Why Do We Need Human Rights? (35): Why Do We Need Democracy?

The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755

Democracy is a human right. In the past, I’ve  listed a number of reasons why we should prefer democracy over other forms of government (here and here for example). I’ve now come across another reason, one that may not be convincing or relevant to everyone, but still it’s mildly interesting:

Lisbon, Portugal, during the great earthquake of 1 November 1755. This copper engraving, made that year, shows the city in ruins and in flames. Tsunamis rush upon the shore, destroying the wharfs. The engraving is also noteworthy in showing highly disturbed water in the harbor, which sank many ships. Passengers in the left foreground show signs of panic.

All things — including wealth — being equal, earthquakes kill more people in dictatorships than in democracies, write NYU political scientists Alastair Smith and Alejandro Quiroz Flores. The reason that democratically elected leaders prepare their countries for disaster better is because they fear they’ll be voted out of office if their governments are caught unprepared. (Dictators obviously tend to worry less about election outcomes.) A recent World Bank study backs up this argument, with an added wrinkle: institutionalized autocracies, like China’s, tend to outperform non-institutionalized or corrupt autocracies as well as young democracies when it comes to preventing earthquake deaths. Still, another study finds that politicians in democratic elections benefit even more from doling out disaster relief after a catastrophe than they do from preparing for disasters yet to come. (source)

More on democracy and human rights here, here and here. More on earthquakes and accountability.

What is Democracy? (64): Plutocracy?

“The bosses of the Senate”

The role of money in democracy is hotly contested. It’s undeniable that democracies spend a lot of money on campaigns, advertising, lobbying etc. Some argue that wealthy individuals or corporations often use their financial means to distort the outcomes of elections or the framing of policy and legislation. There may also be a problem of vote buying: wealthy individuals or politicians paying voters or giving them some other advantages (such as jobs or cheap housing) in an effort to convince them to vote in a certain way. Worries about the effect of income inequality on democracy are partly based on this type of argument, as are efforts to regulate campaign financing.

And indeed, the huge amounts of money going around in democratic politics could potentially move us away of the democratic ideal of equal influence. So the charge of plutocracy isn’t necessarily ridiculous. However, this is essentially an empirical matter and we should therefore look at evidence from political science. Here’s a short and somewhat depressing overview:

With regard to overall spending, Jacobson (1978) was the first to show an effect on vote outcomes, but this effect was mainly present for challengers [in U.S. Congressional elections]. In subsequent years, the effect of challenger spending was confirmed, but others also found effects for incumbent spending as well (e.g. Green & Krasno 1988, Erikson & Palfrey 1995, Gerber 1998). The basic takeaway is that spending more is clearly effective for challengers, and probably also matters for incumbents too, but solving the causal direction problems involved makes it very difficult to be really certain of any of these findings.

One problem is we know that winning candidates generally have more money, but whether money helps candidates or is just a signal of unobserved candidate quality [i.e., people give more money to better candidates] is unclear. Another problem is that not only are donors attracted to high-quality candidates just as voters are, but they are also attracted to winning candidates—that is, if money is given in order to get access to elected officials, donors are more likely to give to candidates who are expected to do well, because the expected return is greater. In both cases, we could observe an empirical relationship between winning and having more money for your campaign, without the money actually “causing” the victory. (source)

So, maybe the “plutocrats” can’t just simply spend in order to have their preferred candidate elected and instead spend money on the candidate who is good and who will win anyway. However, the fact remains that their spending gives them privileged access to politicians and possibly also privileged influence on subsequent policy, and that isn’t something we want in a democracy. If “winning candidates generally have more money” – whether the money causes the win or not – one can reasonably assume that the candidates will in some way be indebted to or influenced by their donors. Also, even if there are doubts about the causal direction, it is worrying that the evidence doesn’t rule out the possibility that campaign spending – especially spending by challengers – can determine who gets elected.

Regarding deterrence – successful fundraising by incumbents deterring challengers from entering a race – the empirical evidence is weak:

there is no consensus in the literature regarding deterrence, and once again there are major questions about causal relationships (i.e., do high-raising incumbents deter, or is it just high-quality incumbents who can raise a great deal of money and simultaneously deter quality challengers for reasons having nothing to do with funding?). (source)

Whatever the evidence on deterrence, it’s clear that money determines who can run. It’s naive to think that a candidate with few means would be able to run against another having a lot of means. The former would simply be invisible, even if he or she feels undeterred.

What about campaign advertising, one of the more visible ways in which money could play a part in politics?

[A]ds appear to be somewhat effective but have wide variance in their effectiveness (that is, some ads help a lot, most help very little or not at all, and a few are counterproductive). (source)

Voter mobilization – face-to-face canvassing, mailings, phone calls – is also very expensive, hence well-funded candidates can do more of it. Whether they in fact do more of it depends on its effectiveness:

mobilization efforts appear to be effective but costly (face-to-face canvassing appears most effective by far, while phone calls & direct mail have much less effect). (source)

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The conclusion is that campaign spending is somewhat effective, and that those candidates with more money do somewhat better. This results in a financial arms race between candidates, increasing the risk of donor indebtedness and of unequal access and influence:

Candidates who raise a lot of money tend to do better, and it’s more likely than not that at least part of this relationship is due to money paying for things like ads and canvassers that help candidates win over new voters and/or turn out their bases. (source)

Vote buying is the other channel through which money could potentially influence democratic politics. Here, some of the evidence is more encouraging:

The experiment took place during the March 2011 elections in Benin and involved 150 randomly selected villages. The treatment group had town hall meetings where voters deliberated over their candidate’s electoral platforms with no cash distribution. The control group had the standard campaign, i.e. one-way communication of the candidate’s platform by himself or his local broker, followed (most of the time) by cash distribution.

We find that the treatment has a positive effect on turnout. In addition, using village level election returns, we find no significant difference in electoral support for the experimental candidate between treatment and control villages.

…the positive treatment effect is driven in large part by active information sharing by those who attended the meetings. (source)

In conclusion: democracy is not simply a market transaction, but neither is it silly to worry about the role of money in elections and legislation.

More on money in politics here. More posts in this series are here.

Most Urgent Human Rights Policies

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If you’re a political leader, a church leader or anyone else with the ability and willingness to change some people’s behavior and promote respect for human rights – to some extent that includes all of us – what should be your policy priorities? On which human rights violations should you focus? Ideally, you would like to be told something more specific than “reduce suffering and violence and enhance liberty and equality”. So here’s my attempt at something specific.

I’ll list a few domains that require urgent action. Not all of these domains are equally amenable to action, because there may be strong resistance in some quarters. Nevertheless, I consider all these domains to be equally important. I’ll list them first (and include links to older posts arguing why action is important) and afterwards distinguish between those domains where immediate progress is realistic and where it’s not. Of course, it’s not because progress isn’t realistic that we should remain passive.

1. Promote free trade. Standard arguments for protectionism sound a lot like the Count complaining that there are beggars at the door. Protectionism may even harm citizens of the protecting country. It certainly harms producers in poorer countries. More here.
2. Abolish capital punishment and reduce incarceration rates. Capital punishment doesn’t deliver on its promises, and even if it did it wouldn’t be acceptable. “Tough on crime” policies go beyond what is required for public safety and the rights of victims.
3. One way to reduce incarceration rates is to end the war on drugs. Ending the war on drugs will also reduce racial discrimination because it leads to strong imbalances in incarceration rates by race, impoverishing and even destroying many black families.
4. Abolish existing laws and practices that lead to discrimination of all types. Some laws, however, may be necessary to combat discrimination.
5. Guarantee social safety nets through a fair and efficient system of benefits and progressive taxation - perhaps including a basic income guarantee - but also encourage private charity. Design the taxation system in such a way that it reduces income inequality.
6. Help the poor by way of Conditional Cash Transfers.
7. Rethink development aid. More here and here.
8. Combat malnourishment and hunger and improve the water supply. More here and here.
9. Reduce immigration restrictions. The supposed negative consequences of increased immigration are largely fictitious, and the benefits for migrants are huge. Also relax asylum rules for refugees.
10. Improve education and healthcare.
11. Enhance the scope of humanitarian intervention in order to avoid Rwanda style atrocities.
12. Promote democracy, the rule of law, the separation of powers, federalism, and the separation of church and state, and improve those institutions where they already exist. Human rights are typically safer in democracies and obviously require the rule of law.
13. Declare victory in the war on terror, but continue the capture terrorist and subject them to fair criminal trials. Abandon torture, targeted killings if alternatives are available, and extrajudicial incarceration, and limit invasions of privacy to those strictly necessary to capture terrorists.
14. Abolish freedom-restricting laws such as those prohibiting assisted suicide and euthanasia. Relax abortion laws where necessary.
15. Guarantee the freedom of the internet.

Now, which of these actions are realistic in the short term, and which are not? The latter part of the list, namely actions 9 to 15, seems to be the most difficult. Substantial progress is already under way for 1, 2, 4 (take the case of same-sex marriage and the repeal of DADT), 6, 7 and 8. Also, 3 may be heading in the right direction. 5 depends to some extent on the general economic climate.

It’s obviously a long list of often very difficult policies, even when we limit ourselves to those areas where progress is relatively easy. Also, in some countries, progress may be easier in some areas than in others. That’s why this list is still too general and different actors may have to choose a subset.

More on progress in the field of human rights here.

Related Articles

• UN chief criticized as soft on human rights (foxnews.com)
• Rights group says democracies ignore abuses (ctv.ca)

What is Totalitarianism?

Scene from the movie 1984

It sounds like a somewhat antiquated concept and it may very well be true that it’s useless as a descriptive device for current politics. However, I believe that it remains a necessary tool for the correct understanding of 20th century history. Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Mao-era China were very different countries and very different political regimes, but it can be argued that what they had in common was more important than what separated them. And what they had in common separated them from all other authoritarian governments before and after them. (Hannah Arendt was one of the first to notice this). That is the reasoning behind the concept of totalitarian government. Those three governments – and perhaps a few others – can be described as totalitarian states and were therefore instances of a separate type of government, like oligarchy or democracy. They were not just particularly brutal forms of dictatorship. We’re not talking about a difference in degree. Of course, some of the elements of totalitarian rule which I describe below can be found in other dictatorial governments as well, but other elements can’t. (Just like some elements of democracy can be found in non-democracies). And what certainly can’t be found elsewhere is the combination of all those elements.

Photomontage of Stalin and Hitler

Totalitarian government is a post-democratic form of government. It couldn’t exist in the era before mass democracy. It’s post-democratic in the sense that it is an outgrowth of modern democratic traditions. Political parties, party ideologies, mass movements and mass mobilization, the pseudo-popular legitimacy of rigged elections and referenda, the mass idolatry, the personality cults, mass indoctrination, propaganda, Potemkin constitutions, show trials etc. all show the totalitarian debt to democracy. The same is true for the focus on re-education and rectification of thought when some parts of the popular will are considered to be deviant: this is proof of the importance of popular consent (when consent is absent, it’s fabricated).

Contrary to older forms of despotism, totalitarianism admits that the state is no longer the natural property of a ruling class, the private tool of a sovereign or a gift of God. It is the expression of the will of the people. Not, as in a democracy, of a divided people or of a people who’s identity fluctuates over time as a consequence of public debate. The will of the people under totalitarian government is permanently defined as a unified whole. The people are defined as a race or a class. The people have a homogeneous project, namely racial supremacy or the liberation of the proletariat. The will of the people, which is also the basis of democracy but which is always kept vague, heterogeneous and fluctuating in a democracy, now becomes a singular, clear and permanent will. All individuals and individual projects or interests are identified with a collective project. Everything which is in accord with this project, is part of the people; everything else is not – is foreign, alien, “entartet”, bourgeois or capitalist – and must be destroyed. If it’s the whole of the people that works towards a certain project, then those with another opinion are enemies of the people and have to be destroyed to protect the people and its project.

That is the origin of the genocidal nature of all totalitarian governments but also of their less extreme forms of exclusion of the other. Every internal division is seen as external. The other is not part of the people. Society isn’t divided but is divided from its enemies. Every sign of internal division is externalized: dissidents are foreign spies, the other is a member of the international jewish conspiracy, a tool of international capitalism, the fifth column etc. For example, long after it was clear that the attack on Hitler in 1939 was the work of a single German individual (Georg Elser) the nazis maintained that the British secret service was to blame. The other attack by von Stauffenberg in 1944 was framed as the work of aristocratic officers who were alienated from the German people. This division between internal and external is consciously cultivated because it confirms the image of the people as a unified whole. If real foreign spies or class enemies can’t be found then they are created. and duly suppressed. Hence everyone can become the enemy, even the most loyal followers.

The fixed will of the people is subsequently represented by the party and the state. The party doesn’t represent a majority, but the people. Hence, other parties have no reason to exist. All people and the whole of the people are represented by a single party. And since this party perfectly represents a perfectly clear and unified popular will, it can infiltrate all parts of society: school, church, labor union, factory, the press, the judiciary, the arts and all other social organizations cease to be independent. The party is everywhere and submits every organization to its will. It believes it can do so because its will is the will of the people. And the party uses the means of the state to be everywhere: the secret service, the department of communications, the police… As a result, the state is also everywhere. Totalitarian government simultaneously bans people to the private sphere – all free and deviant public actions and expressions are forbidden – and destroys the private sphere, to the point that people can’t even trust their friends and family. All private actions are potentially public. Wiretapping, surveillance, public confessions… Even the most private things of all, your own thoughts, are attacked by way of propaganda and indoctrination. Totalitarianism strives for total control of private and public life. All spontaneous and independent individual or social projects are doomed unless they are completely trivial. They can only survive when they are part of the common project, because they make sense only when they are part. When they are not, they are potentially in opposition to the common project.

But we should understand that the identification of the party with the state is only temporary. The state in fact is bound to disappear. That becomes clear when we consider the imperialism that is typical of totalitarianism (to a lesser degree in the case of China). By definition, the projects of totalitarian governments – racial supremacy or a classless society – go beyond the borders of a state. Aryans aren’t only meant to rule within the borders of Germany. They deserve global supremacy in part because they are the best race and in part because the Jews are a worldwide threat. And the classless society can’t exist when it is surrounded by a capitalist world; the proletariat in other countries also deserves to rule.

Totalitarianism is a form of rule that goes beyond the state. A particular state is just a convenient tool for a certain stage in the popular project. The people as well is a concept that goes beyond the group of citizens of a given state. There are also Aryans and workers in other states. In non-totalitarian dictatorships, political rule is essentially tied to the state. A normal dictator may attack other countries, but will do so while enhancing his state or expanding his country. His rule will never go beyond the rule of a state, suitably redefined if necessary. If necessary he’ll redraw the boundaries of the state, but he will never go beyond the state as such. Totalitarian rule, on the other hand, is ultimately larger than the state. It’s the rule of a race or a class, on a potentially global level.

As the people and the state are subject to the rule of the party, so the party is subject to the rule of one individual. The leader makes sure that the party remains unified, because a divided party can’t claim to represent a unified people. So there’s a series of identifications going on: the people is identified with a class or a race; this unified people is then identified with the party that represents it; the party in turn identifies itself with the state because it (temporarily) needs the tools of the state to realize its project (class rule or race rule); the state then takes over society and identifies with it; and ultimately a single leader takes over everything in order to guarantee unity.

The people are like a collective individual, a body with a head controlling all its coordinated movements. State terror and genocide can then be seen as the body removing sickness and parasites. The other is often explicitly identified as parasitical or infectious. Violence and oppression are medicines used to safeguard the integrity of the body of the people and their purpose. The Great Purge wasn’t called a purge by accident. The Jews weren’t depicted as pestilent rats for no reason.

The image of the body also means prophylaxis: why wait with punishment until the crime is committed? We know that certain persons are enemies of the people. Crime in the sense of opposition to the project of the people is a fatality for them, sooner or later. There may be good Jews, but we can’t take the risk that they marry an Aryan and defile the race. And some capitalists may be less harmful than others, but why wait until their presence undermines collectivization or until they betray the country and invite an invasion?

Totalitarian government isn’t like a normal lawless and arbitrary dictatorship. Of course, the laws under totalitarian government are regularly broken or changed to serve certain goals. But there are deeper laws that the totalitarian government has to protect, namely the laws of nature (in the case of Nazism, and more specifically the laws of natural selection) and the laws of history (in the case of communism, more specifically the laws that say that economic and industrial development will necessarily destroy capitalism and inaugurate communist production). Those “deeper” laws aren’t human laws; they are historical laws that drive mankind towards the realization of the project that animates totalitarianism. Totalitarian government serves to facilitate and fasten the operation of those deeper laws. Jews are exterminated because that promotes the ultimate and inevitable supremacy of Aryans. Capitalists, bourgeois, kulaks etc. are exterminated (or reeducated in order to become communists) because that promotes the ultimate and inevitable supremacy of the proletariat (the proletariat is doomed to rule given the evolution of capitalism, but its rule can be hastened).

There is no “regis voluntas suprema lex” as in previous forms of despotism. The legal lawlessness covers a deeper lawfulness. Legal laws have to be adapted to best serve the deeper laws. If terror and violence are required for the realization and hastening of the evolution postulated by the deeper laws, then the legal laws will mandate and require terror and violence. Terror and violence don’t only serve to intimidate, destroy opposition, isolate people from one another and coerce compliance. They serve the project of the people.

I think all this justifies grouping Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Mao-era China under a separate form of government. That doesn’t mean that everything about those regimes was new and typical only of totalitarian government. Obviously, genocides, terror, show trials etc. have occurred before and since. Those are not inventions of Hitler, Stalin or Mao. There are historical parallels, just as there are parallels between contemporary art and ancient art, but still we prefer to distinguish these two forms of art. We have to look beyond the phenomenology of despotic regimes throughout history, and identify the particular logic of different forms of despotism.

What Are Human Rights? (44): External Constraints on Politics, Means of Politics, or Objects of Politics?

inside/outside by Ronen Berka

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People describe and define human rights in lots of ways, but perhaps the most common definition is this: human rights are external constraints on politics. They determine the boundaries that political action – action by both authoritarian rulers and democratic majorities – should not cross. I want to use the metaphor of the ring to clarify this, because that will help us later on in this post. Political action – including legislation – is constrained by a ring of rights:

This definition – let’s call it definition 1 - places human rights squarely outside of and even prior to politics. This is why oppressive actions by authoritarian rulers who have not enacted human rights law can still be condemned by human rights talk. If rights were just a part of politics, this wouldn’t be possible because they would be on the same level as authoritarian politics and they would therefore lack constraining power. (Of course, it is a fact that human rights often fail to constrain, but I’m dealing here with the moral and not factual status of human rights).

The same logic applies to democratic governments that have enacted human rights law: their actions as well should, ideally, stay within a realm defined by a ring of rights. The difference with authoritarian governments is that democracies have more efficient extra-political means to keep their governments within the ring, at least some of the time (for example judicial review; in the case of authoritarian governments there are also means – such as foreign intervention, rebellion etc., but those are normally a lot less effective).

So that’s definition 1, and it’s good as far as it goes. The problem is that it doesn’t quite capture the essence of human rights in a democracy. Rights are not just or not merely outside of politics in a democracy – they are intrinsic to it. Democratic politics can’t function without human rights; rather than external constraints on politics, rights in a democracy are essential means of politics. They are the foundation on which democratic politics can function. That may be obvious in the case of some rights – no democratic politics without free speech, assembly or association rights and the right to vote – but it’s true for all rights (for example, I argued here that violations of the right not to be tortured can undo democracy).

So let’s call this definition 2 and represent it like this:

The ring has become the foundation. Now, it may look as if these two definitions are contradictory and incompatible: something is either an external constraint or a means, but never both. However, rights should be both: we need rights as foundations and means of democratic politics, but at the same time we want rights to be able to constrain democratic politics when necessary (for example when the majority wants to violate rights). I think we can have both.

Things get more complicated when we consider a third definition: rights as objects of politics. The two previous definitions assume that rights are uncontroversial, but that is untrue. Human rights are objects of frequent and reasonable disagreements. They are not self-evident, God-given or axiomatic. They need justifications and arguments, and different people will have different justifications and hence different definitions of rights. The only way to deal with these disagreements is through politics: discuss them in public, and let the majority vote. (E.g. should work be a right, should unemployment insurance be, should incitement be protected as free speech? etc.) As a result, the width and strength of the ring of rights changes over time:

One could argue that it’s not up to politics to decide these disagreements, and that instead a constitutional court should deal with them. However, we know from experience that this doesn’t work: politics will continue to interfere, either directly through legislation or indirectly by way of interference with the workings of the court.

And there’s an even more fundamental problem. Definition 3 looks like it’s incompatible with definitions 1 and 2. If rights are supposed to function as constraints on politics, then we shouldn’t place rights within the political process which they should constrain. When we allow rights to become objects of politics then majorities can easily destroy the  constraints that bind them. Similarly, when majorities are allowed to vote on the fundamental means of politics they may well decide to destroy those means.

The solution is not the removal of rights from politics – that’s both illusory and undesirable – but rather the creation of a distinction within politics: normal political decisions should be absolutely constrained by human rights and should respect rights as the fundamental means of politics; and then there is constitutional politics, which is a periodical – and not a day-to-day – form of politics that tackles society’s basic rules, including human rights. Normal majoritarian procedures don’t apply here. Special majorities are required as well as other safeguards against the destruction of rights.

More posts in this series are here.

What is Freedom? (8): Generic and Specific Freedom

how the police used to pull you over

People from both sides of the political divide are in favor of more freedom, it’s just that they often talk about different kinds of freedom: those on the left usually want to promote generic freedom, while those on the right favor specific freedom. Of course, they don’t use these terms, since I just made them up. What I mean by them is this:

• Generic freedom: I lack generic freedom if I never have the freedom to do certain things, for example because I don’t have the capabilities, resources, education or whatever that is necessary for me to normally be able to do these things.
• Specific freedom: I lack specific freedom if I normally have the freedom – i.e. the generic freedom, which is the ability or the resources – to do certain things but if in certain specific circumstances or on certain specific occasions someone or something prevents me from doing these things.

In the case of specific freedom, I both can and cannot do certain things (in the words of von Wright): I cannot do them now or here, but I could have done those things had it not been for some obstacle or interference. The “can do” is given and the problem of freedom only arises afterwards, namely when I can’t do, in some specific circumstances, what I normally can do.

In the generic type of freedom, on the other hand, the “can do” is problematic, and problematic in a generic rather than a specific sense: I can’t do certain things, not because I normally can but I now and here face some impediment, but because I normally can’t.

Promoting someone’s generic freedom means increasing the range of different things that person can do, generically. For example, it means teaching people to do things, allowing them to learn to do things, giving them the resources and opportunities to do things etc. Promoting someone’s specific freedom means reducing the range of impediments that force this person to omit certain actions. For example, it means reducing legal prohibitions, social pressure etc.

It’s tempting to conclude that generic freedom is in a sense prior to specific freedom: you won’t encounter impediments while trying to do what you already can do if what you are trying to do is not something you already can do. If you can’t do something, whether or not there are impediments, you don’t care about possible impediments. However, maybe specific and generic freedom are not so different after all: lack of capabilities or resources can also be viewed as an impediment.

Still, if we maintain the distinction between these two types of freedom – or these two understandings of freedom – then it seems to me that it can help to explain many of the differences between right and left wing politics. If you’re worried about generic freedom, you’ll want to help people pay for their healthcare and education; you’ll favor generous social security benefits etc. If, on the other hand, your main worry is specific freedom, you’ll favor less regulation and legislation, free markets and other policies that may or may not promote equal generic freedom for everyone.

More on the similar distinction between positive and negative freedom is here. More posts in this series are here.

For My American Readers: Should You Vote Tomorrow, or Would That Be a Complete Waste of Time?

[This is an old blogpost, slightly modified and reposted on the occasion of the Presidential election in the U.S. tomorrow.]

The odds that your vote will actually affect the outcome of an election are very small. Close elections are very rare, and even rarer are those in which one vote is pivotal. So it doesn’t make a difference whether you participate or not. In light of this, it’s a small miracle that turnouts are as high as they are, and it’s ridiculous for people to lament a turnout that’s “only” 60%.

Clearly, people know that their votes don’t affect the outcome – at least most of the time – and vote for other reasons than a mere sense of responsibility. But what reasons? Signaling is certainly part of it. People vote because they are more than individuals. They identify with others, they want to belong and they want to be part of a “movement” or party that has a certain set of beliefs. Voting makes them such a part, and hence gives them an identity and a cause. Let’s not forget that an identity is highly dependent on expression and on recognition of this expression by others. Elections, even with a secret vote, are highly effective tools for the production of identity. The seemingly meaningless and futile vote of an individual becomes quite meaningful when aggregated with the votes of like-minded individuals.

It’s only when you adopt an economic and reductionist view of people, in which individuals only pursue their self-interest, that you cannot make sense of apparently silly behavior such as voting in which the costs (transport, risk, time etc.) outweigh the immediate benefits (if any).

There’s also the mysterious force of the “if-everyone-were-doing-this” rule, which we apply regularly. (It’s a variation on the Kantian categorical imperative: it is immoral to act on a maxim that we cannot imagine everyone else acting on). Throwing one piece of garbage in the park is almost absolutely harmless. Someone will clean it, and if not no one will notice. And yet most of us just don’t do it because “if everyone was doing it” – which they are not – it would be hell, and that’s how we teach our kids not to do it. And they understand. And they – or most of them – listen and don’t do it. Part of the reason why this rule works is the force of example. We don’t want to give a bad example because when people follow it, we will suffer, even though we may in the short run benefit from doing what we shouldn’t.

Similarly, when a certain number of voters believe that their vote doesn’t make much of a difference and isn’t worth the cost of participating, then they give a bad example which can be followed by large numbers of people. As a result, the usefulness of the remaining votes increases, and these votes will then determine the behavior of the rest of the population. People will be ruled by a minority with perhaps harmful views. So in order not to find themselves in this situation which is detrimental to most people, most people choose to vote.

A better way to express this idea:

The idea is not that one person’s decision to forgo voting would crash the system—how would that possibly happen?—but that it is immoral to act on a maxim that we cannot imagine everyone else acting on. So if I … will abstain from voting because the costs of voting outweigh the benefits, I will first need to see if the maxim passes a test implicit in Kant’s categorical imperative. I ought not act in accordance with the maxim if it fails the test.

So let’s see: can I universalise the non-voting maxim? Can I imagine living in a world in which every eligible voter opts for a nap or a game of Temple Run in lieu of going to the polls? No. The logic of American democracy does not support such a universalised principle. No one votes, no one is elected, a moment of constitutional failure brings an emergency convention in which unelected delegates draft a new constitution calling for an alternate system of specifying leaders that doesn’t involve the public. The franchise, and America as we know it, disappears. Since the logic of the system cannot be sustained were everyone to adopt the nap-over-voting maxim, I am morally bound not to act on it.

Now, again, the force of Kant’s argument is not empirical: you don’t need to show that a decision not to vote will actually bring a constitutional doomsday. You just need to show that if universalised it would. (source)

So, drag yourself outside tomorrow, if necessary, and do your duty, which is a duty both to your community and to yourself.

Political Graffiti (213): Obama = Bush ?

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Something to consider next week? A similar one is here. More political graffiti is here.

The War on Terror is 11 Years Old Today, With No End in Sight

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The War on Terror, started by the U.S. government as a response to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and later joined by other governments, is 11 years old today, with no end in sight. It has had and continues to have grave consequences for the human rights of people worldwide. Osama is dead, and the war in Iraq is over, and yet people are still stuck in Guantanamo, drone strikes are more numerous than ever before and the internal security forces of Western states are increasingly powerful. It’s a high price for an uncertain gain.

However, before I discuss the consequences for human rights, I would like to make it clear that I believe, as any rational human being, that terrorism is evil, that it has to be stopped and that democracies have a right to defend themselves against violent, anti-democratic fanatics (see this post for example).

I also believe that democratic governments should be especially vigilant because the freedoms that they are elected to protect, offer opportunities for those who hate freedom, opportunities that do not exist in other political systems. Potential terrorists find it relatively easy to enter a democracy and operate in it. A democracy is a very vulnerable form of government because of the freedom it gives to everyone, even those who don’t mean well.

The freedoms of a democracy can be and are abused, but this, it seems, has frightened democratic governments to such an extent that they have decided to limit these freedoms up to the point that they are in danger of abandoning them altogether, and hence doing the work of the terrorists for them. It can be acceptable to limit certain rights for the protection of other rights (see also this post), but the right to security seems to have taken on an absolute priority, at the expense of many other rights. There is no reasonable balance anymore.

1. Civil liberties

Governments try to defend their countries against terrorist attacks by limiting civil liberties in their territories.

• The right to privacy has been limited: CCTV has become ubiquitous, DNA databases have been created, eavesdropping and wiretapping have been legalized etc.
• “No-fly-lists” have come into force, limiting the freedom of movement of even those who have written critically of the government or attended peace-protests.
• Hate speech laws have been voted to silence jihadist hate preachers, silencing others at the same time.
• “Racial profiling” by the police has turned innocent people into possible suspects, often inverting the burden of proof.
• Habeas corpus has been limited, periods of detention without charge extended, sometimes indefinitely (for “enemy combatants”).

However, in spite of all this, the constraints on a government’s actions within its territory are sometimes still considered to be inhibiting:

• “Extraordinary rendition” has been covertly practiced, allowing suspects to be tortured outside of the territory by professional torturers in other countries.
• Extra-territorial prisons have been created, in Guantanamo, but probably elsewhere as well, where suspects can be tortured or held indefinitely and where the Geneva Conventions supposedly don’t apply.

2. Mentalities

The war on terror has also changed people’s minds and attitudes.

• The media have started to censor themselves. Solidarity with the government at war and the commander-in-chief, or the fear of being perceived as unpatriotic, appeasers, “useful idiots” or even open allies of the enemy have turned many in the media into uncritical supporters of the war.
• Citizens have turned on Islam and Muslims. Xenophobia and more specifically islamophobia have undermined the ideals of tolerance and multiculturalism, and have in certain cases even led to hate crimes against Muslims.
• A ”culture of fear” has been created by the terrorist but also nurtured by irresponsible western politicians. This fear has damaged democracy. Not only have the media relinquished their traditional role as watchdogs. Politicians as well, and especially incumbents, have abused the fear of terrorism to harness support. Alert levels seem to go up just before elections.

3. Preemptive war

The US government has elaborated and implemented the strategy of preemptive war, a war

waged in an attempt to repel or defeat a perceived inevitable offensive or invasion, or to gain a strategic advantage in an impending (allegedly unavoidable) war. (source)

The Iraq war was deemed a preemptive war because Iraq was allegedly about to attack the US with weapons of mass destruction, or supply these weapons to terrorists. Whatever the merits of the case against Iraq – and with the passing of time these seem to become weaker and weaker – the war has been framed, correctly or not, as a necessary stage in the ongoing war on terror. It has, however, resulted in massive numbers of casualties on both sides. The human rights violations caused by the war stand in no relation to the violations caused by terrorism or the violations that could have been caused by Saddam.

In any case, you can’t solve the problem of terrorism by violent means only. Terrorism has causes, and there will be terrorism as long as these causes exist. (Mind you, I don’t want to excuse or justify terrorism).

4. Counter-productive

It is now widely believed, even in US government circles, that the war on terror is counter-productive. Especially the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the torture in Abu Ghraib and the detentions in Guantanamo have produced a backlash and have increased rather than reduced the terror threat. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate issued the following among its “key judgments”:

The Iraq conflict has become the “cause celebre” for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. (source)

The war on terror has created and exacerbated resentment, hatred of the West and anti-americanism. And with anti-americanism often comes hatred of democracy and freedom, as wellas Islamic radicalization. Apart from the removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan, there is no evidence that any of the strategies in the war on terror has done any good (source). Any even this tiny success seems to be far from certain.

5. Misnomer

There is something fishy about the concept of a “war on terrorism”. This “war” is in fact no such thing. There is no well-defined enemy. Anyone can at any time become an enemy. For this reason, there is no conceivable end to the war. And if you claim to wage a war on terrorism, you might as well claim to wage a war on carpet bombing. Both are tactics or strategies, not something you wage war against.

If you insist on calling anti-terrorist actions a war, then you give too much credit to the riffraff you’re opposing. Rather than deranged criminals they can call themselves soldiers. And soldiers defend something. You legitimize them. You turn a crime into a two-sided struggle in which each side defends its positions. This in turn leads to the view that the war on terror is a war of the West against the rest, bringing back images of colonialism, imperialism and the crusades, again legitimizing the terrorists, helping to consolidate their often internally opposed forces, and making them honorable in the eyes of some ordinary citizens.

I can understand that the concept of a “war on terrorism” is useful for some Western governments, because an executive that is at war has more powers, less oversight, more popular support and less criticism, but it’s a meaningless and dangerous concept. Let’s give it up, or let us at least declare victory in the one we’re now fighting for 11 years.

(This post is hoisted from the archives and slightly revised. The original was published on August 6th, 2008 and is unfortunately still relevant today).

The Causes of Human Rights Violations (40): Polarization as a Novel Way of Violating the Right to Free Speech

The traditional ways of silencing people are still all too common: libel or blasphemy laws, threats, the physical targeting of journalists, censorship, book burning or indexing, political correctness, exaggerated respect for people’s sensibilities etc. However, the silencers have developed new and increasingly sophisticated means. And I’m not thinking about tactics like internet filtering – this is indeed a new and sophisticated technology, but in essence it’s just a new form of book burning.

I’m thinking more about things like polarization as one of those new ways of silencing. A commonly cited justification of free speech is that it can help people to influence each other and spread their beliefs. We hold strong beliefs, we think we have good reasons supporting those beliefs, and we want to express these beliefs and these reasons in an attempt to convince others. Free speech helps us to do so.

At least, that’s the case in theory. In real life, this “marketplace of ideas” is dysfunctional. Many groups in society are not arguing, convincing or engaging in public thinking. Instead, ideas are expressed as claims rather than argued for. Expression, if you like, is limited to “brute” expression. One of the reasons for this is that expression can be motivated, not by the willingness to persuade, but by the need to show one’s identity or belonging. In other words, expression is signaling rather than arguing. Another reason for the lack of argumentation is the fact that a lot of expression is about being controversial and outrageous, antagonizing other groups on the polarized spectrum, provoking a “media storm” and cashing in on the advertizing generated by the ensuing pageviews, clicks or whatever.

If ideas aren’t debated but expressed in a “brute” way only, for whatever reason, then polarization is inevitable. No one is convinced by the brute expression of an idea or opinion. And if no one is convinced, then people stay in their respective camps. These camps then drift further apart because absent an exchange of reasons for beliefs, people start to see other groups as increasingly strange, alien and incomprehensible.

Calvin and friend having an argument

Now, polarization is of course nothing new, but I can’t help thinking that nowadays some people in positions of power are actively encouraging polarization as a means to silence debate, consciously or not. People in positions of responsibility, people who could use their power in order to organize and protect debate, use it instead to promote brute expression and hence to stifle the exchange of arguments and to polarize society. Think of news network owners, politicians, many journalists etc. These people are interested in polarized expression rather than debate, particularly the type of polarized expression that is mildly upsetting to other groups because that brings in the readers, page views, ratings and the corresponding advertizing dollars. The silencing that occurs here is not the silencing of expression but the silencing of argumentation and debate. Opinions are still expressed but no longer argued because argumentation – compared to a blunt statement of a controversial opinion - doesn’t provoke and hence doesn’t produce income.

Why do people actively promote the brute expression of ideas and the silencing of debate? Because of the dollars, of course, but also because it diminishes some discomfort. When there’s only brute expression, we can avoid having to examine our beliefs, defend them and possibly change them. We all value consistency in our basic beliefs and we don’t always want to take the trouble arguing for them or responding to arguments against them. If we are shielded from arguments in the media, then we don’t have to take these argument into account. And that’s relaxing. However, the result is polarization because the flip-side of the relaxation offered by the absence of arguments is the increasing alienation from people holding other beliefs: we are also shielded from the arguments these people have (or could have) for their own beliefs, and hence these beliefs start to seem strange, bizarre and not something we want to be involved with.

More on polarization here.

Political Graffiti (195): Speak the Truth

(source, source)

More on truth in politics here. More political graffiti here.

Animalization, A Collection of Images

Depicting the enemy as some kind of animal is a time-honored method of dehumanization. And once the enemy is no longer human, a lot of our usual moral inhibitions fall to the wayside. Here are some examples:

this anti-immigrant ad from Hong Kong reads: “Do you want Hong Kong to pay 1 million HKD per 18 minute raising illegitimate child from mainland? Hong Kong people have had enough of it! We understand that you suffer from contaminated milk powder, so we tolerate your raid upon our milk powder; we understand that you don’t have freedom, so we receive you over here through “free pass”; we understand that your education is poor, so we share our educational resource with you; we understand that you don’t read traditional Chinese, so we use “cripple” Chinese character (simplified Chinese) in the following: “Please respect our local culture when you are here, without Hong Kong you are all doomed.” Strongly demand the government to amend the 24th clause of Basic Laws! Stop the massive invasion of double negative pregnant women from mainland. (double negative = none of the woman’s parents are from HK)”

(source)

American World War Two propaganda poster depicting the Japanese as rats

(source unknown)

Anti-German image from World War One depicting Germans as … some kind of animal

(source unknown)

Nazi cross kills a jewish rat

(source unknown)

Nazi propaganda depicting Jews as bacteria and disease carriers (“Krankheitserreger”)

(source unknown)

It seems Charles Darwin descended from monkeys, hahaha

(source unknown)

the more common objects of monkeyfication are of course Africans and African Americans

(source unknown)

The Obamas in the Planet of the Apes

(source unknown)

and in the interest of objectivity, Bush as a loving monkey

(source unknown)

More on animalization here.

Human Rights Maps (175): The Shifting Identity and Borders of Europe

Kidnapping of Europe by Emil Kazaz (detail)

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Europe – contrary to the European Union, the Council of Europe or individual European countries – is not a legal entity; it’s just an idea. And not a very clear one at that. The vagueness here isn’t limited to concepts such as the “European identity”, the “European culture” or the “European people” (what is the most defining characteristic of Europe: Christianity, humanism, economics or liberty/equality/fraternity?). Even the geographic extent of the “continent” is disputed and changes over time. The geographical uncertainty is in part the consequence of the conceptual uncertainty, although there are also some purely geographical reasons why it’s difficult to say where exactly Europe is. Changes in the geographical meaning of Europe sometimes follow from conceptual changes, as I will make clear below. I will also argue that this has some relevance for human rights.

But before that, a bit of history. Europe is not like Africa or America. It doesn’t have a nice clean shape with natural borders. The northern, western and southern borders are pretty evident since those are formed by the coastlines of the Arctic Sea, the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea respectively. But there has always been and there continues to be fervent disagreement about the eastern border. Some use geographical facts, such as the Ural mountains, the Black Sea and the Dardanelles (or Hellespont) in order to say where Europe stops in the east. That would result in the exclusion of Turkey – or most of Turkey.

However, these geographical facts are hardly determinant, or at least not as determinant as the geographical facts that determine the other three borders. They often have an arbitrary ring to them. Which is why discussions about the eastern border are really about non-geographical facts even if they are ostensibly about geographical ones. They are about identity, culture and religion. The elusive concept of a European cultural identity is central to determining the geographical concept of Europe: can Muslims be Europeans? Or only Christians? Or is religion irrelevant? Answers to these questions will determine the geography.

(Of course, generally speaking it’s quite correct to say that geographical issues may be independently determinant in discussions about the composition of continents: it’s unlikely that a continent includes a land area thousands of miles away from the main land area of the continent and separated from it by countries belonging to another continent; e.g. South Africa will never be European, even if a large segment of its population is culturally European, whatever that means. In the case of the eastern border of Europe, however, geography cannot be determinant).

Those who focus on identity, religion and culture to determine the nature of Europe often use the history of geography as a means to exclude Muslim countries in general and Turkey in particular. They can do so because historically, the word “Europe” had a very limited meaning:

Europe was merely that bit of land on the continent that the Persians had to cross to get from the Hellespont to Greece proper. (source)

This is the Hellespont:

(source)

That the area above the Hellespont was originally called “Europe” can still be seen from this Roman map:

Europa as a dioecesis of the Thracian province of the Roman empire, around 400 A.D.

(source)

Extrapolating from this historical fact, one can argue that Europe stops at the mainland of Turkey – Istanbul and everything north of the Hellespont is then still European, the rest of Turkey is not. And one can also argue that those “European” areas of Turkey – often called Thrace although Thrace was originally smaller than that – aren’t really Muslim anyway, since Istanbul was once Constantinople and as such a center of Christianity.

However, it’s just as easy to use the same historical reference in order to argue that Turkey does, historically, belong to Europe: if the “original” Europe was in Turkey, why shouldn’t Turkey be in today’s Europe? Again, geography by itself does not determine the nature and extent of Europe.

The more northern part of the eastern border is less controversial than the southern part – at least it is now. Most do now agree that the Ural mountains are a nice and convenient natural border. There aren’t any cultural or religious issues in play here. In other words, there aren’t any Muslims there we need to keep out. The only problem that had to be solved is Russia: difficult to exclude completely from Europe – they are Christian after all – but equally difficult to include entirely. If you include it entirely, then why not also Mongolia, Alaska and some of the old Soviet republics? So people have come to accept the more or less arbitrary geographical cut in the middle of Russia. However, this decision followed centuries of uncertainty and movement, as you can see from this map:

(source)

Some continue to dispute even this. The Ural doesn’t neatly cut Russia in two: what about the areas above and below the Ural? And why the Caucasus?

The conclusion of all this is that discussions about the geographical extent of Europe – and therefore also discussions about the nature of Europe – are difficult and far from settled. As a result, there’s a wide variety of views. Some claim that Europe is the collection of the countries that cover the relatively small area of that curvy western peninsula of the larger Asian continent that starts at the Atlantic Ocean and stops at the border of Turkey, or perhaps even at the borders of the Balkan countries (some of which are Muslim as well). Others see Europe as a giant continent spanning the globe from Iceland on one side – Iceland being geographically closer to America than to the European mainland – to the Bering Strait, close to Alaska, on the other side. Some include the UK, others do not. Etc. The maximalist view would include some 50 countries in Europe, including Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

Why mention all of this under the heading of “human rights maps”? Questions such as “what is Europe?”, “where is Europe?”, “how far does Europe reach?” and “which countries belong to Europe?” have a cultural and historical significance, but they can also have an impact on human rights. For example, if Europeans – whoever they are – agree that a country is inside Europe, then it can become a member of the European Union (if also certain other conditions are fulfilled). This membership offers a lot of advantages to the citizens of member countries and many of these advantages mean better protection for certain rights: freedom of movement, easier reunion with family members already living in a “European” country, looser visa restrictions for traveling to certain countries outside of the European Union, the advantages of free trade, subsidies, bailouts etc. Membership of the Council of Europe is also reserved to “European” countries, and this membership offers citizens access to the European Court of Human Rights, the most powerful international court for the protection of human rights. I’m sure many Turkish citizens are eager to profit from being accepted as Europeans, as do the citizens of other countries that may or may not be European.

So the question about the definition of Europe is an important one. Below are some bonus maps illustrating the uncertainty about the extent of Europe. This one seems to suggest that certain parts of the Middle East belong to Europe (the Judeo-Christian parts):

1884 map of 12th century Europe during the age of the crusades

 (source, click image to enlarge)

And this one omits Greece and the other territories occupied by the Ottoman empire:

Europe during the 15th century

(source, click image to enlarge)

When the Turks controlled large parts of the Balkans, those areas were considered to be beyond Europe, the eastern edge of which was the border between the Austrian and Ottoman Empires. (source)

More human rights maps are here.

Annals of Heartlessness (21): Poverty is OK

A survey result that is – to me at least – shocking: half of Americans believe that it’s perfectly OK for some people to be poor.

And by political affiliation:

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More in the annals of heartlessness here.

Capital Punishment (41): The “Healing” Argument and the “Danger” Argument

Jesus in the electric chair, sculpture by London artist Paul Fryer, titled "Pieta"

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Capital punishment is usually defended on the basis of a theory of deterrence or retribution, but there are some other, less common arguments as well. There’s for example the argument that capital punishment is necessary for “closure” and “healing” of the victim’s surviving family and friends. Capital punishment is therefore viewed as a therapy. Apart from the doubts that capital punishment can serve this purpose – what does closure and healing mean and do they necessarily require an execution? – there’s a strong case that it shouldn’t be used for this purpose even if it can be: it would amount to crude instrumentalization of the criminal, even more than in the case of deterrence. Moreover, there’s a problem with cause and effect: if people are told that they need an execution in order to accomplish closure, then perhaps they’ll start to believe there’s no other way.

Another argument in favor of capital punishment is based on guesses about the harm that would result from failing to use this type of punishment. If we don’t satisfy the public’s blood lust - or call it “punitive emotions” if you want – the public will seek to satisfy it in ways that we wouldn’t like (e.g. lynching). However, there’s again a problem with cause and effect in this argument: the justice system does not merely reflect opinion about appropriate punishment, but also shapes it. Far from reducing blood lust, capital punishment may instead promote it. This is the so-called brutalization effect.

The basis of blood lust is moral outrage, and such outrage – contrary to blood lust - is often completely justified. And it should be recognized, but it can be in ways that don’t involve executions.

More on capital punishment is here.

Political Graffiti (176): I’ve Never Voted Tory Before

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And here are some funny mashups in non-graffiti form:

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And a previous post is here. More political graffiti here.

Statistical Jokes (38): Percentages of Percentages

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I don’t want to insult anyone’s intelligence, but in case you don’t immediately get the joke: is Mr. Grayton’s level of support currently 1% (20-19)? Or 16,2% (81% of 20%, a reduction of 19%)?

More statistical jokes here.

Political Graffiti (170): Suspicious Minds

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The context, including the reference to the hairstyle, is here:

More political graffiti.

Terrorism and Human Rights (37): Torture is Social and Political Suicide

torture scene with rats from the movie "1984"

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When democratic governments consider the option of torturing someone, the stakes are usually high. They won’t consider it just for some marginal benefit. The paradigmatic case is the ticking time bomb that’s about to kill thousands or even millions. Torture is supposed to be justified because the benefits are huge, or – stated negatively – because the possible harm resulting from a failure to torture is huge. Combining the size of what is at stake with the urgency of the threat makes the case for torture even stronger.

However, this justification of torture has some unsettling side effects. Given the urgency, and given the fact that terrorists are probably trained to withstand torture, a free society would have to

maintain a professional class of torturers, and to equip them with continuously-updated torture techniques and equipment. Grave dangers to democracy and to individual freedoms would be posed by an institutionalized professional “torture squad”. (source)

Such a highly trained and continuously available torture squad would be necessary to inflict torture that is likely to succeed in extracting the information on a reliable basis and within an extremely short time frame. It would also be necessary to inflict levels of pain sufficient to procure the victim’s compliance but insufficient to kill or render incapable of communication. Amateur thugs will not suffice. You really need professionals.

This is the institutionalization of torture. It’s difficult to see how a free society could survive the presence of such a torture squad. It would infect our entire society to know that there are people among us who torture for a living. The squad members themselves will most likely fail to remain well-intentioned, and the mere existence of such a squad corrupts morality in a society. It’s naive to think that the members of the torture squad will return to normality once their job is done and function like normal law-abiding and non-violent citizens in between emergency sessions. Torture leads to the destruction of a democracy and a free society that decides to go this way.

More on social and political suicide here. More on the ticking bomb here.

(image source)

Measuring Democracy (7): Some Technical Difficulties

Suppose you want to construct a democracy index measuring the level or lack of democracy in different countries in the world. The normal thing to do is to select some supposedly essential characteristics or attributes of democracy and try to measure the level or presence of those. So, for example, you may select free speech, elections, judicial independence and a number of other characteristics. Some of those are perhaps already measured and you can simply take those measurements. For others, you may have to set up your own measurement (e.g. a survey, analysis of newspapers or official documents etc.), or use a proxy.

In any case, you’ll end up with different datasets on different attributes of democracy, and you’ll have to bring those datasets together somehow in order to make your overall index, you single country-level democracy score. The problem is that the datasets contain different kinds of scales which cannot as such be aggregated into a global index. The scales and the values in the scales have to be normalized, i.e. translated into a common metric.

normalized value = raw value/maximum raw value

First, however, you have to rescale some existing scales so that they start at 0 – in other words, so that the lowest score is 0 (instead of starting at 1 for example, or at -10 such as the Polity IV scale). This way, all scales will have a normalized range from 0 to 1; 0 being the negation or total absence of the attribute; 1 being the complete and perfect protection or presence of the attribute.

What about weighting the different attributes? Some may be more important for a democracy than others. However, introducing weights in this way inevitably means introducing value judgments. While value judgments can’t be avoided (they’ll pop up at the moment of the selection of the attributes as well, for example), they can be minimized. If you choose not to use weighting, you consider all attributes to be equally important, which is a view that can be defended given the often interdependent nature of the attributes of democracy (an independent judiciary for example will likely not survive without a free press).

Once the different data sources are translated into normalized scales and, if necessary, weighted appropriately, they have to be aggregated in order to calculate the global index of quality of democracy. One possible aggregation rule would be this:

global index = source 1 * source 2 * ... * source n.

So a simple multiplication. But that would mean that a value of 0 for one attribute results in labeling the country as a whole as having 0 democratic quality. This is counter-intuitive, even with the assumption of equal importance of all attributes. Hence, a better aggregation rule is the geometric or arithmetic mean (or perhaps the median).

However, there’s also a problem with averages: low scores on one attribute can be compensated by high scores on another. So very different democracies can have the same score. Also, within one country, a high score on suffrage rights but 0 on actual participation would give a medium democracy score, whereas in reality we wouldn’t want to call this country democratic at all (the score should be 0 or close to 0). Perhaps we can’t avoid weights after all.

More posts in this series are here.

(image source)

Political Graffiti (163): Obey

(source, by Shepard Fairey)

More political graffiti here.

Political Graffiti (162): Shake Off Female Objectification

objectification graffiti by DOLK

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More on objectification. More political graffiti.

Political Graffiti (156): Expression is Natural

by Mobstr

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More Mobstr here and here. More on freedom of expression. More political graffiti.

Political Graffiti (154): Sex Slave

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More on modern slavery, human trafficking and prostitution. More political graffiti.

Political Graffiti (149): Downing Street 10 Dick

(source, probably by Banksy – real or fake?)

More Banksy. More political graffiti.

Political Graffiti (146): Capitalism Kills Love

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More on capitalism here. More political graffiti here.

Capital Punishment (34): Mere Signaling

It’s often assumed that capital punishment is about fighting crime, just retribution or desert, or perhaps about anger and revenge, but in reality it’s much more about signaling. And by signaling I don’t mean the signaling of threats to potential murderers so that they are deterred, or the signaling of the “just” nature of a society that takes an eye for an eye. Proponents of capital punishment, by expressing their support for it, signal their own moral rectitude. Their expression of support refers to high profile crime cases that are widely discussed in the media and that are likely to be familiar to friends, family and others to whom people want to signal. Signaling support for the death penalty in reference to such high profile cases makes the signal particularly strong and deep, partly because it’s so full of familiar and shockingly emotional detail.

Politicians who favor capital punishment and who keep the legal regime in place are equally focused on signaling. They signal that they care about the emotions of the victims of crimes and of the relatives of the victims, and at the same time they signal that they emotionally identify with those who care about the victims of crime. In other words, they signal that they feel connected to the large majority of humanity. And that kind of signal is vitally important for democratic politicians.

Opponents of capital punishment simply don’t have the same signaling power. For example, there’s no large constituency for signals about sympathy for criminals or for signals about anti-instrumentalization. Politicians don’t stand a lot to gain from such signals, and neither do citizens concerned about how others think of them. On the contrary, they risk signaling emotional indifference for the plight of victims and hence they risk lowering their moral standing.

This asymmetry in signaling power between proponents and opponents can explain the persistence of rational arguments in favor of capital punishment, even after they have been shown to be wrong or inconsistent with the facts. (That’s the case for the arguments based on the deterrent effect for instance – see here and here – but also for the arguments based on retribution which are hopelessly circular: a certain punishment is appropriate for a crime because that crime requires a certain punishment). Proponents of capital punishment obviously can’t justify it simply on the basis of emotional identification. They need a more rational story as a cover. And as long as this story can be used successfully in the signaling process, that will do, whether or not the story is factually or logically correct. That will do, because opponents who point to factual or logical failings in the story amplify the signaling of the proponents: by pointing to these failures, the opponents signal rationality and detachment rather than emotional connection, and they thereby make the case for the proponents.

This is counterintuitive, given that it’s most often the opponents of capital punishment who are accused of emotionality and a lack of toughness, but I think it’s the right conclusion.

More on human rights and signaling is here. More on the death penalty here.

Related Articles

• How the planned execution of Teresa Lewis challenges our views on gender and capital punishment. (slate.com)
• It Beats Death By Electrocution (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• Jerry Brown Wants Executions To Resume In California (huffingtonpost.com)
• Swiss death penalty advocates drop campaign for referendum to restore capital punishment (foxnews.com)
• Teresa Lewis: God have mercy on us | Lynn Litchfield Divers (guardian.co.uk)

Who Does Most Harm to Human Rights? The Left or the Right?

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I can simplify this question a bit and focus on those rights violations that are caused by government action. Moreover, I’ll focus on governments in developed countries and say that those are generally democracies dominated either by left-wing or right-wing political movements, alternating. Now, if I want to judge whether it’s the left or the right that is most harmful to human rights, I need to define left and right. And that’s tricky. But let’s simplify some more and say that

• the right is generally conservative, concerned about respect for religion and religious rules/morality, in favor of capitalism and free markets, against taxation and government intervention in markets, not very interested in equality or equal rights in some areas (as a consequence of religious morality for instance), suspicious of immigration, in favor of a strong national defense, and focused on law and order;
• the left is worried about capitalism and free markets, in favor of government regulation and intervention in markets, suspicious of free trade, willing to tax and redistribute, and politically correct.

I know, highly simplistic, but I’ll try to make it useful. So bear with me. If we focus on present-day developed nations, which of these two political ideologies is most likely to lead to government policies and legislation that cause human rights violations?

If you look at national defense, you could claim that right-wing governments are most harmful. Although the left is often very supportive of the war on terror, especially in the US (but less elsewhere), it’s the right that is most enthusiastic and most eager to adopt extreme measures. In the name of this war, the US tortured, invaded, murdered civilians, eavesdropped, rendered, and arbitrarily arrested. After every new terror-scare, right-wing spokespeople are quick to demand more rights sacrifices (Miranda rights should be suspended, citizenship revoked etc.). On the other hand, it was a left-wing government in Britain that eagerly supported this war, and Obama seems to be continuing the work of Bush.

If we look at markets, the left is clearly more skeptical about it’s benefits. However, economists – also left leaning economists – generally agree that free trade is good and that many interventions in markets, such as trade restrictions, quotas, subsidies etc. aggravate poverty. And poverty is a human rights violation. Of course, right-wing governments also impose or maintain such restrictions, but arguably left-wing governments are more prone to such vices since they often depend on support of labor unions and other protectionist forces.

On the other hand, the trust in markets expressed by the right can result in a kind of blindness: the right often doesn’t notice market failures and the harm that a slap of the invisible hand can do. As a result, the poor are blamed for their poverty, which is why government assistance in the struggle against poverty is deemed unnecessary, unhelpful and even damaging. The right’s focus on private philanthropy is good but it’s naive to think that philanthropy alone will solve the problem of poverty.

Taxation is a difficult one. Very high levels of taxation are obviously economically inefficient and may lower living standards rather than equalize them. On the other hand, very low rates make it impossible to fund the welfare state, with the same result. Both right wing and left wing fiscal policy can be harmful from a human rights point of view. And there’s a problem of actions vs words here: it’s not obvious that right-wing governments impose low tax rates and left-wing governments high tax rates, despite the respective rhetoric.

If we accept that the right is more enamored of religion, then it’s clear where we should lay the blame for a host of rights violations, such as attempts to undo the separation of state and church, discrimination based on religion or sexual orientation and invasions of privacy. Take the example of gay marriage. A focus on religion can also lead to a lack of respect for the sexual privacy of consenting adults, not just homosexuals, but also adulterers, people consuming obscene or pornographic material, or engaging in sodomy. Laws against homosexuality, adultery, sodomy and obscenity usually come from the right. Moreover, the right can show a lack of respect for religious minorities, a result of the incompatibility of different religious claims (“there is only one God”). Opposition to Muslim headscarves for instance is often more prevalent among the right (although there’s also anti-Muslim sentiment in some parts of the feminist or atheist left).

Moving on to another topic. The right’s focus on law and order has led to high incarceration rates, especially in the U.S. These rates have also been inflated by a misguided war on drugs, apparently inspired by a puritan religious morality. Capital punishment is also more popular on the right.

Regarding the left, we can mention some of the harmful consequences of political correctness. PC can lead to exaggerated limits on free speech. Hate speech, for example, is in certain cases a justifiable reason for speech limits, but it seems like some of the limits go too far. An innocent use of a particular word can get you fired, for instance.

Of course, I did simplify. The left-right dichotomy as I have defined it here doesn’t accurately reflect all nuances of political ideology. Some on the left are more pro-free-market than some on the right. Moreover, the dichotomy doesn’t capture all ideologies (libertarianism in a sense is neither left nor right). Also, many governments are left-right coalitions. And, finally, many human rights violations are not caused by governments but by fellow citizens. And when they are caused by governments, they may not be caused by those parts of government that are made up of elected politicians of the left or the right. Bureaucracies or judges can also violate rights. Some violations are not based on left or right leaning ideologies, but on other things such as an extreme desire to regulate etc.

Still, I think that the overview given above is useful. It’s not useful in the sense that it allows us to quantify or compute the respective levels of (dis)respect and to conclude that either the right or the left is better for human rights. It doesn’t. In that sense the question in the title of this post is meaningless. However, the overview above highlights the fact that everyone can violate human rights and that human rights activists should be careful when affiliating themselves with a particular ideology. Neutrality, objectivity, fairness and a lack of double standards are crucial in the struggle for human rights.

Political Graffiti (141): Where’s My Bailout?

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More about the recession. More political graffiti.

What is Democracy? (54): Kallocracy?

Ronald Reagan looking handsome

Beautiful people have a number of advantages in social life. They earn more, even in occupations where appearance does not seem relevant to job performance. And, somewhat surprisingly, the beauty premium – and the corresponding ugliness penalty – are higher for men than for women. (I say surprisingly because we usually think that women are more often judged on the basis of their looks). A related effect is heightism: tall people, who are often considered to be more beautiful, also earn more.

And it’s not just in salaries that beauty makes a difference. Beautiful people are also more successful in democratic politics. They are more likely to be elected and, again, the marginal effect of beauty is larger for male candidates than for female candidates. So democracy is in fact kallocracy, rule of the beautiful (from the Greek “kallos“).

But why is there a political benefit of good looks? Probably because there’s a general benefit of being beautiful and because people generally – and hence also in politics – value good looking people more than the rest of us. Psychological experiments have shown that a snap judgment of whether we like someone’s face determines what we believe about that person’s character. And character is important in politics. There’s also the fact that the visual media give more attention to beautiful politicians, something which probably translates into a higher voter share.

Makes you doubt the value of democracy, doesn’t it? And makes you wonder whether we wouldn’t be better off handing over politics to some kind of elite. More positively, perhaps we should start seriously considering a type of democracy that isn’t focused on the selection of candidates through the means of a media circus.

More posts in this series are here.

Human Rights Maps (134): Gerrymandering

Original cartoon of "The Gerry-Mander", the political cartoon that led to the coining of the term Gerrymander. The district depicted in the cartoon was created by the Massachusetts legislature to favor the incumbent candidates of Governor Elbridge Gerry over the Federalists in 1812. Combining the salamander form and the name of the Governor gives "gerrymander".

Democracy is a human right. This is of course an excessively vague statement, and so we should define democracy. There are many ways to do that (and we have a whole blog series about it), some good and some less good, but for better or worse we usually define democracy as a representative system in which people cast votes for candidate-politicians, and the candidates who collect a majority – sometimes a plurality – of those votes go on to become the representatives of the people. Those representatives govern, again usually by way of majority or plurality votes amongst each other, and this government is considered a good proxy of government by the people (demo-cracy). It’s considered a good proxy because of many reasons:

• Representatives have an incentive to govern in accordance with the wishes of the people, since they supposedly want to be re-elected in the future.
• The people can influence their representatives through free speech, organized political activity and the threat of dismissal.
• The people can verify the coherence between their views and the actions of politicians because of freedom of the press, government accountability rules, freedom of information rules etc.

The argument that we need a proxy for direct government by the people is itself contentious but let’s temporarily bow to standard opinion for the sake of argument.

One problem with this model of democracy is that it can be gamed. For practical purposes, the “people” in this model are usually partitioned into different sections – districts, states, provinces, constituencies etc. Each section of the people then gets to vote, and the majority – or plurality – within each section then appoints a representative to be seated in a national parliament. It’s clear that the way in which the boundaries between these sections or districts are drawn determines to some extent the outcome of the vote, and that decisions to redraw – “redistrict” – can alter the outcome substantially.

This knowledge has led politicians to exert influence on the way in which the boundaries are drawn, so as to favor their electoral prospects. For example, a white upper-class politician can manipulate district lines in such a way that the voters in the district are mainly white upper-class. Her opponent, who happens to be from a poor black community, will likely do less well with the given electorate. If the district boundaries cut across class and race, the two candidates will have a more equal contest.

It can also happen that a particular group of constituents manipulates the district boundaries, perhaps with the help of politicians or officials, for example because of racist motives: attributing black communities to other districts makes it unlikely that black politicians will have influence over racially biased white populations.

These kinds of district manipulation are called gerrymandering, and it includes both a spatial and a quantitative aspect:

• the spatial dimension of borders is manipulated – e.g. poor black neighborhoods are excluded from the district and attributed to another one
• and/or the size of the electorate is manipulated – e.g. boundaries are fixed in such a way that a relatively small pocket of voters is grouped into one district and therefore gets it’s own representative (also called malapportionment).

Needless to say, it’s usually incumbents who engage in this kind of manipulation, since it’s they who often have the authority and power to modify district boundaries.

[I]n no fewer than 44 of America’s 50 states, it is state legislatures, composed as they are of party politicians, who decide where the lines should be drawn for seats in the House of Representatives in Washington, DC. The potential for abuse is so obvious that it is a kind of miracle that the system has survived as long as it has. (source)

As the saying goes, in gerrymandered election districts, the voters don’t choose their politicians – the politicians choose their voters.

The stylized example below shows the possibly dramatic effects of gerrymandering, limited to the manipulation of the borders, not the size of the districts. It’s a fictional country containing 15 citizens. There are three districts, every district gets to vote and the majority in each district decides on one of the three national representatives. The three districts are of equal size and the gerrymandering won’t modify the size of the districts, only the borders. There are two political parties, the Orange Democrats (round shapes) and the Purple Republicans (square shapes). 9 of the 15 citizens systematically vote Purple, 6 Orange, and they keep their residence fixed.

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The original district lines, A, gives 1 district to Orange and 2 to Purple, roughly equivalent to the total voting pattern of 6:9. Now, as a result of this more or less correct districting, Purple becomes the majority in government, and therefore able to engage in some redistricting, which gives us situation B. Given districting B, the next election guarantees a 3 district win for Purple, a result that’s disproportional considering the nation-wide 9:6 Purple majority. Orange is no longer represented at all. However, for some mysterious and irrelevant reason, some further redistricting occurs, which gives situation C. At the next election, Orange ensures a 2-1 win notwithstanding its nation-wide minority position of 6:9.

Gerrymandering can have different motives:

• It can be used to give a certain political party a disproportionate share of national power (especially when district systems are combined with first-past-the-post elections in which the one candidate with the most votes – majority or plurality – wins the seat reserved for that district; in political systems that give seats in parliament in proportion to the total national votes, it makes no sense to gerrymander).
• It can be used to favor a certain political class (e.g. when wealthy people are systematically attributed to smaller districts).
• An individual candidate can use it to impose an electoral disadvantage on a particular opponent.
• Groups of citizens can use it to maintain supremacy and to exclude others from political participation. This exclusion can take many forms:
  • groups may be included in another, very large district in which their voice will be drowned
  • a group may be scattered over many districts so that they can’t unite in a coherent voting block
  • or they may be attributed to a district in which their group will win anyway, in which case their votes are wasted.
• etc.

This means that it can also be used in a positive way, e.g. to give disadvantaged groups a larger weight in elections. However, the word gerrymandering usually has negative connotations, and rightly so.

Sometimes it’s difficult to prove that gerrymandering took place, but a highly irregular geographical shape of a district, or big differences between the sizes of the populations of districts are good indications. Ideally, districts boundaries should be drawn randomly on the basis of census data, and should therefore not result in highly irregular and contorted shapes.

Some examples of such irregular shapes from the US:

California's 11th congressional district drawn to favor its then-Republican incumbent

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The earmuff shape of Illinois's 4th congressional district packs two Hispanic areas while remaining contiguous by narrowly tracing Interstate 294

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Utah's 2nd congressional district was redrawn after the election of Democrat Jim Matheson in 2000 to favor future Republican majorities. The predominantly Democratic city of Salt Lake was connected to predominantly Republican eastern and southern Utah through a thin sliver of land running through Utah County. This particular redistricting did not have the desired effect, as Matheson is still in office.

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U.S. congressional districts covering Travis County, Texas (outlined in red) in 2002, left, and 2004, right. In 2003, the majority of Republicans in the Texas legislature redistricted the state, diluting the voting power of the heavily Democratic county by parceling its residents out to more Republican districts.

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More maps about democracy are here. More human rights maps in general here.

Related Articles

• “Gerrymandering” carves out a dull argument (reuters.com)
• Jeff Reichert: What Is Prison-Based Gerrymandering? (huffingtonpost.com)
• Electoral boundaries in America: Time to bury Governor Gerry (economist.com)
• Redistricting: Gerrymandering as a Competitive Sport | Dissident Voice (wilderside.wordpress.com)
• Florida Supreme Court Rules Against Attempts to Stop Redistricting Reform Ballot Measures (elections.firedoglake.com)

The Compatibility of Freedom and Equality (12): How Coercion Promotes Freedom

George Grosz, Toads of Property (1920)

Freedom understood as independence and the absence of interference or intentional coercion (especially government coercion) is an important concept. The problem is that it seems to invalidate redistribution through taxation. If the government taxes a wealthy person to transfer some of her wealth to another person living under a fixed threshold of basic resources, then the government intentionally coerces the wealthy person and takes away (part of) her freedom. That’s one of the origins of the traditional view that freedom and equality are incompatible. For people who believe strongly in freedom as the absence of intentional coercion, it’s very difficult if not impossible to accept taxation and redistribution.

On the other hand, there are those who want to maintain the use of government and taxation as a means to guarantee people an equal share of those basic resource necessary for a decent human life. And I’m one of them. How can we reply to those – let’s call them libertarians – who voice concerns about the loss of freedom that’s inherent in redistribution?

1. First, we could argue that freedom, as it is understood here, isn’t the only important value, and that we should put it “in the mix” of the whole of human values, including welfare and equality, and try to balance those values in a fair way. That’s the value pluralism approach, but it’s an approach that won’t be successful to those who don’t believe in value pluralism or who believe that if there are many values, freedom is still the most important one (e.g. many libertarians).

2. Another reply could be that redistribution reduces one type of freedom – freedom from intentional coercion – in order to promote another type of freedom, namely a more positive type of freedom in which not only the absence of coercion is important but also the availability of choices, capabilities and power. Of course, a wealthy person’s choices, capabilities and power aren’t enhanced by the fact that she pays taxes – on the contrary – but when these taxes are used to guarantee a poor person’s basic income for example (or education, or health etc.) then that poor person will have a wider array of choices, capabilities, opportunities, power etc. So positive freedom is redistributed by means of a limitation on negative freedom, and is redistributed in such a way that on average people have more equal access to it. (If a rich person pays $10,000 in taxes for the welfare benefits, healthcare, education etc. of a poor person, then the rich person loses less choices, opportunities and capabilities then those gained by the poor person. Of course, the exact tax rate is important: punitive tax rates may harm the rich more than they benefit the poor).

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In a way, this second reply also involves an appeal to value pluralism: negative freedom (one value) is balanced against more equal access to positive freedom (another value), and is – sometimes and in part – outweighed by it.

3. A third reply isn’t based on value pluralism. We could argue that redistribution of income or wealth through government taxation merely limits one person’s negative freedom for the sake of another person’s negative freedom. It’s fairly easy, in fact, to argue that poverty, or the absence of those basic resources necessary for a decent human life, reduces the negative freedom of the poor. The poor are intentionally coerced all the time, for no other reason than their poverty: the homeless are forcibly removed from train stations, gypsies from land where they aren’t allowed to camp, poor migrant workers have their passports taken away by their employers and are forced to repay “travel costs” by working for free, etc.

If the government gave these people a basic income for example, or rent subsidies, they wouldn’t be coerced in these ways. The taxes that the government would collect for this purpose would not simply reduce negative freedom for the sake of another value (positive freedom, welfare, equality etc.). It would reduce the negative freedom of some for the sake of the negative freedom of others (possibly many others depending on the type of taxation system). In other words, it would modify and equalize the distribution of negative freedom. It would increase intentional coercion on some people in order to reduce intentional coercion on (many) others.

Taxation and redistribution do indeed reduce freedom (in one sense of the word) but at the same time they increase freedom (freedom in the same sense as well as in a more positive sense). Conversely, a failure to tax and redistribute could reduce freedom.

More posts in this series are here.

Political Graffiti (136): Cyprus, I Love You

graffiti at the demarcation line between Greek Cyprus and Turkish Cyprus - the sigh reads: "enjoy yourself in this land of racial purity and true apartheid, enjoy the sight of our desecrated chuches, enjoy what remains of our looted heritage and homes"

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More on Cyprus. More political graffiti.

The Causes of Wealth Inequality (16): Wages in the Financial Sector

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[I]nequality has been soaring in part because of politics. Piketty and Saez document that the very rich today are different than those several decades ago, most importantly because they are not rentiers enjoying returns on their or their parents’ capital, but W-2 earners, enjoying very, very high salaries. Recent research by Thomas Philippon and Ariel Resheff shows a concurrent increase in salaries in the financial sector relative to the rest of the economy, confirming the pattern suggested by casual empiricism that many of these very high W-2 earners are in the financial sector.

But the expansion of the financial sector and the salaries therein over the last two decades may not have been just an unavoidable consequence of economic tides but a very political process. The deregulation of finance, despite the presence of implicit and explicit government guarantees to financial institutions which would have ordinarily necessitated significant regulation, appears to have been partly won by the financial industry as a result of lobbying, campaign contributions and the access to politicians that the industry enjoys (though this is not to argue that some of this deregulation did not have a compelling economic logic nor that free-market ideology played no role). If so, politics may have been the key factor in setting in motion the forces that have led to the massive rise in top inequality. (source)

More posts in this series are here.

Political Graffiti (132): Revolution For Display Purposes Only

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More on revolution. More political graffiti.

Why Do Countries Become/Remain Democracies? Or Don’t? (17): Inequality

Riot scene from Chaplin's Modern Times

A transition to democratic government is very unlikely when the population of a country is sharply divided in unequal classes or groups. Some of these groups will try to monopolize political power in order to repress rival groups and maintain the distributional status quo. For example, when there’s a division between a landowning class or an industrial class on the one hand, and a group of impoverished rural or urban workers on the other hand, then the former group will fear election victories by the latter group because such victories will lead to redistribution of land or other assets. Privileged classes will therefore work against democracy. As a result of this, the working classes will radicalize and aim for a revolutionary overthrow and the abolition of property rights altogether, thereby also making democracy less likely.

Something like this is arguably a good description of much of the recent history of Latin America. Positively stated: more economic equality – perhaps following the expansion of a middle class – will make democracy more viable, since different groups have less to lose from a democratic power shift.

But polarization doesn’t have to be exclusively economic in nature. Religious or ethnic divisions can also hinder the creation and continuity of democracy, especially when there’s also a spatial division between groups. This is probably what happened in Africa since decolonization. Of course, non-economic divisions are often exacerbated by economic ones, in which case we can hope that more economic equality will take the sting out of ethnic divisions.

More posts in this series are here.

Why Do Countries Become/Remain Democracies? Or Don’t? (15): Presidential v. Parliamentary Democracy

Mount Rushmore

This post in the series focuses on the “remain” part rather than the “become” part. Juan Linz has famously argued that presidential democracies don’t work, with the exception of the US. To simplify things a bit, in a presidential democracy – where you have of course also a parliament – the executive power is elected directly by popular vote. People elect a president and this president selects her government. The people also elect members of parliament in separate elections. In a parliamentary democracy the executive isn’t elected directly by the people. The people elect only the members of parliament. The political party (or parties) that manage to get a majority of elected members of parliament then form a government (often after coalition negotiations between parties when there isn’t one party that has managed to acquire a majority of representatives in parliament).

One of the causes of the breakdown of presidential systems is the opposition between legislature and executive: both the president and the majority in the legislature have democratic legitimacy since they are both directly elected. That’s not a problem when both are of the same political family, but when they are not, it’s a recipe for stalemate at best and breakdown at worst.

Under such circumstances, who has the stronger claim to speak on behalf of the people: the president or the legislative majority that opposes his policies? Since both derive their power from the votes of the people in a free competition among well-defined alternatives, a conflict is always possible and at times may erupt dramatically. Theme is no democratic principle on the basis of which it can be resolved, and the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate. It is therefore no accident that in some such situations in the past, the armed forces were often tempted to intervene as a mediating power. (source)

On the other hand, parliamentary systems seem to be less stable in countries plagued by bitter ethnic conflict, as is the case in many African countries.

More posts in this series are here.

Related Articles

• Presidential system of government encourages corruption – Awujale (vanguardngr.com)
• You: ‘India’s parliamentary democracy’ – imperilled? (nation.com.pk)

The Causes of Human Rights Violations (24): Political Rhetoric, Violence and Free Speech

editorial cartoon by Clay Bennett, about violence and political rhetoric

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My two cents about the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords:

• The attack was obviously politically inspired, even though the shooter may have been insane. An insane act isn’t necessarily apolitical. There may or may not be a direct causal link between the attack and the “heated political rhetoric” that has come to characterize American politics and that often borders on incitement. (Compared to other western democracies, the political language is indeed extreme in the US). If there is such a link, it will be very hard to establish, given what we know about the psychology of the attacker.
• In general, violent rhetoric can contribute to actual violence (see this paper for example). The case of the Rwanda genocide is well-known. And we don’t need to go and look at extremes in order to find cases of hate speech turning into hate crime. There are not a few pedophiles who have had there whereabouts shouted from the rooftops and who suffered the consequences. Given the omnipresence and ease-of-use of the media in developed societies, what is published and broadcast through these media may very well nurture or even provoke extremism and hate in society. It’s futile to deny this possibility.
• This general conclusion does not warrant the automatic linking of a case of violence to instances of political rhetoric that seem to be a possible inspiration. In other words, it’s not because Sarah Palin was silly enough to publish a map with cross-hairs “targeting” Giffords (among others) in a purely political and non-violent way, that her actions caused the attack. Maybe these actions contributed, maybe not. Most likely we’ll never know. And even if they did contribute in driving a sick person over the edge – which is not impossible – then they are most likely only one element in a large set of causal factors, including the perpetrator’s education, medical care (or lack thereof), the ease with which he could acquire a gun etc. That large set doesn’t drown individual causes but it does diminish the importance of each (possible) cause. Human motivation and the determinants of human action are almost always highly complex. (Something which is too often forgotten in criminal sentencing).

John Stuart Mill

• Given the general possibility of speech resulting in violence, is that possibility a sufficient reason to limit our freedom of speech, even before the actual violence occurs? Yes, but only in very specific cases, namely those cases in which the link between speech and (possible) violence is clear. John Stuart Mill used the example of an excited mob assembled in front of the house of a corn dealer accused of starving the poor. Hate speech in such a setting is likely to lead to violence, while the exact same words printed in an obscure magazine are not. The words in the magazine should be protected by freedom of speech; the words of the mob leaders probably not.
• Yet even when words should be left free by the law, morality requires of speakers that they consider the possible consequences of speech.
• Are the events we witnessed recently of the same nature as the words of the mob leaders? And what about similar recent events? I don’t think so. Which means that the people concerned have not abused their freedom of speech.
• Does that mean that they used their freedom in a good way? No, it doesn’t. Heated rhetoric is almost never the best way to talk, not even for the purposes of the speaker. It doesn’t tend to accomplish a lot or to further anyone’s interests (apart from the interest in getting attention). So those of us who insist on “turning it down a notch” have good reasons to do so. This insistence obviously doesn’t imply curtailment. It’s just a question, and it deals with form rather than content. People are generally too fast to claim their right to free speech when confronted with criticism of the way in which they use or abuse this right. Criticism of speech doesn’t automatically imply the will to prohibit speech, and freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from criticism. Quite the opposite.

More here and here.

Related Articles

• Extremist Rhetoric, Violence and American History (themoderatevoice.com)
• Violence, Language, Politics (secularshawshank.wordpress.com)
• Clinton warns against demonized rhetoric (thehill.com)

The Causes of Wealth Inequality (13): Deliberate Policy?

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Some say that the increase in income inequality in countries such as the U.S. has been the result of deliberate government policy. That’s quite an accusation. It’s not controversial to assume that tax policy under right wing governments tends to be less burdensome on the rich, and that social welfare policy under such governments tends to be more stingy. If you look at it like this, it’s not crazy to argue that right wing policies can aggravate income inequality. But it’s quite another thing to claim that right wing governments use these policies in order to deliberately aggravate income inequality. That accusation is incompatible with right wing ideology, which claims that the preferred policies also and ultimately help the poor (trickle down economics etc.), and that left wing policies supposedly favoring the poor are in fact self-destructive (unemployment benefits create labor disincentives, taxes create production disincentives, etc.). However, it’s possible that this ideology is just a smokescreen for anti-poor policies. But I guess that’s somewhat difficult to prove.

If we look at the tax rates, it’s true that the rates for the wealthy tend to go down under Republican presidents:

In 1979, the effective tax rate on the top 0.01 percent (i.e., rich people) was 42.9 percent. … By Reagan’s last year in office it was 32.2 percent. (source)

However, things aren’t as simple as that:

From 1989 to 2005, … as income inequality continued to climb, the effective tax rate on the top 0.01 percent largely held steady; in most years it remained in the low 30s, surging to 41 during Clinton’s first term but falling back during his second, where it remained. The change in the effective tax rate on the bottom 20 percent (i.e., poor and lower-middle-class people) was much more dramatic, but not in a direction that would increase income inequality. Under Clinton, it dropped from 8 percent (about where it had stood since 1979) to 6.4 percent. Under George W. Bush, it fell to 4.3 percent. (source)

The tax rate for the rich dropped somewhat around 2005 following the Bush tax cuts, but all the tax effects over the last decades taken together don’t really make a good case that tax policy is the major cause of rising income inequality. So it’s even more difficult to make the case that tax policy was part of a conscious strategy to aggravate inequality. The increase in inequality has been too big compared to the possible impact of taxation. That’s corroborated by the fact that pre-tax inequality in the U.S. rose faster than after-tax inequality.

What’s interesting, however, is that pre-tax inequality in the U.S. tends to rise much faster under Republican rule. See this post for example. So inequality can still be the result of policy, but policy expressed in other ways than taxation. Other policies that may have contributed – deliberately or not – to rising income inequality are anti-labor union policies, decreases in the minimum wage, etc.

More posts in this series are here.

Related Articles

• Did federal government policy create the Great Divergence? (slate.com)
• Mapping Income Inequality (blogs.forbes.com)
• The source of income inequality and a cure? (professorbainbridge.com)
• How income inequality is changing (blogs.reuters.com)
• Slate: A historical look at Income Inequality in the U.S. (americablog.com)
• Our Banana Republic: US Income Inequality Grows (emptywheel.firedoglake.com)
• Income Inequality: ‘The Most Profound Change In American Society In Your Lifetime’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• The Great Divergence – how did income inequality get so bad? (americablog.com)
• What’s income inequality got to do with it? (economist.com)

Migration and Human Rights (39): The Democracy Argument Against Open Borders

Usually, arguments against open borders and in favor of varying degrees of immigration restrictions are based on economic or cultural considerations. Often, such arguments can be easily dismissed as prejudiced, chauvinist and selfish, and the data don’t support them anyway. However, a potentially stronger argument against open borders is based on the requirements of democracy. It’s potentially stronger because it goes to the heart of the same liberal values that animate the push for open borders.

Central to the idea of democracy is that those who are governed by laws should have a say in the drafting of the laws. In the words of Jürgen Habermas:

Gültig sind genau die Handlungsnormen, denen alle möglicherweise Betroffenen als Teilnehmer an rationalen Diskursen zustimmen könnten.

Jurgen Habermas

People are obligated to obey the laws of government only insofar as they have consented to those laws (or to the power exercised in passing those laws). That’s the whole idea behind self-government.

Now, what would happen to this idea where we to open the borders? It’s claimed that the constant coming and going of people that would result from open borders, would make self-government impossible. People would vote on laws that would not apply to them in the future because they come and go, and other people would not be able to vote on laws that would apply to them because they won’t be here yet. Open borders would mean that people are allowed to decide on things they don’t care about and won’t have a stake in. Self-government would not be possible because the “self” that governs would never match the “self” that is governed.

Another democracy based objection to open borders is a practical one. The effective functioning of democracy requires a common language, since democracy is essentially deliberation. It also requires knowledge of the political system and the political culture, and a feeling for what is achievable and acceptable to the wider community. Open borders inhibit this effective functioning.

There are basically two ways to respond to these arguments. First, the arguments seem to confuse access rights and citizenship rights. It’s correct that citizenship in a democracy should be tied to certain conditions, such as knowledge of the language and permanence of residence, and that citizenship is a necessary condition for most democratic participation. I made that argument here so I won’t repeat it now. Suffice it to say that there are good reasons to distinguish – but not separate – different parts of humanity by way of conditional acquisition of citizenship – with each part hopefully having democratic rights within its own country. However, these reasons don’t, by themselves, justify closed borders. Access rights and citizenship rights are different things.

Michael Walzer

However, as Michael Walzer has argued, when we decide to allow people in but at the same time deny them citizenship, we run the risk of creating a permanent underclass of disenfranchised non-citizens, who live and work in the country but can’t effectively protect their interests through political participation. Hence, an open border policy should also include a pathway to citizenship. The problem is then to strike the right balance between the need for flexible citizenship and the risks to democratic governance resulting from a notion of citizenship that is too weak.

Secondly, the central idea of democracy – that people governed by laws should have the right to participate in the framing of those laws – can be used to argue in favor of rather than against open borders. A decision by one part of humanity to exclude others from a certain part of the earth’s surface clearly violates this central idea. The potential immigrants who are excluded obviously don’t have a say in this decision, and yet they are governed by it. If they had a say, they would probably carry the day, given their numerical strength.

Some would claim that it’s foolish to allow potential immigrants to participate in such decisions. Would we allow a mob of homeless people, demanding access to our house, to vote, together with us, whether or not they have a right to access? No we wouldn’t, but the analogy is baseless. We do have a legitimate property right to our house (at least most of us do), but the citizens of a country don’t have a similar right to a part of the surface of the earth.

It’s of course an open question how we would practically organize such a common decision. Perhaps we should take the next logical step and institute some kind of federal world democracy. But that’s for another post.

More on open borders here.

Related Articles

• The Conservative Case for Open Borders — By: Ramesh Ponnuru (corner.nationalreview.com)
• The case for open borders (trueslant.com)
• The Social Security Argument Against Open Borders (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)
• The Cultural Argument Against Open Borders (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)

Political T-Shirt (14): Miranda Rights

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First, a word about Miranda rights, for those of you not from the U.S. Miranda rights are a warning that is required to be given by police in the U.S. to criminal suspects in police custody before they are interrogated. The warning informs them about their constitutional rights. An elicited incriminating statement by a suspect will not constitute admissible evidence unless the suspect was informed of the right to decline to make self-incriminatory statements and the right to legal counsel (if he or she is indigent, an attorney will be provided at no cost to represent her or him). The right to remain silent and be represented by an attorney are important elements of the right to a fair trial and of a civilized criminal justice system.

This t-shirt is an ironic reaction to a recent Supreme Court Decision ruling that silence is no longer an adequate indication that you wish to invoke your right to remain silent. Instead, an accused person who wants to invoke his or her right to remain silent must to do so unambiguously. So, in other words, you have to speak in order to claim your right to remain silent… Hence the t-shirt, allowing you to remain silent and “speak” at the same time.

More political t-shirts here.

Related Articles

• Who read Miranda rights to plotter? (politico.com)
• Time to Codify a Miranda Exception for Terrorists? (volokh.com)

Human Rights Maps (107): Income Inequality in New York

Not a map in the usual sense of the word:

(source, click image to enlarge)

A similar approach is this: income levels and income differences along NY’s subway lines. An example:

income inequality in NY

If you’re wondering why I believe income inequality is a human rights issue, go here. More on income inequality is here (some data here). More human rights maps are here.

Related Articles

• Income Inequality and Financial Crises (nytimes.com)
• Income Inequality: Who’s Really to Blame? (time.com)
• The Spirit Level: how ‘ideas wreckers’ turned book into political punchbag (guardian.co.uk)
• Un-Level Ground (online.wsj.com)

Statistical Jokes (18): Bye S?

On the off chance that some of those 13% are reading this blog and are unaware of the google, here are two dictionary definitions:

Something more substantial on the role of the media in a modern democracy is here. More about bias here. More statistical jokes here.

Why Do Countries Become/Remain Democracies? Or Don’t? (14): Assassination

In 1939, an anti-Nazi workman, Georg Elser, concealed a time bomb in the Bürgerbräukeller, set to go off during Hitler's speech on 8 November. The bomb exploded, killing seven people and injuring sixty-three, but Hitler escaped unharmed; he had cut his speech short and left about half an hour early. Elser was arrested, imprisoned for 5 ½ years and executed shortly before the end of the war.

(read more)

If we agree that democracy is something important, then we need to know why, how and when countries turn to or away from democracy. So, here’s another installment in our ongoing series:

Assassinations are a persistent feature of the political landscape. Using a new data set of assassination attempts on all world leaders from 1875 to 2004, we exploit inherent randomness in the success or failure of assassination attempts to identify assassination’s effects. We find that, on average, successful assassinations of autocrats produce sustained moves toward democracy. We also find that assassinations affect the intensity of small-scale conflicts. The results document a contemporary source of institutional change, inform theories of conflict, and show that small sources of randomness can have a pronounced effect on history. (source, source)

I guess no need to say that this isn’t a sufficient condition for a democratic transition. More posts in this series are here.

Related Articles

• Mahmoud Ahmadinejad survives alleged assassination attempt (guardian.co.uk)

Political Jokes & Funny Quotes (97): 24 Types of Libertarian

I know, this is no substitute for philosophical discussion, but it has the appeal – as well as the lack of nuance – of a good caricature:

(source, click image to enlarge)

I’ve added some numbers and linked them to some less “cartoonish” but also less humorous descriptions:

1. This reflects the belief in involuntary and automatic systems (market, invisible hand…). More here and here.
2. Reflects the value absolutism of libertarianism and the refusal to get into the “dirty” business of reconciling and balancing different values. More here and here.
3. More on privatization here.
4. More on big government and gun rights.
5. More on the undeserving poor and on Heinlein.
6. More on hypocrisy.
7. More on some of the extreme consequences of libertarian logic is here.
8. More on taxation.
9. More on justice and merit.
10. More on the libertarian view of the free market is here.
11. More on abortion.
12. More on the war on drugs, police abuse, and war.
13. More on libertarianism and discrimination is here.

More about libertarianism in general is here. More jokes are here.

Related Articles

• 24 Types of Libertarians vs. 24 Types of Authoritarians (neatorama.com)

Marx and the Arrows of Determination

In an effort to convince you that my new $19.95 book is actually worth a lot more than that, I’m blogging some excerpts. (I blogged the introduction when the book came out). Today, how do the different parts of the substructure and superstructure determine each other?

Marx is usually understood as arguing that the substructure (the material world) determines the superstructure. But that’s only part of his argument. The creation and propagation of ideology is an important activity of the ruling class. The members of this class usually do not work but appropriate the fruits of the labor of other classes, and hence they have the necessary leisure time to engage in intellectual “work” and to construct and promote ideologies that they can use to serve their interests, consciously or unconsciously. Those with material power also have intellectual power. They can influence what others think, and they will be most successful if they themselves believe the ideologies that they want to force on others.

This clearly shows that the substructure does not only determine the legal and political parts of the superstructure, but thinking as well. The prevailing ideas are the ideas of the prevailing class.

Karl Marx

[T]he class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. K. Marx, The German Ideology

But there is a kind of feedback action at work here. The substructure determines ideas, but these ideas in turn help to maintain a particular economic substructure. Not everything goes up from the material to the intellectual. Something comes down as well, but only after it went up first.

This can be expressed in the left half of the following drawing:

In this drawing, an arrow means “determination”. All ideas, not only political and legal ones, are both the expression (arrow 2) and the safeguard (arrow 3) of the economic structure of society. (The bottom-left half, arrow 1, represents the previously mentioned relationship between means of production and relations of production).

But there is also a right half in this drawing: the fact that ideas, in a kind of feedback mode, help to determine a particular economic structure, does not always have to be negative or aimed at the status quo. The poor, when they shed their false consciousness imposed by ideology, become conscious of their real situation, and this consciousness will help to start the revolution which will modify class relations and hence the substructure. This is represented by arrow 6.

Ideally, arrow 6 would have to pass through the box containing “politics” since the revolutionary proletariat will take over the state when attempting to modify the relations of production.

However, as we will see later [in the book], this awakening is bound to certain material preconditions, in particular the presence of certain very specific forces of production, namely large-scale industrial production with mass labor (arrow 4) and the strain imposed by existing class relations (arrow 5). It cannot, therefore, take place in every setting. Ultimately, all consciousness, real and false, is determined by the substructure. The order of determinations is fixed and follows the numerical order in the drawing. …

You can buy the book here and read something more about it here. More about Marx here.

Political Graffiti (118): Ballot Box

(source, the text reads “Ballot box” and “Place your votes here”)

More graffiti on democracy is here, here, here, here and here. More textual information on democracy is here. More political graffiti in general is here.

Terrorism and Human Rights (29): Terrorism, Caused by Poverty or Repression?

This is a follow up from some previous posts (here, here and here) claiming that poverty doesn’t cause terrorism, at least not usually, and another one (here) claiming that rights violations are a better predictor (and, conversely, respect for human rights predict reduced terrorism). I’ve found this paper (gated unfortunately) supporting those claims.

The empirical results reported here show that terrorist risk is not significantly higher for poorer countries, once the effects of other country-specific characteristics, such as the level of political freedom, are taken into account. … lack of political freedom is shown to explain terrorism, and it does so in a nonmonotonic way. Countries with intermediate levels of political freedom are shown to be more prone to terrorism than countries with high levels of political freedom or countries with highly authoritarian regimes. …

On the one hand, the repressive practices commonly adopted by autocratic regimes to eliminate political dissent may help keep terrorism at bay. On the other hand, intermediate levels of political freedom are often experienced during times of political transitions, when governments are weak, and political instability is elevated, so conditions are favorable for the appearance of terrorism. (source)

More posts in this “human rights facts” series are here. More on terrorism and on poverty.

Political Graffiti (109): Poverty and Public Transport

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More on poverty. More political graffiti.

Political Graffiti (108): This Institution Suppresses Freedom of Expression

Marc Kelly's political graffiti on University of Ottawa property

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More on freedom of expression. More political graffiti.