In a few months, the people of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will hold a referendum election on the question of whether to change their electoral system fundamentally. Currently Britain's parliament is elected on the same basis as the U.S. House of Representatives: several hundred geographic districts hold elections, and whoever gets the most votes is elected. It's a very simple system, and it sounds very appealing. But if this referendum is successful, Britain will replace it with what they call alternative vote, or what I call instant runoff voting (AV/IRV). Reading two law review articles about presidential government which happened to discuss proportional representation, I was reminded of why I really like IRV.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
The Important Thing for a Government
I'm currently reading an article by Professor Bruce Ackerman in which he argues against American-style separation of powers as a system that other governments should copy. He gives various reasons why presidentialism is bad: it creates impasses (like the one we're in now), gives perverse incentives to majorities that do take full control of the government, encourages the President to overthrow the legislature, promotes the cult of Presidential personality, etc. He also argues, however, that the Westminster system, where a single electoral victory grants plenary power for up to five years, is wrong, because citizens have better things to do than debate issues in the public forum all the time and so a single election should not be interpreted as a sweeping mandate to do whatever you want. I'm not yet to the point where he proposes his own solutions, though I think I have some ideas what they are and I think I don't like them, but just from what I've read so far I think I think that he fundamentally misunderstands something about governments. Because, after all, Ackerman concedes that the American and British systems appear to work quite well indeed for America and Britain. So what is it that makes these hideous systems manage to work well in their indigenous nations?
The answer is that the most important trait a government can have actually has nothing to do with the structure of that government, or at least not in any particularly predictable way. The most important thing for a government is the popular perception of legitimacy. The citizenry must accept and believe that the government is truly the government of them, by them, and for them. We believe that in America. They believe that in Britain. So our governments work. That's why, I think, the American hyper-inert system has actually tended to produce results, even when government is divided (though the filibuster is undermining this tradition), and the British government has not tended to produce massive overreaches by fleeting majorities. The culture of legitimacy shapes the government into a working, functioning whole.
The problem with this answer, of course, is that there's no easy way to create the perception of legitimacy in a brand-new government. I think my best recommendation would be to avoid talk of "copying" the systems of prominent countries. When the people of a nation sit down to forge a new constitution for themselves, I think foreign scholars should stay away. The drafters of that new constitution should of course be learned in political theory and constitutional design, but the answers to the basic questions of governmental structure, like "how many elections should a movement need to win before it can shape policy?", should be answered by the people of that country. In America, where we set out to craft the largest and most diverse democratically-governed nation in history, we needed a system with heavy insulation against domination by, say, either slave states or free states. Britain's a smaller, more homogeneous country, and as their system developed ad hoc the House of Commons became seen as the people's representatives against the king or the Lords. So for a nation that is just designing its own constitution, I advise it to ignore advice and make its own road in the way that suits it best.
If I did have one concrete piece of advice, it would be to clearly delineate the means of constitutional change. Both the British and American systems have been required by circumstances to change over time. In America, we have almost steadily increased the power of our central government; Britain, meanwhile, is in the process of delegating more power to Scottish, Welsh, and North Irish regional governments. Even if the original constitution is perfectly adapted to that country at that time, it is impossible that it will continue to be so well-suited forever. Ackerman worries that in Presidential governments the President might just dissolve the legislature and rule as a dictator, with military support. Well, if the military wants to run a military coup it is likely to have one. At the very least I think you can have a well-defined process for changing the institutional structure, so that the people can at the very least have a clear idea of whether that change was legitimate or not.
The answer is that the most important trait a government can have actually has nothing to do with the structure of that government, or at least not in any particularly predictable way. The most important thing for a government is the popular perception of legitimacy. The citizenry must accept and believe that the government is truly the government of them, by them, and for them. We believe that in America. They believe that in Britain. So our governments work. That's why, I think, the American hyper-inert system has actually tended to produce results, even when government is divided (though the filibuster is undermining this tradition), and the British government has not tended to produce massive overreaches by fleeting majorities. The culture of legitimacy shapes the government into a working, functioning whole.
The problem with this answer, of course, is that there's no easy way to create the perception of legitimacy in a brand-new government. I think my best recommendation would be to avoid talk of "copying" the systems of prominent countries. When the people of a nation sit down to forge a new constitution for themselves, I think foreign scholars should stay away. The drafters of that new constitution should of course be learned in political theory and constitutional design, but the answers to the basic questions of governmental structure, like "how many elections should a movement need to win before it can shape policy?", should be answered by the people of that country. In America, where we set out to craft the largest and most diverse democratically-governed nation in history, we needed a system with heavy insulation against domination by, say, either slave states or free states. Britain's a smaller, more homogeneous country, and as their system developed ad hoc the House of Commons became seen as the people's representatives against the king or the Lords. So for a nation that is just designing its own constitution, I advise it to ignore advice and make its own road in the way that suits it best.
If I did have one concrete piece of advice, it would be to clearly delineate the means of constitutional change. Both the British and American systems have been required by circumstances to change over time. In America, we have almost steadily increased the power of our central government; Britain, meanwhile, is in the process of delegating more power to Scottish, Welsh, and North Irish regional governments. Even if the original constitution is perfectly adapted to that country at that time, it is impossible that it will continue to be so well-suited forever. Ackerman worries that in Presidential governments the President might just dissolve the legislature and rule as a dictator, with military support. Well, if the military wants to run a military coup it is likely to have one. At the very least I think you can have a well-defined process for changing the institutional structure, so that the people can at the very least have a clear idea of whether that change was legitimate or not.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
The "I've Been Ranked Ahead of Tiger" Club
Ernie Els
Greg Norman
Davis Love III
Vijay Singh
Lee Westwood
Martin Kaymer
That's the list. Since Tiger Woods first ascended to the World #1 ranking on June 15th, 1997, only these six men have been ranked ahead of him in the Official World Golf Rankings. As of tomorrow, Graeme McDowell will join the club, and if Luke Donald wins the 36-hole finals match then he'll join as well. In that scenario, Tiger would have fallen to World #5, the lowest he's been during that entire period. He's only been #3 very occasionally before the current stretch. Notably absent, of course, is the guy with four majors and twenty-eight PGA Tour victories since then, the most majors in that span and second-most wins. Despite being, I'd say, clearly the second-best player of the Tiger Woods Era, Phil Mickelson has never been ranked ahead of Tiger during the entire era. They're within about a tenth of a point in the rankings right now.
It's an open question in golf right now whether this club is about to get not-very-exclusive. If Tiger spends a significant amount of time ranked 5th or lower, there's going to be a lot of people ahead of him, and it's going to be pretty volatile who those people are. The way he's kept this list down to six men over thirteen-and-a-half years is by never being lower than 3rd, and only below 2nd for a few scant weeks. To my mind, when this list starts getting bigger at a fairly frequent pace, it will be the end of the Tiger Woods era, properly speaking. That era was defined by a level of dominance unparalleled in this or any other sport, being better than everyone for 623 out of 698 weeks, and better than everyone in the world except for four specific people for all 698 of those weeks. I actually have fairly little doubt that Tiger will win more tournaments, and more majors; in fact, I think it's quite likely indeed that he'll be back to World #1 at some point. But regaining that extreme, unprecedented level of absolute dominance would take a lot of doing.
Greg Norman
Davis Love III
Vijay Singh
Lee Westwood
Martin Kaymer
That's the list. Since Tiger Woods first ascended to the World #1 ranking on June 15th, 1997, only these six men have been ranked ahead of him in the Official World Golf Rankings. As of tomorrow, Graeme McDowell will join the club, and if Luke Donald wins the 36-hole finals match then he'll join as well. In that scenario, Tiger would have fallen to World #5, the lowest he's been during that entire period. He's only been #3 very occasionally before the current stretch. Notably absent, of course, is the guy with four majors and twenty-eight PGA Tour victories since then, the most majors in that span and second-most wins. Despite being, I'd say, clearly the second-best player of the Tiger Woods Era, Phil Mickelson has never been ranked ahead of Tiger during the entire era. They're within about a tenth of a point in the rankings right now.
It's an open question in golf right now whether this club is about to get not-very-exclusive. If Tiger spends a significant amount of time ranked 5th or lower, there's going to be a lot of people ahead of him, and it's going to be pretty volatile who those people are. The way he's kept this list down to six men over thirteen-and-a-half years is by never being lower than 3rd, and only below 2nd for a few scant weeks. To my mind, when this list starts getting bigger at a fairly frequent pace, it will be the end of the Tiger Woods era, properly speaking. That era was defined by a level of dominance unparalleled in this or any other sport, being better than everyone for 623 out of 698 weeks, and better than everyone in the world except for four specific people for all 698 of those weeks. I actually have fairly little doubt that Tiger will win more tournaments, and more majors; in fact, I think it's quite likely indeed that he'll be back to World #1 at some point. But regaining that extreme, unprecedented level of absolute dominance would take a lot of doing.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
The Twilight of Racism
Gallup recently released data on aggregate state-by-state approval of Barack Obama in 2010. They find, among other things, that his approval declined compared to 2009 in every single state; not a shocker. More interesting, I think, is the comparison between these approval ratings and Obama's 2008 performance, something Nate Silver of 538 analyzed in some depth yesterday. He noted that Obama's approval has declined most from his actual electoral performance in swing states, probably due to his having run one hell of a ground game in '08, and also that he seems to be doing best in the South. He mentions that this might have something to do with fading racial animus against Obama as white voters grow accustomed to having a black President. I have investigated the question in a little more detail.
Here's a graph of the change in Obama's numbers, '08 election to '10 approval, as a function of the share of the white vote Obama received in 2008 (per the CNN exit polls):
Using all 50 states plus DC, the correlation is 0.6054, pretty strong, and it appears that every extra point of white voters Obama received in '08 has cost him 0.227 points of approval swing through 2010. If we exclude the two apparent outliers on the upper-right, which are Hawaii and Washington, D.C. (and it seems reasonable to me to exclude these two), then we have a correlation of 0.7122, which is really, really strong for such an obvious relation, and an extra point of white voters has cost Obama 0.283 points in shift.
The conclusion? I think it's safe to say that we are seeing some of the effect some of us thought we might see. Some racially-motivated voters in the South, probably not the most hard-core of racist voters, are noticing that, hey, there's been a black guy in the White House for two years now and the world hasn't ended! This means that some of the states where Republicans have been needing to keep Democrats one-third of the white vote, states like SC, LA, GA, AL, and MS, the "black belt," might start being just slightly non-racist enough that the Democrats might have a chance. Obama only needed 23% of the white vote in Mississippi to win it in 2008. Is it so shocking, given that fact, that Gallup has him with net-positive approval in Mississippi? I don't think it really is. Maybe the solid south is finally beginning to crumble after all.
Here's a graph of the change in Obama's numbers, '08 election to '10 approval, as a function of the share of the white vote Obama received in 2008 (per the CNN exit polls):
The conclusion? I think it's safe to say that we are seeing some of the effect some of us thought we might see. Some racially-motivated voters in the South, probably not the most hard-core of racist voters, are noticing that, hey, there's been a black guy in the White House for two years now and the world hasn't ended! This means that some of the states where Republicans have been needing to keep Democrats one-third of the white vote, states like SC, LA, GA, AL, and MS, the "black belt," might start being just slightly non-racist enough that the Democrats might have a chance. Obama only needed 23% of the white vote in Mississippi to win it in 2008. Is it so shocking, given that fact, that Gallup has him with net-positive approval in Mississippi? I don't think it really is. Maybe the solid south is finally beginning to crumble after all.
Response to Huckabee
In criticizing Obama's decision to abandon his defense of DOMA, Mike Huckabee claimed that marriage is the foundational form of government. Here's what I wonder: for someone who spends an awful lot of time talking about political philosophy (his whole schtick is about how we need government only to the extent that the people fail to govern themselves privately), has he ever read John Locke's Second Treatise? 'Cause I have, fairly recently, and I happen to remember that Locke addresses this issue. He specifically inquires whether the family power relation is an appropriate model for a political power relation, and decides that it is not, for several reasons. The family relation, he says, is an emphatically natural relation, i.e. people are born into it (or, as he would put it, are placed into that relation by god), whereas a political relation is, uh, political. People choose to enter a political compact, but you're stuck with your family. So it's not a good model.
Of course, you can disagree with Mr. Locke, but given that a) the importance of this conclusion in the Second Treatise is to enable Locke to reject a system of monarchy by divine or natural right, and b) we tend to reject systems of monarchy by divine or natural right these days, I think it's interesting that Huckabee just blithely asserts this. Now, one can get doubly modern on this problem, and state that marriage has changed to where it's no longer the foundation of an absolute patriarchy founded on divine right but rather a voluntary arrangement between two people which might also, as circumstances dictate, grow to include others with ties that are to some degree voluntary (in that you can get out of them if you really want to) to the core pair. In this case you can almost make the case for an analogy to government. But unfortunately at that point we've also de-gendered marriage, and it's hard to see why this kind of civil-arrangement definition of marriage would in any way prejudice us against letting gay people have it. If the point of marriage is that people get to form what one might call private social contracts, stronger in force than the actual social contract but limiting only a very few people, and that these compacts are sort of analogous to political compacts scaled down, then there's no reason at all why it should have anything to do with sex. So basically, Huckabee's making a very odd argument here.
Of course, you can disagree with Mr. Locke, but given that a) the importance of this conclusion in the Second Treatise is to enable Locke to reject a system of monarchy by divine or natural right, and b) we tend to reject systems of monarchy by divine or natural right these days, I think it's interesting that Huckabee just blithely asserts this. Now, one can get doubly modern on this problem, and state that marriage has changed to where it's no longer the foundation of an absolute patriarchy founded on divine right but rather a voluntary arrangement between two people which might also, as circumstances dictate, grow to include others with ties that are to some degree voluntary (in that you can get out of them if you really want to) to the core pair. In this case you can almost make the case for an analogy to government. But unfortunately at that point we've also de-gendered marriage, and it's hard to see why this kind of civil-arrangement definition of marriage would in any way prejudice us against letting gay people have it. If the point of marriage is that people get to form what one might call private social contracts, stronger in force than the actual social contract but limiting only a very few people, and that these compacts are sort of analogous to political compacts scaled down, then there's no reason at all why it should have anything to do with sex. So basically, Huckabee's making a very odd argument here.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
The Opposite of Love
This is totally random, but I just saw someone referring to the idea that "the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference." This strikes me as somewhere between wrong and simplistic. The truth is that these three emotional states are really three corners of a triangle:
What's the "opposite" of love? Well, assuming this is an equilateral triangle, there are two points in the triangle furthest from love: one is hate, which is the opposite along the "positive/negative" axis, and one is indifference, which is the opposite along the "magnitude" axis. Note, of course, that it is a triangle, because as the magnitude goes to zero and you reach indifference there becomes very little, well, difference between the most positive feeling and the most negative feeling.
The truth, then, is not that "the opposite of love is not hate." It's that indifference is, perhaps, just as far from love as hate is, and maybe can be just as hurtful as hate, too. A pedantic point, but one that I think is worth making. Also, I like making colorful diagrams.
The truth, then, is not that "the opposite of love is not hate." It's that indifference is, perhaps, just as far from love as hate is, and maybe can be just as hurtful as hate, too. A pedantic point, but one that I think is worth making. Also, I like making colorful diagrams.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Learning Styles
I know I saw some article recently saying that the famed "learning styles" idea has been overhyped, but whatever. Here's the story. For a variety of reasons, including a class that kicked out half of its 680 students and a lingering stomach bug, I have myself set up to take a midterm in a high-math-content microecon class this Thursday, having gone to only two lectures of that class thus far. This has inspired me to disregard my roommate's advice that the textbook was really not necessary for him when he took the class, and seek out a copy of said textbook; for more various reasons I don't have my hands on it yet.
But when I was explaining to my roommate what I want the textbook for, namely, to see a few examples of each of the several algorithms we're supposed to know how to use, he responded that he doesn't think the textbook has examples. It has problems, but you're supposed to do them for yourself. I think it's possible that there's sort of an ideology that this is a good thing, that you're not supposed to show someone how to do it but rather make them figure it out, and they learn it better. But I know that I at least feel that the quickest and easiest way to learn an algorithm like the kind that a microecon class uses lots of, and I do mean learn it, quite properly, is to see it done. Once I've seen what's supposed to happen, it's rather easy for me to remember what I am then supposed to do. Trying to figure it out for myself, though, is often just really, really frustrating, and takes a hell of a lot longer. I'm not sure what that says about my learning style, but I definitely think that a textbook that just presents you with an algorithm and never shows you examples of using it is not targeted to me. (Also, this might tie in with a post I'll be writing shortly, also about learning.)
But when I was explaining to my roommate what I want the textbook for, namely, to see a few examples of each of the several algorithms we're supposed to know how to use, he responded that he doesn't think the textbook has examples. It has problems, but you're supposed to do them for yourself. I think it's possible that there's sort of an ideology that this is a good thing, that you're not supposed to show someone how to do it but rather make them figure it out, and they learn it better. But I know that I at least feel that the quickest and easiest way to learn an algorithm like the kind that a microecon class uses lots of, and I do mean learn it, quite properly, is to see it done. Once I've seen what's supposed to happen, it's rather easy for me to remember what I am then supposed to do. Trying to figure it out for myself, though, is often just really, really frustrating, and takes a hell of a lot longer. I'm not sure what that says about my learning style, but I definitely think that a textbook that just presents you with an algorithm and never shows you examples of using it is not targeted to me. (Also, this might tie in with a post I'll be writing shortly, also about learning.)
Friday, February 18, 2011
Fiction
What is fiction? No, wait, what is reality?
Some models of existence suggest that there are a lot of universes in existence. Perhaps there are other universes with different physical laws and properties. Perhaps there are a number of universes parallel to our own which diverged from it at some point. Possibly even an essentially infinite number, composed of all possible paths that existence could have taken since its beginning, whenever the hell that was. This last possibility has always intrigued me, because I think it would have a very interesting consequence for a large portion of so-called fiction. If every possible history of this universe that could ever have unfolded has in fact unfolded in some parallel dimension, then I believe it follows that any piece of realistic fiction, by which I mean any story which has not happened in our universe but could have happened in a universe with the underlying properties of ours, is not actually fiction. It's just a story told from a different parallel universe.
Some models of existence suggest that there are a lot of universes in existence. Perhaps there are other universes with different physical laws and properties. Perhaps there are a number of universes parallel to our own which diverged from it at some point. Possibly even an essentially infinite number, composed of all possible paths that existence could have taken since its beginning, whenever the hell that was. This last possibility has always intrigued me, because I think it would have a very interesting consequence for a large portion of so-called fiction. If every possible history of this universe that could ever have unfolded has in fact unfolded in some parallel dimension, then I believe it follows that any piece of realistic fiction, by which I mean any story which has not happened in our universe but could have happened in a universe with the underlying properties of ours, is not actually fiction. It's just a story told from a different parallel universe.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
The True Source of Judicial Review
I'm doing some reading for my comparative constitutional law class, in particular about judicial review itself. We read Marbury, obviously, but also a case by the Israeli Supreme Court in the '90s that established judicial review as more or less a fundamental principle of constitutional democracy. That's a sentiment with which I more or less agree. The casebook then discusses various controversies surrounding judicial review, including the Alexander Bickel "countermajoritarian dilemma" saga from American politics but also the fact that in the aftermath of the Israeli Supreme Court's appropriation of the power of judicial review for itself it has faced assaults from the political branches. Specifically, we are told, there was a very recent effort by the Minister of Justice (a funny sort of title, given the following) to curtail the Court's power to invalidate laws that infringe upon human rights.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
The Point of Happiness
Well, okay, not exactly the point of happiness; that's a slightly grandiose title for dramatic effect. But I am going to talk about the point of something different, namely David Cameron's idea of creating a happiness index to measure the well-being of Britons. This is kind of a signature proposal of his, one he came up with in 2005 and is now implementing as Prime Minister. It's one of the things that makes me like him considerably better than I would like an average Conservative PM. Here's why.
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