away with. But if there is nothing truly revelatory about the number of Trump's lies, keeping track of them still serves a variety of symbolic purposes for the commentators who repeat the steadily mounting figures with gleeful outrage. One is simply to underline the extent to which this is not a normal presidency. Another, far more debatable, is to hold up Trump as a symptom and symbol of what is often called the "post-truth era."…
Princeton historian David Bell, reviewing Penn historian Sophia Rosenfeld's Democracy and History: a Short History…
Not only does she make short work of the "postmodernism is to blame" argument; she provides the historical background necessary to understand our current truth crisis. That a crisis does indeed exist, Rosenfeld has no doubt. But it is not one that came upon the Western world from nowhere, like a meteor strike vaporizing a peaceful pastoral landscape. Instead, it broke along an epistemological fault line that has existed in modern democratic regimes since their founding: Who has the authority, in a democracy, to determine what counts as truth—an elite of the supposedly best, most intellectually capable citizens, or the people as a whole?…
Rosenfeld cannot resist mentioning the Trump lie count at the start of her book. But rather than treat it as a shocking sign of the new "post-truth era," she uses it to note the obvious fact that truth and democratic politics have "never been on very good terms." If we are now living in an age of unprecedented mendacity, what was the Nixon administration? For that matter, no less an American icon than George Washington complained, at the end of his presidency, of the "ignorance of facts" and "malicious falsehoods" with which hostile newspapers had tried to destroy his reputation.
Rosenfeld also insists (borrowing, yes, from Foucault) that different societies exist under different "regimes of truth." Not all truths are self-evident, and not all facts are easily verifiable, so societies need particular evidentiary standards and forms of authority to determine where truth lies. These can change from place to place and from era to era; they are rarely (if ever) stable or uncontested, but continuities are still discernible.
Our own regime of truth dates back to the 18th century, when a host of Enlightenment thinkers challenged established churches and rulers. They insisted that no single individual or institution should "hold a monopoly…on determining what counts as truth in public life" and disputed the idea—long promoted by absolute monarchs—that good rulership involved keeping most information secret and lying when necessary to protect the state. They put a premium on the values of openness, transparency, sincerity, freedom of expression, and unfettered debate. In short, they created the "truth culture of the transatlantic Enlightenment."…
How does truth fit into democracy? Read in full at "An Equal Say."
* George Carlin
As we contemplate context, we might recall that it was on this date in 1825 that the U.S. House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams to the Presidency. The election of 1824 had been contested by four candidates from the Democratic-Republican Party: John Quincy Adams, Andrew jackson, William Crawford, and Henry Clay. Jackson won a plurality of the popular vote, and a plurality– but not a majority– of the electoral college vote… so the race went to the House of Representatives. Per the Twelfth Amendment, the House considered the top three vote-getters in the electoral college. That eliminated Clay, who threw his support to Adams– who prevailed.
After the election (the first in which a president did not receive the most popular votes; so far the only race settled in the House), Adams named Clay to the coveted post of Secretary of State– deemed "the corrupt bargain" by Jackson, who went on to form (what evolved into) the Democratic Party. The Democratic-Republicans became the National Republican Party (AKA, the Anti-Jackson Party), then the Whig Party.
Tagged with civil discourse, corrupt bargain, Elites, history, John Quincy Adams, lies, political science, sociology, Trump, truth
"There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship"*…
Democracy stopped declining in 2018, according to the latest edition of The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index. The index rates 167 countries by 60 indicators across five broad categories: electoral process and pluralism, the functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties. It is stricter than most similar indices: it concludes that just 4.5% of the world's people live in a "full democracy". However, the overall global score remained stable in 2018 for the first time in three years. Just 42 countries experienced a decline, compared with 89 in 2017. Encouragingly, 48 improved.
In recent years, threats to democracy around the world have become increasingly obvious. The Arab spring fizzled. China's leader is poised to rule for life. Populists with autocratic tendencies have won elections in the Philippines, Brazil and Mexico and subverted democratic institutions in Hungary, Turkey and Poland. Perhaps because the trend is so glaring—strongmen in different countries often copy each other's tactics, soundbites and scapegoats—voters are not taking it lying down. Political participation improved more than any other measure on the EIU's index. This is true even in advanced democracies such as the United States, where voters are highly disgruntled. Polarisation in America has led to anger, gridlock and [a government shutdown]. According to Gallup polls from January to mid-November 2018, the share of Americans who approve of the way that Congress is handling its job had fallen to an average of 18%, down from 40% in 2000. Perhaps because they are so cross, they are more likely to vote. Turnout at the 2018 mid-term elections was the highest for over 100 years.
Parts of Europe are suffering from a democratic malaise. Italy fell from 21st to 33rd in the rankings after voters elected a populist coalition that seeks to bypass democratic institutions and curtail the civil liberties of immigrants and Roma. Turkey's score declined for the sixth year in a row as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan swept aside most constraints on his power. Russia deteriorated for the tenth year in a row, after the main opposition candidate was barred from running in a presidential election and Vladimir Putin continued to crush civil liberties. Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia saw slight improvements in 2018, mostly reflecting higher scores for political participation.
The report warns that all this may be a pause, rather than the end of democracy's retreat. The global rise in engagement, combined with a continued crackdown on civil liberties such as freedom of expression, is a potentially volatile mix. It could be a recipe for instability in 2019.
See the report in full– and explore the interactive version of the map, above– at "The retreat of global democracy stopped in 2018."
* Ralph Nader
As we commit ourselves to citizenship, we might recall that it was on this date in 1961 that President Dwight D, Eisenhower made his farewell address on a national television broadcast. Perhaps most famously, Eisenhower, the only general to be elected president in the 20th century, used the speech to warn the nation against the corrupting influence of what he described as the "military-industrial complex."
But he also used the occasion to urge a long view of our America and its citizen's responsibilities:
As we peer into society's future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
Tagged with democracy, Eisenhower, Farewell Address, global politics, history, Military-Industrial Complex, political science, politics
"Things on the whole are much faster in America; people don't 'stand for election', they 'run for office.'"*…
If you want to find a Republican member of Congress, head out into the country. To find a Democrat, your best shot is in a city. But to find a competitive election this fall? Head to the suburbs, where control of the House of Representatives will likely be decided.
More than 40 percent of the U.S. House of Representatives is composed of predominantly suburban districts, according to a new CityLab analysis that classifies all 435 U.S. House districts according to their densities. These seats are currently closely divided between Democrats and Republicans. But that balance could be washed away by a "blue wave" in November. There are 28 Republican-held suburban districts that are competitive1 this fall under FiveThirtyEight's projections—close to 40 percent of Republicans' 74 suburban seats. The number of suburban Democratic seats in play: 1 out of 90…
The fascinating analysis in full at: "Density is Destiny."
* Jessica Mitford
As we get out the vote, we might note that today is International Moment of Frustration Scream Day– one is encouraged to go outside at twelve hundred hours Greenwich Mean Time and scream for a solid thirty seconds. The occasion was created by Ruth and Tom Roy, who have a long suit in this sort of thing.
Tagged with density, elections, electoral politics, history, humor, International Moment of Frustration Scream Day, political science, politics, population density
"There's nothing in the world so demoralizing as money"*…
The beginning of a MUCH longer infographic
This infographic was initially created to show how much money exists in its different forms. For example, to highlight how much physical cash there is in comparison to broader measures of money which include saving and checking account deposits.
Interestingly, what is considered "money" depends on who you are asking.
Are the abstractions created by Central Banks really money? What about gold, bitcoins, or other hard assets?
Since we first released this infographic in 2015, "All the World's Money and Markets" has taken on a different meaning to us and many others. It's a way of simplifying a complex universe of currencies, assets, and other financial instruments in a way that people can understand.
Numbers represented in the data visualization range from the size of the above-ground silver market ($17 billion) to the notional value of all derivatives ($1.2 quadrillion as a high-end estimate). In between those two extremes, we've added many other familiar measures, such as the GDP of California, the value of equities, the real estate market, along with different money supply metrics to give perspective…
See the infographic in its entirety– and ponder such take-aways as that the total of all derivatives outstanding today exceeds the total before the crash of 2008 the led to the Great Recession— at "All of the World's Money and Markets in One Visualization."
* Sophocles, Antigone
As we batten down the hatches, we might send careful-calculated birthday greetings to Amartya Kumar Sen; he was born on this date in 1933. A polymathic economist and philosopher, he has made material contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, thinking on economic and social justice, economic theories of famines, and indices of the measure of well-being of citizens of developing countries.
Sen's revolutionary contribution to development economics and social indicators is the concept of "capability" developed in his article "Equality of What". He argues that governments should be measured against the concrete capabilities of their citizens. This is because top-down development will always trump human rights as long as the definition of terms remains in doubt (is a "right" something that must be provided or something that simply cannot be taken away?). For instance, in the United States citizens have a hypothetical "right" to vote. To Sen, this concept is fairly empty. In order for citizens to have a capacity to vote, they first must have "functionings". These "functionings" can range from the very broad, such as the availability of education, to the very specific, such as transportation to the polls. Only when such barriers are removed can the citizen truly be said to act out of personal choice. It is up to the individual society to make the list of minimum capabilities guaranteed by that society. For an example of the "capabilities approach" in practice, see Martha Nussbaum's Women and Human Development. [source]
Called the "conscience of his profession," Sen was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998; India's Bharat Ratna in 1999 for his work in welfare economics; and in 2017, the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science.
Tagged with Amartya Sen, derivatives, development, economics, global economy, history, markets, money, political science